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A crater blasted by emergency response forces at Alia Specialist Hospital in Omdurman, Sudan, on April 21. IVOR PRICKETT/The New York Times Press Agency
As the death toll soars in Sudan’s conflict-hit Darfur region, U.S. President Joe Biden is under pressure to meet with leaders of the United Arab Emirates, a key regional power, this week and urge the country to halt arms exports.
Rights groups have warned that weapons from the UAE and other countries are fuelling a second genocide in Darfur in two decades.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters over the weekend that Sudan “will certainly be on the agenda” when Biden meets UAE leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan on Monday.
“We are concerned by the steps many countries are taking to perpetuate conflict rather than resolve it,” Sullivan said, predicting “intense but delicate diplomatic negotiations” with several countries in the region.
Continued reports from multiple sources, including United Nations experts, suggest that the UAE, an oil-rich Gulf state with strong interests in Africa, is providing an arsenal of sophisticated weaponry to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a Sudanese paramilitary militia that has been fighting the Sudanese army for the past 17 months.
The conflict in Sudan has become the world’s worst displacement crisis, with more than 10 million people forced from their homes and 25 million facing hunger. Independent estimates suggest that as many as 150,000 people have died in the war.
The RSF has now intensified its attacks on the strategic Darfur city of El Fasher and may be on the verge of taking it, analysts say, which would likely trigger a wave of ethnic cleansing and massacres of civilians.
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International concern is growing: “The EU will not witness another genocide,” European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said in a statement on Sunday.
“The consequences will be irreversible for the thousands of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire,” he said. “We also reiterate our call on those fuelling the war, particularly its regional and international backers, to cease supporting this situation.”
Recent UN investigators have documented numerous war crimes in Sudan and called for a nationwide arms embargo. Previous UN reports have found that the UAE has supplied weapons and funds to the RSF.
In a letter on Friday, five U.S. members of Congress urged President Biden to use his meeting with the UAE leader to urge him to halt aid to the RSF.
“We are concerned that the UAE’s support for the Sudan Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is at odds with efforts to end fighting in Sudan,” they said.
Leading humanitarian group Refugees International went further: “RSF’s actions may amount to genocide, directly fueled by the UAE’s military support,” its president, Jeremy Konyndyk, said in a statement on Sunday night.
He urged Biden to use his meeting with the UAE leader as an opportunity to “send a tough message” and publicly condemn the UAE’s support for paramilitary groups.
El Fasher is the last city in Darfur not controlled by the RSF, and the UN has documented the massacres of thousands of civilians in other cities seized by paramilitary forces since the start of the war.
Satellite imagery shows a growing number of newly discovered graves in El Fasher, civilians fleeing the city on foot, buildings damaged by air and artillery strikes and numerous bomb pits, according to a report released Friday by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Lab. Famine has already been officially declared in the refugee camps, which are home to half a million people.
The UN’s special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, said the situation in El Fassial had become “dire” and that fierce house-to-house fighting was creating “existential fear” among civilians.
“The recent escalation of hostilities has created a spiral of violence that threatens to engulf everything in its path,” she said Friday.
The global debate over the UAE’s role in Sudan has intensified in recent months, symbolized by American rapper Macklemore canceling a show scheduled for October in Dubai, the country’s largest city. “Unless the UAE stops arms and funding the RSF I will not be performing there,” Macklemore said in an Instagram post, describing the Sudanese war as “horrific.”
The UAE government denies that it is supplying weapons to the RSF, but suspicions were fuelled by a weekend report in the New York Times that the UAE was secretly deploying Chinese-made drones in eastern Chad to support the RSF’s military offensive in Darfur.
The attacks come as the RSF pushes deeper into El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, inflicting heavy casualties. At least 14 people were killed in RSF artillery fire on Saturday, the Sudan Tribune reported.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged RSF to halt the attacks.
“It is inexcusable that the warring parties have repeatedly ignored calls for a cessation of hostilities,” the president said in a statement issued Saturday through spokesman Stephane Dujarric.