Sudan is burning in indifference, and that should haunt us

Introduction: a war the West barely watches

A conflict that has dragged on for years without real attention

A detailed timeline documents the continuing escalation of the Sudanese civil war throughout 2026, including the fall of el-Fasher and the subsequent siege imposed by the Rapid Support Forces around the city of el-Obeid, according to a compilation of events published on Wikipedia and corroborated by the Council on Foreign Relations.

I must admit this right away, with the honesty I always try to maintain in my writing: I devote far less attention to Sudan than to Ukraine, and this asymmetry troubles me deeply when I face it head-on. This piece is my attempt to correct, even modestly, that imbalance.

Why this essay, why now

The Council on Foreign Relations reports that the Rapid Support Forces encircled the city of el-Obeid at the end of June, with documented drone strikes and reports that at least twenty-two civilians were killed in a separate incident on June 10.

These figures, however cold they look on paper, represent real human lives, displaced families, children growing up in the middle of a war that most Western media barely mention, if they mention it at all.

I ask this question plainly, of myself as much as of my readers: why does a drone strike on Kyiv make headlines for days, while an entire siege of a Sudanese city disappears into a brief wire report? This hierarchy of attention deserves to be questioned honestly.

I have no comfortable answer to this question. I merely suspect that geographic and strategic proximity shapes our collective empathy far more than we would like to publicly admit.

The fall of el-Fasher, a bloody turning point

A symbolic city fallen after a prolonged siege

The fall of el-Fasher, capital of North Darfur state, represents one of the most significant developments of this civil war in 2026. After months of grueling siege, the Rapid Support Forces eventually seized control of this strategic city, according to the timeline documented on Wikipedia.

This military victory by the RSF was accompanied, according to several human rights organizations, by documented atrocities against the civilian population trapped in the city during the siege, including targeted killings and massive forced displacement.

A worrying precedent for still-besieged cities

The fall of el-Fasher immediately raised fears of a similar fate for other Sudanese cities still under threat from the Rapid Support Forces, particularly el-Obeid, now encircled in turn according to the latest reporting from Al Jazeera.

This repeating pattern of prolonged sieges followed by brutal takeovers illustrates a deliberate military strategy by the RSF, which appear to favor exhausting civilian populations as a method of weakening the resistance of Sudanese government forces in each targeted city.

I refuse to use softened words to describe what happened in el-Fasher. These are documented atrocities against civilians, full stop, regardless of the geopolitical complexity of the Sudanese conflict.

El-Obeid, the next city under threat

An encirclement recalling the worst-case scenarios

According to Al Jazeera, the United States expressed concern over the encirclement of the city of el-Obeid by the Rapid Support Forces at the end of June, a development that raises fears of a repeat of the tragic scenario previously seen in el-Fasher.

This American concern, though belated and limited in its concrete scope, at least implicitly acknowledges the severity of the humanitarian situation unfolding around this city, where hundreds of thousands of civilians could find themselves trapped in a prolonged siege.

An international community largely absent

Beyond this American statement of concern, the concrete international response to this looming threat remains largely insufficient, with few substantial diplomatic or humanitarian actions to prevent a repeat of the deadly el-Fasher scenario.

This international passivity contrasts painfully with the swift and determined Western mobilization seen in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a difference in treatment that raises uncomfortable questions about the selectiveness of our collective compassion.

I must be honest about my own limits here: even I, a columnist who prides himself on closely following geopolitical news, discovered the scale of this crisis much later than I would like to admit.

The human toll of a war without end

Numbers that are staggering

Human Rights Watch's annual 2026 report on Sudan documents the catastrophic scale of this humanitarian crisis, with millions of people displaced within the country and hundreds of thousands more having fled to neighboring countries since the conflict began.

These figures, however abstract they may seem in a report, represent one of the worst human displacement crises of our contemporary era, comparable in scale to other humanitarian disasters that receive markedly greater media attention.

A famine taking hold in silence

Beyond displacement, several regions of Sudan face documented risks of famine, according to international humanitarian organizations, a direct consequence of destroyed agricultural infrastructure and the impossibility of delivering humanitarian aid to active conflict zones.

This famine, progressively taking hold far from Western cameras, may represent the most tragic aspect of this war: children dying of hunger not by climate accident, but as a direct consequence of human political and military choices.

I think of these Sudanese children every time I write about the abstract geopolitical stakes of this conflict. Behind every displacement statistic hides an individual tragedy we collectively choose to ignore.

Women and children, the first silent victims

Gendered violence documented but barely covered

Several humanitarian organizations on the ground report disproportionate violence against women and children in areas controlled by the Rapid Support Forces, including forced displacement, family separations, and detention conditions denounced by independent observers in Sudan.

These accounts, gathered by organizations like Human Rights Watch, paint the portrait of a civilian population caught between two armed forces that, according to multiple converging reports, have both been accused of abuses against the very populations they claim to protect.

An entire generation marked by this conflict

Sudanese children growing up at the heart of this civil war already carry the psychological and physical scars of a conflict that, for many of them, represents the only reality they have ever known since birth or early childhood.

This reality alone should be enough to justify a far more determined international mobilization than the one currently observed, regardless of the cold geopolitical calculations that unfortunately continue to dictate Western humanitarian priorities.

I think of these Sudanese children born in the middle of a civil war, who have never known anything but displacement and fear. This entire generation deserves better than our persistent collective indifference.

