# El-Fasher and the West's Silence on RSF Crimes in Sudan

> A new report from Amnesty International, published on July 1, 2026, indicts the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Sudan's paramilitary militia, for crimes

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Essay
- Published: 2026-07-05
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/el-fasher-le-silence-occidental-face-aux-crimes-de-la-rsf-au-soudan

## Introduction: a report that indicts the Rapid Support Forces

### Amnesty International documents the horror of El-Fasher

A new report from **Amnesty International**, published on **July 1, 2026**, indicts the **Rapid Support Forces** (RSF), Sudan's paramilitary militia, for crimes against humanity committed during the siege and capture of the city of **El-Fasher**, in **North Darfur**. Titled "City Under Siege, Children Under Fire," this report of more than **200 pages** rests on eight months of investigation and **247 interviews**, including **39 with children**, a considerable evidentiary base that makes these findings particularly difficult for the international community to dismiss.

The Secretary General of **Amnesty International**, **Agnès Callamard**, described the situation as "a war against civilians" and "a stain on the conscience of humanity," words of rare gravity that reflect the scale of what her teams documented on the ground around this strategic city in western **Sudan**.

### An eighteen-month siege that starved an entire city

El-Fasher, home to more than **1.5 million people** before the conflict, endured an **RSF** siege stretching from **May 2024** to **October 2025**, a period during which access to food and humanitarian aid was systematically restricted, plunging the population into a famine that **Amnesty International** documents in precise detail in its report, forcing some residents to survive on ambaz, a peanut-oil production residue normally reserved for livestock.

This strategy of prolonged siege, followed by a final assault on **October 26, 2025**, allowed the **RSF** to seize the last major garrison held by the Sudanese army in the **Darfur** region, ending eighteen months of fierce resistance by the **Joint Forces** defending the city alongside the regular army.

*I consider this report one of the most damning documents published on the Sudanese conflict since it began. The Western world, too often fixated on other geopolitical crises, can no longer pretend to ignore what happened in El-Fasher, and I firmly believe it is our collective responsibility to pay attention to this tragedy, one so badly undercovered by our media.*

## The deliberate ethnic targeting of non-Arab communities

### The Zaghawa community singled out systematically

One of the most troubling elements of the report concerns the systematic targeting of the **Zaghawa** community, a non-Arab ethnic group heavily present in the **El-Fasher** region, several of whose members fought within the **Joint Forces** defending the city. According to **Amnesty International**, Arab **RSF** fighters targeted Zaghawa civilians regardless of any involvement in hostilities, routinely hurling ethnic slurs meaning "slave" or "servant."

In the **Abu Zerega** area, roughly **35 kilometers south of El-Fasher**, the destruction of predominantly Zaghawa villages matches, according to **Amnesty** investigators, a distinct pattern of ethnic cleansing, with residents treated as collectively responsible for the actions of the fighters who defended the city.

### Children deliberately targeted

The report places particular emphasis on the fate of children, noting that they "were not simply collateral damage," in the words of **Agnès Callamard**, but were often "intentionally targeted" and suffered injuries, abductions, and forced recruitment on a large scale, a chilling reality documented through testimony from dozens of survivors gathered by the organization's investigators.

Hundreds of thousands of children were displaced during this military campaign, many of them risking death or repeated injury while fleeing combat zones, while countless others are now orphaned, left to fend for themselves in overcrowded displacement camps across the **Darfur** region.

*The deliberate targeting of children in this conflict outrages me deeply, and I believe it is essential never to normalize this kind of act by burying it in abstract statistics. Every orphaned or wounded child in El-Fasher represents an individual tragedy that the report's overall figures only partially convey.*

## The methods documented by Amnesty's investigators

### A meticulous investigation built on hundreds of testimonies

The methodological rigor of the **Amnesty International** report deserves emphasis: investigators analyzed **89 publicly available videos** along with detailed satellite imagery of **North Darfur**, cross-referencing these materials with direct survivor testimony to establish a precise timeline of the abuses committed between early **2024** and **October 2025**.

This combination of sources, ranging from human testimony to digital and satellite evidence, gives the report a credibility that is difficult to dispute, including for the **RSF** itself, which did not respond to **Amnesty International's** requests for comment on the specific findings of this in-depth investigation.

### Commanders named directly by the organization

In a rare move for this type of report, **Amnesty International** made the unusual decision to directly name three **RSF** commanders it holds responsible for the worst documented abuses, including one identified as **Abu Lulu**, accused of orchestrating the summary execution of prisoners wearing civilian clothing during the capture of the city.

This naming of alleged perpetrators is explicitly intended to pave the way for future prosecutions, with **Amnesty International** calling on the international community to support existing accountability mechanisms, particularly the **International Criminal Court**, so that these individuals may one day answer for their actions before a court of law.

