Interview with Nathaniel Raymond, executive director, Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

MELINDA TUHUS: The work you do—I don't know. It's hard to even imagine how you can do this work. It must be so devastating to you. Can you just start there?

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: I've been a war crimes investigator for 26 years. I've been using remote sensing with my colleagues to detect and document threats to the human security of civilians for 15 years now. And on one hand, watching crimes against humanity and war crimes from space never gets easy. On the other hand, you develop over time a type of clinical approach like a heart surgeon where you are able to effectively compartmentalize your feelings about what you're viewing in your real time to be able to focus on having operational outcome. And that's really essential. We have teams, some members are young, some members have been doing this with us for 15 years, and we're constantly training and practicing about how to do this work during a crisis like El Fasher and to be able to stay operationally effective. And that takes a lot of practice. It's not something that you do in the heat of the moment. It's something you prepare for.

MELINDA TUHUS: Yeah. Wow. As I mentioned, I've been trying for two years to do an interview about what's been going on in Sudan, and it's never happened to me that I couldn't get anybody to talk to me. So I am so grateful that you're willing to do it and you have so much expertise.

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: So you have to begin with the revolution against Bashir in 2018 into 2019 and the overthrow of the National Congress Party government by democracy activists, and everyday Sudanese that led to the attempted democratic transition. To understand what happens in April 2023, you have to understand that there were two main security actors that (ousted Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-)Bashir created and strengthened. One is the Sudan Armed Forces, which he led, and the other is known as the Rapid Support Forces, which was an outgrowth of the Janjaweed. So the Janjaweed, which were the genocidal militias. And the first Darfur genocide come from an ethnic group called the Rizeigat, which are semi-nomadic pastoralist peoples of central and southern Darfur and they're of Arab lineage. And the people of Darfur, the Fur, the Zaghawa, the Masalit and the Berti are non-Arab Africans. That's indigenous Muslim non-Arab Africans. That's a vast oversimplification.

MELINDA TUHUS: Oh my God. And one place, one of the slaughter places was the maternity hospital.

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: El Saudi, yeah. It's described as a maternity hospital, but by the end of the siege, it was the last functioning all-purpose hospital. There they killed 450 people, all the patients, their companions and most of the doctors, nurses, and pharmacists except those that they took for ransom.

MELINDA TUHUS: So it's just horrific and it's hard to know how to respond. But one thing I did want you to talk about is the role of the UAE, the United Arab Emirates in this whole horrible situation.

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: On Monday morning of the first day of RSF control, straight out of a movie script, the cavalry arrived and the Wall Street Journal suddenly reports that they had received two classified U.S. intelligence assessments, one from the Defense Intelligence Agency and one from the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department. And they said that the U.S. government had known for months that the United Arab Emirates had been supplying weapons to the Rapid Support Forces. And in one report mentioned by the Wall Street Journal and the intelligence community confirms our reporting that the RSF have a CH 95 fixed wing drone, and which we had seen on the ground at Nyala and in the air over El Fasher. And they conclude that that drone came from China via the UAE. And so the important thing to understand is that there's been reports of various credibility for years now that the UAE is arming the RSF.

MELINDA TUHUS: Okay. And so are we to assume that the slaughter is ongoing even as we speak, or what do we know?

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: Absolutely. Yeah. We can see house-to-house raids and we see a level of movement of remains that suggest it's still ongoing.

MELINDA TUHUS: Oh, and I just wanted to ask you, you said women arrived mostly with children who weren't their own. What did you mean by that?

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: Meant that their parents were dead.

MELINDA TUHUS: Okay. So they arrived, whoever could get out, get out and got out. And some of the children ended up with other people.

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: So much of the children ended up with other people. They had separated out the men and boys. They did in El Geneina.

MELINDA TUHUS: Right. Okay.

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: And when the children arrived, the folks in Tawila began to record the highest level of malnutrition we had ever seen in a population on the move. 70 percent of the children were at highest stage of malnutrition.

MELINDA TUHUS: So when they came out and they went to Tawila, I dunno if I said ...

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: Tawila

MELINDA TUHUS: When they went to Tawila, is there anybody providing humanitarian aid in that whole part of the country?

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: Yes. Tawila is the main humanitarian base. So Tawila is a safe haven city that's in the territory of a local militia leader named Abdul Wahid al-Nur, and his group is the SLA, the Sudanese Liberation Army. And the SLA, what's called al-Nur faction, had negotiated a truce with the RSF. And so they became neutral in the conflict. And they're to the west about 40 kilometers to the west of El Fasher in Tawila and also a region called the Jebel Marra. And Jebel Marra is the traditional homeland of the Fur. And so, Abdul Wahid al-Nur sheltered the people who fled El Fasher at various points during the siege and now the humanitarians have been able to build a base there where there's multiple organizations, about half dozen or more providing assistance. And the concern is that Tawila could fall if al-Nur breaks the truce and leaves the people and retreats further into the hills in the caves of Jebel Marra. Or if the RSF attacks the humanitarians and the 650,000 people there are in danger.

MELINDA TUHUS: Wow. So what can happen? What about the role of the U.S.?

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: The United States, the United Kingdom and Europe has fundamentally prioritized its diplomatic economic and security relationship with the UAE over protecting these people. And despite U.N. Security Council Resolution 2736 from last summer, which we played a role in helping push for—which called for ceasefire in El Fasher—the will of the Security Council has not been enforced. And the U.S. and its partners have continued both under Biden and the Trump administration to push for a comprehensive end to the war rather than focusing on the imminent security threat, human security threat against non-Arab indigenous African Muslims in Darfur. And so that approach, we at Humanitarian Research Lab have been warning since the beginning would lead to where we are now. And it's failed completely and it's failed completely because the United States has chosen, along with the United Kingdom and European nations to try to pursue the magical thinking that you can somehow end this war without holding the UAE to account for financially sponsoring and operationally sponsoring a genocide that is not going to work.

MELINDA TUHUS: Yeah. So I guess in ending, what is your organization calling for? What are other humanitarian groups calling for and what do you think is the likelihood of any of that coming to pass that would help the people and stop the genocide? Are you calling it a genocide?

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: Yes. And so is the U.S. government. In January of 2025, a formal genocide determination was made by Secretary Blinken. We had been pushing inside the government for that determination to be made in July of 2023. Blinken made his last couple days in office his last week. The Trump administration has not overruled the determination. And so it's still the policy of the United States that a genocide is occurring in Darfur as a result of the actions of the Rapid Support Forces. And so that's the policy of the United States.

MELINDA TUHUS: I thought if a genocide was declared, then there was the responsibility to act.

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: There is—that responsibility exists both under the Ellie Wiesel Atrocity Prevention Act and under the Genocide Convention. And the fact of the matter is that the international community is failing in that obligation. The only things that will stop the current trajectory is sanctions pressure on the UAE or the introduction of some form of peacekeeping force, which is extremely unlikely to impossible. And so, the critical issue now is getting access to the city for those who are still alive and ensuring those in Tawila are safe. And then, as this is happening, a new front is opening in the Kordofans, particularly El-Obeid, and so this cycle could repeat within days to the west, to the east, sorry, in the central highlands. And so what needs to happen is we need to be able to access our El-Fasher and we need to be able to prevent the siege of El-Fasher from repeating again in El-Obeid, Dilling and Kadugli in the East.

MELINDA TUHUS: Nathaniel, thank you so much for your time and your work. I really appreciate it.

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: I really appreciate you. Thank you.

MELINDA TUHUS: Thanks. Take care. Have a good day.