Regional actors and their murky interests

A conflict fueled by outside powers

This Sudanese civil war is not unfolding in a geopolitical vacuum: several regional and international powers stand accused of providing material, financial, or logistical support to the various warring factions, turning Sudan into a new theater of proxy geopolitical rivalries.

This outside interference considerably complicates any prospect of a negotiated resolution to the conflict, with each regional power having its own strategic, economic, or security interests in seeing one or another of the warring Sudanese factions prevail.

An international responsibility largely dodged

This international dimension of the Sudanese conflict should logically prompt greater diplomatic pressure from major Western powers to end the outside interference fueling this war, but that pressure remains largely insufficient given the scale of the resulting humanitarian crisis.

I cannot help but notice that this same international community nevertheless knows how to quickly mobilize severe, coordinated sanctions when its own direct strategic interests are at stake, as we saw against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.

Here is an uncomfortable truth I must name: our collective outrage seems proportional to the geographic and strategic proximity of a conflict, not to the actual scale of the human suffering it causes.

What this silence says about our collective priorities

An implicit hierarchy of Western compassion

This striking contrast between the massive Western mobilization for Ukraine and the relative indifference toward Sudan reveals an implicit hierarchy in our geopolitical priorities, where geographic, cultural, and strategic proximity appears to largely determine the scale of our collective empathy.

I do not claim this hierarchy is purely cynical or devoid of legitimate justification: Russia's invasion of Ukraine directly threatens the European security order in a way the Sudanese conflict, however tragic, does not threaten in the same manner.

A necessary reflection on our own moral limits

But this strategic justification is not enough, in my view, to fully excuse the near-total silence surrounding this Sudanese tragedy in Western public debate and in my own columns, which focus overwhelmingly on the Ukrainian conflict.

This reflection forces on me a form of humility I do not often express in my usually more pointed writing: I have no simple solution to offer for correcting this attention asymmetry, other than to keep naming the problem whenever the opportunity arises.

I include myself in this criticism, without indulgence. This piece is my attempt, probably insufficient, to correct an imbalance I myself have perpetuated for too long in my work as a columnist.

What the West could concretely do

Underused diplomatic and humanitarian levers

Despite this relative media indifference, the West has concrete diplomatic and humanitarian levers it could mobilize more actively to respond to this Sudanese crisis, including increased humanitarian aid funding and sustained diplomatic pressure on the regional powers fueling this conflict.

These levers, though imperfect and insufficient to resolve so complex a conflict on their own, could at minimum ease some of the worst humanitarian consequences of this war, particularly by facilitating food aid access to the most vulnerable populations.

A moral responsibility beyond mere strategic calculations

I continue to believe, despite my own cynicism sometimes displayed toward the cold geopolitical calculations that dominate international relations, that there exists a minimal moral responsibility that should transcend the direct strategic interests alone of major Western powers.

This moral responsibility, if taken seriously, would justify a markedly greater Western mobilization than the one currently observed in the face of a humanitarian crisis as vast as the one now striking Sudan and its millions of civilians displaced or threatened by famine.

I close this section with a simple but, I believe, essential conviction: the value of a human life should never depend on its geographic proximity to our own Western strategic interests.

Conclusion: an uncomfortable mirror

What Sudan reveals about our contradictions

This timeline of the Sudanese escalation, rigorously documented by sources like Wikipedia and the Council on Foreign Relations, acts as an uncomfortable mirror revealing the deep contradictions of our Western humanitarian engagement, selective and unevenly distributed according to geopolitical criteria that have little to do with the actual scale of human suffering.

I do not claim to resolve this contradiction in this piece, nor to offer a miracle solution to a conflict of such considerable geopolitical complexity. I simply wish, humbly, to name a silence that troubles me and that, I suspect, should trouble my Western readers as well.

A call not to look away

The fall of el-Fasher and the growing siege of el-Obeid deserve our attention, our outrage, and ideally a far more substantial Western diplomatic and humanitarian mobilization than the one observed so far in response to this tragedy, which continues to worsen amid near-general indifference.

I will continue, in my future writing, to try to correct this attention asymmetry, which strikes me as morally unjustifiable, even though I know a single essay will never be enough to undo years of collective silence in the face of this Sudanese war.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Who I am and my declared biases

I sign this essay as a columnist for mad-m.ca, usually focused on the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and Western defense issues. This essay is a conscious attempt to broaden my scope of analysis to a humanitarian crisis too often neglected in my own journalistic work.

I have no specialized expertise on the internal dynamics of the Sudanese conflict, and I rely entirely on recognized documentary sources for this analysis, rather than on in-depth field knowledge I do not possess.

My limits and my commitment to rigor

The information available on this conflict, though documented by recognized organizations, remains at times incomplete due to the limited access independent journalists have to active conflict zones in Sudan.

I commit to continuing to follow this file and to correcting any information that proves inaccurate, in keeping with the journalistic rigor I apply to every subject I cover, including those outside my usual area of coverage.

Sources

Primary sources

Timeline of the Sudanese civil war (2026) — Wikipedia, 2026

Power struggle in Sudan — Council on Foreign Relations, 2026

Secondary sources

US raises concern as RSF forces encircle Sudanese city of el-Obeid — Al Jazeera, June 22, 2026

Sudan — Human Rights Watch World Report 2026

A timeline of key events in Sudan — Arab Center Washington DC, 2026

UN envoy warns of growing risks in El Obeid as Sudan conflict drags on — UN News, June 25, 2026