*I applaud Amnesty International's decision to directly name alleged perpetrators. Too often, reports on war crimes remain trapped in the abstraction of overall figures, whereas holding named, identified commanders individually accountable marks a concrete first step toward a justice that, sadly, remains largely hypothetical for the victims of Darfur.*

## The troubling role of the United Arab Emirates in this conflict

### Foreign support flagged by human rights organizations

Several **Amnesty International** reports, including earlier publications covering other episodes of the El-Fasher siege, point to material support provided by the **United Arab Emirates** to the **RSF**, outside backing that the organization believes directly enabled the continuation of the military campaign against civilian populations in the **Darfur** region.

This accusation, reiterated by **Amnesty International** in its statement accompanying the **July 2026** report, explicitly calls on Western countries, particularly the **United States** and the **European Union**, to pressure **Abu Dhabi** to end all support for the Sudanese paramilitary militia, including through the ongoing bilateral trade negotiations between the **EU** and the **Emirates**.

### The arms embargo, a tool that needs strengthening

The organization is also asking the **United Nations Security Council** to extend to the whole of Sudanese territory the arms embargo that has, for nearly two decades, applied only to the **Darfur** region, an international legal instrument whose effectiveness remains largely undermined by repeated circumventions documented by several independent organizations.

This call to expand the embargo is paired with an urgent appeal to all states, without exception, to immediately halt any supply of weapons and ammunition to the warring Sudanese parties, a demand that, if rigorously enforced, could significantly limit the **RSF's** operational capacity on the ground.

*This question of foreign support for the RSF strikes me as the true crux of this tragedy. Without outside weapons and financing, this militia could never have waged such a devastating campaign for so long. The West must stop looking away from trading partners that fuel this kind of conflict, even when those partners happen to be valuable economic allies.*

## The UN's assessment of a possible targeted extermination campaign

### An independent fact-finding mission with chilling conclusions

Ahead of the **Amnesty International** report, an independent fact-finding mission mandated by the **United Nations** had already concluded, in **February 2026**, that the events surrounding the capture of **El-Fasher** bore what it called the "hallmarks" of the gravest crimes recognized under international law, a conclusion based on more than **320 interviews** with survivors and corroborated satellite imagery analysis.

Expert **Mona Rishmawi**, a member of this UN-mandated investigative mission, summarized the gathered evidence as leading to only "one logical conclusion" regarding the intent behind these acts targeting the region's Zaghawa and Fur communities, a statement of exceptional gravity in the usually measured language of **United Nations** bodies.

### The British and international diplomatic response

British Foreign Secretary **Yvette Cooper** called these findings "truly horrifying" and announced her intention to present them directly to the **United Nations Security Council**, stressing the need for international criminal investigations to secure some measure of justice for the victims of this campaign.

This British diplomatic push is part of a broader wave of international pressure, though several observers, including within **Amnesty International**, lament the slowness of the international community's concrete response to warning signs that, in their view, had been visible for many months before the city actually fell.

*This slow international response exasperates me deeply. How many damning reports, how many chilling testimonies will it take before the major Western powers act with the firmness this situation truly demands, rather than settling for diplomatic statements that change nothing on the ground?*

## Amnesty International's concrete demands to the international community

### A national ceasefire and an international protection force

At the close of its report, **Amnesty International** lays out a series of specific demands addressed to the international community, starting with the call for an **immediate national ceasefire** in **Sudan**, backed by coordinated pressure from the **African Union** and other regional bodies on the two main parties to the conflict, the Sudanese army and the **RSF**.

The organization also demands the rapid deployment of an **independent, adequately resourced international force** to protect civilian populations from abuses committed by all parties to the conflict, a force that, according to **Amnesty**, should have solid expertise in human rights and child protection.

### Stronger backing for existing judicial mechanisms

The report also stresses the need to guarantee sufficient financial and political support for the accountability mechanisms already in place concerning **Sudan**, particularly the **International Criminal Court** and the fact-finding missions backed by the **United Nations** and the **African Union**, so that those allegedly responsible for the documented abuses can one day be brought before competent courts.

This emphasis on the judicial dimension reflects **Amnesty International's** conviction that, without a real prospect of criminal sanctions for responsible commanders, the **RSF** will keep reproducing the same patterns of violence against civilian populations in other regions of **Sudan**, particularly in the currently threatened areas of **Kordofan**.

*I fully share this conviction from Amnesty International: without real judicial consequences, nothing will stop the RSF from repeating this pattern elsewhere in Sudan. Impunity is the fuel of this kind of violence, and until the major Western powers and international bodies make that impunity more costly, these tragedies will keep repeating themselves.*

## Why the West must break its relative silence on Sudan

### A crisis eclipsed by other geopolitical conflicts

It must be acknowledged that the Sudanese crisis, despite its considerable humanitarian scale, remains largely overshadowed in Western media coverage by other conflicts, particularly Russia's war in **Ukraine** and tensions in the **Middle East**, an imbalance in international attention that carries real consequences for effective diplomatic and financial mobilization toward **Sudan**.

