Sudan the Blood is Visible from Space

Peter Rothpletz
Source: zeteo
Thousands of civilians are feared dead after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been fighting the Sudanese army since 2023, captured El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state.

It was the last government stronghold in the region.

As the RSF closed in, countless civilians attempted to flee.

Many were captured on the outskirts of El Fasher and held for ransom. Far more were shot and killed on sight.

The sand in and around the city of approximately 400,000 is so caked with blood that you can see evidence of the RSF’s war crimes via satellite imagery, according to Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL).

If you’re queasy now… buckle up, my brothers and sisters. This is your belated trigger warning. This will not be a cheeky, sardonic, fun Lede.

Yale’s HRL has further asserted it has evidence of “door-to-door clearance operations.” The lab claims “El Fasher appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of... indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution.”

On Tuesday, the World Health Organization reported it had learned that more than 450 people were massacred — on that day alone — in the last functioning hospital in El Fasher.

For months, America’s attention has been elsewhere, transfixed (rightfully) by Gaza, distracted (frustratingly) by horse race politics at home, and overwhelmed (infuriatingly) by Donald Trump’s fascist threat du jour.

But the genocide in Sudan must end now. The global community must intervene.

If not, Emi Mahmoud told NPR, “there will be no one left to save.”

The fighting there has raged for the last two-and-a-half years, resulting in an estimated 40,000 deaths and over 10 million displaced.

El Fasher fell this week after enduring some 18 months of siege – a siege made possible by the RSF constructing an extensive, miles-long “earthen wall” to prevent civilians from receiving food, water, and medical supplies.

Yale’s HRL says the group built “a literal kill box around El Fasher.”

According to Al Jazeera, countless civilians who have tried to flee have been shot on sight. Again and again and again.

It’s a sickening state of affairs. But it can be halted with political pressure from the US government. As the Wall St Journal reported on Wednesday, “U.S. intelligence agencies say the United Arab Emirates sent increasing supplies of weapons, including sophisticated Chinese drones to [the RSF] this year, bolstering a group that has been accused of genocide and pouring fuel on a conflict that has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.”

As with Gaza, where the US president could have ended the genocide at any time with a single phone call to the prime minister of Israel, the US could end the genocide in Sudan too with a single phone call to our other close ally, the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Pick up the phone, Donald Trump. Call the Sheikh. You (falsely) claim to have ended eight wars – why not call it nine?

*columnist and contributor @nytimes @dailybeast @guardian @newrepublic @msnbc @vogue @zeteo