Sudan’s Civil War Unleashed Worst Active Genocide and Famine in the World Today

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

Sudanese refugees

The nation of Sudan is the site of the worst active genocide and famine in the world today. On Oct. 26, El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur and the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in the region, fell to the Rapid Support Forces or RSF.  Since the city’s fall widespread atrocities have been reported, including mass killings, ethnically-motivated violence and sexual assault. More than 150,000 people are estimated to have died in the current civil war, with 25 million affected by famine and millions more displaced internally or as refugees.

Both Sudan’s Armed Forces and the RSF, which have been engaged in a deadly war with each other since April 2023, were created by Sudan’s dictator Omar al-Bashir, who was overthrown in 2019. The RSF is an outgrowth of the Janjaweed—Arab militias that committed genocide against black African Muslims in Darfur in the early 2000s.

Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, has worked as a war crimes investigator for 26 years. Over the past 15 years, he’s used remote sensing technology to detect and document threats to the security of civilians. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Raymond about the evolution and current state of Sudan’s war, which included the RSF’s 18-month siege of El Fasher, leading to the highest of five levels of famine for the 500,000 people who were sheltering there.

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: The RSF launched a sneak attack on the (Sudan Armed Forces) SAF to try to consolidate control of the government. And it was then that our team from the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale was brought in by the State Department to support the first U.S. and Saudi effort to attempt to negotiate an end of the war, which was called the Jeddah process.

At the start of the civil war, contemporaneous to that, RSF forces began to attack the Darfur population in the west and used the civil war as cover for action to attempt to reignite and complete the Darfur genocide. And we began to detect in the far western part of the country, fires using a NASA thermal sensor called VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite). We began to see fires in communities where there was no Sudan Armed Forces. And in fact, the Sudan Armed Forces in the city of El Geneina in the late spring, early summer of 2023 walked across the border into Chad and left the Masalit people there in the city of Geneina, which is the capital of the Masalit tribe, to die. And what proceeded to happen after that was a house-to-house hunt for men and boys in killing over weeks of men and boys in El Geneina. And we monitored that from above. This is very important when we get to El Fasher, is that with Geneina, we saw genocidal violence and we were able to get ground photos of the bodies.

And we used that to develop a calibration to measure bodies and satellite imagery based on having validated photographs of them on the ground. It was then after that massacre that within the U.S. government, we issued the first warning that we thought they would go and attempt the same thing in El Fasher with the Fur and the Zaghawa. During the Darfur genocide, the international community deployed a UN peacekeeping force called UniMed and its headquarters was in El Fasher. And many of the Fur and Zaghawa that fled along with other tribes that fled the genocide gathered 20 years ago around El Fasher.

So we briefed the UN Security Council in private session in July, 2023 and told them that there would be an attack and a siege likely in the dry season of 2023 into 2024 that would put El Fasher under siege. And if the siege failed, it would kill tens of thousands in a massacre, which would be the final battle of the Darfur genocide. We proceeded to leave U.S. government service in the winter of 2024 over a lack of action on the risk to El Fasher.

And so we raised replacement money and we’ve camped out on El Fasher since then because we believe that we had the best chance to protect the most people by focusing on El Fasher. On Oct. 26, SAF negotiated a deal on the night to escape to the west once again, leaving the civilians to RSF. And the 26th and the 27th, we began to see objects on the streets between 1.3 meters, which is about three feet to two meters, which is about six feet. The smaller ones are children, the larger ones are adults. Some messages got out and sources told us on Monday morning, 1,200 were dead. By Monday evening, they messaged again and 10,000 were dead. By Tuesday, we couldn’t reach them anymore.

MELINDA TUHUS: It’s just horrific. Are we to assume that the slaughter is ongoing even as we speak, or what do we know?

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: Absolutely. We can see house-to-house raids and we see a level of movement of remains that suggest is still ongoing.
MELINDA TUHUS: 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: Classified U.S. intelligence assessments said that the U.S. government had known for months that the United Arab Emirates had been supplying weapons to the Rapid Support Forces. But the point is, UAE is steadfastly denied their involvement as the evidence mounts that they have directly supported the RSF, including increasing armed sales and the volume of armed sales during the siege of El Fasher.’
MELINDA TUHUS: 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.
For more information, visit the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health at medicine.yale.edu/lab/khoshnood.
Listen to Melinda Tuhus’ in-depth interview with Nathaniel Raymond (26:50) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter to get updates to our “Hey AmeriKKKa, It’s Not Normal” compilation.
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