This implicit ranking of crises, in which some humanitarian tragedies receive far greater political and media attention than others, deserves to be questioned honestly, especially since the number of civilian casualties and displaced people in **Sudan** ranks among the highest of any conflict currently underway anywhere in the world.

### A moral responsibility that outweighs strategic interests alone

While the **West** must remain focused on the major strategic threats posed by **Russia**, **China**, **Iran**, and **North Korea** to the international order, this should never justify relative indifference toward humanitarian tragedies of this magnitude simply because they unfold in a region perceived as peripheral to the immediate geostrategic interests of the major Western powers.

A Western foreign policy genuinely consistent with its proclaimed values of defending human rights should grant **Sudan** a level of diplomatic and humanitarian attention proportional to the documented gravity of the abuses committed, rather than reserving that attention almost exclusively for crises that directly touch Western economic or security interests.

*This piece forces a form of self-criticism of the Western editorial line I usually defend with conviction. Yes, Russia, China, and Iran represent the major strategic threats to the West, but that must never become an excuse to look away from a human tragedy of the magnitude the Sudanese people are currently living through.*

## The humanitarian fallout for Darfur's displaced

### Overwhelmed displacement camps in an already exhausted region

The fall of **El-Fasher** triggered a massive influx of displaced people toward the nearby towns of **Tawila** and **Tina**, on the border with **Chad**, where already limited humanitarian capacity has been completely overwhelmed by the scale of need. Humanitarian organizations on the ground describe precarious sanitary conditions, insufficient access to clean water, and a glaring shortage of qualified medical staff to care for the wounded and traumatized victims of this military campaign.

This catastrophic humanitarian situation compounds years of conflict that have already displaced millions of people across **Sudan**, making this one of the world's gravest crises in terms of forced population displacement, a reality several **United Nations** agencies are struggling to bring to the attention of the Western public despite repeated appeals for international financial aid.

### The glaring shortfall in international humanitarian funding

Despite the documented scale of this crisis, **United Nations** humanitarian funding appeals for **Sudan** remain chronically underfunded by the international community, a budget shortfall that directly limits the ability of organizations on the ground to meet the urgent needs of displaced populations in the **Darfur** region and elsewhere in the country.

This persistent underfunding illustrates, once again, the gap between the documented severity of the Sudanese crisis and the political and financial attention actually granted by the major Western powers, an imbalance that several humanitarian organizations regularly denounce without managing to durably reverse the trend.

*This chronic underfunding of the humanitarian response in Sudan perfectly illustrates the underlying problem I am raising in this piece. You can publish the most damning reports in the world, but if the international community does not follow through with concrete financial resources, civilian populations will keep paying the price of our collective indifference.*

## Conclusion: El-Fasher, a test for the international conscience

### A report that can no longer be ignored

The **Amnesty International** report on El-Fasher stands as a damning document that documents, with methodological rigor difficult to dispute, the scale of suffering inflicted on the civilian population of this city and its surrounding region by the **Rapid Support Forces**. Faced with this level of documentation, the international community's prolonged inaction becomes less and less morally defensible.

The **247 testimonies** gathered, the detailed satellite analyses, and the naming of responsible commanders provide a solid foundation for any future judicial action, provided the necessary political will finally materializes within the competent international bodies to turn these findings into actual prosecutions.

### What history will remember of this international response

History will judge harshly the response, or the absence of response, from the international community to what the **Amnesty International** report describes as a systematic campaign against civilian populations targeted because of their ethnicity. **Sudan** deserves attention proportionate to the documented gravity of its tragedy, not the relative indifference dictated by geography or the strategic priorities of the moment.

For the survivors of **El-Fasher**, who agreed to testify despite the obvious risks to their personal safety, the only acceptable response from the international community remains swift, concrete action, rather than more diplomatic statements with no tangible follow-through on the ground.

*I close this piece with the conviction that silence is never a neutral option in the face of this kind of tragedy. Every additional day of international inaction translates into shattered lives in El-Fasher and across Darfur, and I refuse to look away simply because this crisis unfolds far from the usual spotlight of Western news.*

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- Amnesty International, full report on RSF crimes against humanity in North Darfur — July 1, 2026

- Amnesty International, Agnès Callamard's introductory speech on the El-Fasher report — July 2, 2026

### Secondary sources

- BBC, Rapid Support Forces accused of crimes against humanity in El-Fasher — July 1, 2026

- Al Jazeera, Amnesty says RSF committed ethnic cleansing in Sudan's El-Fasher — July 1, 2026

- BBC, UN says abuses bear the hallmarks of the gravest crimes under international law — February 19, 2026

- Deutsche Welle, warnings mount over the risk of new mass atrocities in Sudan

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/el-fasher-le-silence-occidental-face-aux-crimes-de-la-rsf-au-soudan