The UK downgraded and sidelined its own atrocity monitoring protocols with regard to Sudan. This helped compound what is now clearly an active genocide. That genocide is largely being carried out by a militia backed the UK’s Gulf ally and arms trade customer UAE.
The damning assessment comes from a 25 March Guardian investigation. Journalists documented the fall of the southern city of El Fasher to the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The story explains in shocking detail the heroism and horror of 27 October.
Local defence forces and military members struggled in vain to hold off RSF and help civilians escape. The death toll of the city’s fall may be as high as 70,000.
The war between Sudanese government forces and RSF has been raging since 2023. So far millions have been displaced and up to 150,000 killed. Several Gulf states, Egypt, Israel, UK, US and many other local and global powers are pursuing their own colonial interests in Sudan.
UK abandoned Sudan
The report found:
The UK seemingly abandoned El Fasher: reports predicting genocide apparently discarded; intelligence apparatus that should have prompted intervention were not updated throughout the 561-day siege.
As fighting had intensified, the UK removed Darfur’s original genocide – when 300,000 were slaughtered by the RSF’s Arab predecessors – from its list of recognised mass atrocities.
The authors warned this wasn’t just a matter of generalised humanitarian failure. The UK – and US – were key players in the eventual massacre:
To frame El Fasher within the timeworn narrative of collective international failure avoids the darker truth.
Decisions were taken that ensured help never came. Both the US and UK suppressed or sidelined warnings that would have helped avoid the slaughter.
And they said that when it comes to it, the British government will have few excuses:
Central to the UK’s approach was the Joint Analysis of Conflict and Stability (Jacs), conceived to assess whether genocide was likely and, if so, intervene suitably.
The UK’s own intelligence, sources confirm, said the RSF wanted to “eliminate” the city’s non-Arab population.
However:
…no attempt was made to update Jacs throughout the 18-month siege. The most recent Jacs assessment for Sudan is dated 2019: four years before the current war began.
Cold indifference?
The UK even approached a group of US-based experts whose innovative use of satellite and open source intelligence has revealed a range of atrocities.
The Guardian report states:
The UK mission to the UN security council asked Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, what could be done.
Raymond advocated urgently deploying a UN monitoring force around El Fasher. “If we don’t, these people will die. I begged them.”
Despite this advice, “nothing happened”.
The US proved just as unwilling to help:
The US similarly seemed in no rush to help. Requests for “kinetic intervention” to protect El Fasher were rejected.
The US state department blocked intelligence assessments relating to El Fasher that would have triggered an intervention to prevent genocide.
Exactly why is unclear, but UK MPs were briefed as early as 2023. And a secret Cabinet Office briefing was even held to discuss the matter. At one point the UK even removed Darfur – an affected region of Sudan – from a watchlist:
…when the Islamic State’s targeting of Iraq’s Yazidi minority was added to the UK’s official list in August 2023, Darfur was removed.
“It silently – inexplicably – removed the Darfur genocide,” stated the briefing.
The Guardian explained:
It wasn’t the first sign Darfur had been deprioritised. As fighting spread across the region in 2023, a parliamentary report warned of genocide. Submitted to Downing Street it received no formal response. “We were indignant, outraged,” said one of the authors.
This is despite the UK effectively being in charge of Sudan issues and civilian protection at the UN’s highest body:
Yet the UK was El Fasher’s great hope. Not only Sudan’s penholder at the UN security council, it had international responsibility for civilian protection.
UK-UAE relations
The UAE is a major customer for UK arms. British military gear has been seen in the hands of RSF. UK relations with UAE seem to have shaped the British response to the Sudan Genocide.
The Guardian reported:
Weeks before the siege began, the UK’s then Africa minister, Andrew Mitchell, met the president of Chad and discreetly urged him to stop the UAE smuggling weapons into neighbouring Darfur.
Mitchell confirmed that even then – March 2024 – he possessed “incontrovertible proof” that the Emiratis were arming the RSF.
Adding:
Yet his government, likewise the current, seemingly chose not to act. “It was quickly clear the Starmer government did not want to piss off the Emiratis,” said a US source.
The UK is culpable for the genocide in Sudan, every bit as much as it is for the one in Gaza. This is true now, but also historically. The British ruled Sudan by force until independence in 1956. A young Winston Churchill even bragged (at book length) about fighting there in the 1890s. The people of Sudan, whose heroic agency is so apparent in the Guardian report, remain trapped at the point where global and local powers fight like vultures over land and resources which do not belong to them.
Featured image via the Canary
By Joe Glenton
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