Let’s name the country that’s financing mass murder

Recently arrived Sudanese refugees from various parts of north Darfur, including el-Fasher, at the Oure Cassoni refugee camp in eastern Chad, Nov. 28, 2025. Last year, a brutal militia overran el-Fasher, slaughtering some 60,000 people in a few weeks, after repeated warnings by human rights experts went unheeded, Times columnist Nicholas Kristof writes. (Ivor Prickett/The New York Times)

By NICHOLAS KRISTOF

Last year, human rights experts warned for many months that a brutal militia was about to overrun a major Sudanese city, el-Fasher, and massacre inhabitants.

President Donald Trump and other world leaders mostly shrugged. The militia went ahead and overran el-Fasher, slaughtering some 60,000 people in a few weeks.

Now the same militia is besieging another major Sudanese city, el-Obeid, which has half a million or more people, and is also threatening populations north in the Darfur region. Some inside el-Obeid are starving, yet, again, Trump and many other world leaders seem largely indifferent.

Preventing the slaughter would not require military action. It would not even require money. Put aside the arguments over whether humanitarian assistance is worthwhile. (But first, let me say I believe that the billions spent on the Iran war would have been better allocated to $2 bed nets to save children’s lives from malaria.) It may be that all we need to do to avert atrocities in Sudan is speak up.

The backdrop: Sudan is probably the world’s worst humanitarian crisis right now. The country is caught in a civil war between the army and a largely Arab militia, the Rapid Support Forces, and while both sides have behaved viciously, the RSF is particularly notorious for savagery, including for killing and raping members of several Black African ethnic groups. While reporting on the Chad-Sudan border in 2024, I interviewed survivors who described the RSF systematically killing men and boys over the age of 10 and gang-raping many women and girls.

“We don’t want to see any Black people,” one woman quoted an RSF leader telling villagers before the militia slaughtered the men and boys, among them her five brothers.

The RSF is now massing forces around el-Obeid and attacking it with drones. Food is scarce, and people are weakening. The region is suffering from an outbreak of cholera, which, if it spreads, could greatly increase the suffering.

“Another human rights catastrophe is unfolding in Sudan,” Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, warned a few days ago. He added that people in the region are being subjected to summary executions and sexual violence.

“Families have to queue for long hours to get water that is often unsafe for drinking,” the Norwegian Refugee Council reports. “Once they manage to bring water home, they must choose whether to use it to drink, cook or wash.”

It’s not entirely clear if the RSF plans to overrun el-Obeid or whether there would be a bloodbath if it did. Compared with el-Fasher, fewer people in el-Obeid are members of the Black African ethnic groups that the RSF targets. It’s even possible that the siege of el-Obeid is a feint to distract from an attack elsewhere, such as on the Darfur city of Tawila.

Still, the risks are immense, and the U.N. Security Council issued a statement last month warning of the “imminent risk of mass atrocities.”

Leaders are willing to speak about the violence itself. Both the Biden and Trump administrations described the situation in Sudan as genocide. The State Department just last month warned of “alarming indications that mass atrocities could be imminent.”

But what American, European and U.N. officials won’t say openly is that the power behind the RSF is the United Arab Emirates. Although the UAE denies it, its backing of the RSF is well established. Yet the UAE is rich and influential, so it has become The Country That Must Not Be Named.

Tough public comments and other pressure from Washington and European capitals might shame the UAE enough for it to tell its murderous friends in Sudan to back off; similar pressure led the UAE to pull most of its forces out from a brutal war in Yemen in 2019. Instead, world leaders today tiptoe around the UAE’s role.

The UAEhas particularly close financial ties to the Trump family. Indeed, Trump’s family income surged last year partly because an investment firm tied to the Emirates paid hefty sums for a stake in the family’s main crypto company.

Members of Congress, led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Sara Jacobs, have sponsored legislation that essentially would limit sales of weaponry to the UAE as long as it arms the RSF. “This awful conflict could be ended if we had the political will to do so, instead of starting stupid wars with Iran,” Van Hollen said.

This is an excellent moment to apply public pressure, for the UAE appears to be lobbying for one of its top Foreign Ministry officials, Lana Nusseibeh, to be the next U N. secretary-general.

“This won’t end until the Emirates are pressured to stop their advanced weapons superhighway to the RSF,” said Nathaniel Raymond of the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, which closely follows the crisis in Sudan. “This war could end in two weeks if the RSF entered an ammo drought because the Emirates decided it was no longer worth it.”

So this is in part on us. Will we find the courage to speak up?

Contact Nicholas Kristof at Facebook.com/Kristof, Twitter.com/NickKristof or by mail at The New York Times, 620 Eighth Ave., New York, NY 10018.