Washington’s Mixed Messages on Fueling the War in Sudan

On September 23, the White House released a statement summarizing the latest bilateral meeting between the President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and President Biden. The lengthy document emphasized the close U.S.-UAE partnership, and in the sixth paragraph under the heading “Partners in a Stable, Integrated, and Prosperous Middle East and Wider Region,” the statement noted the leaders’ shared concern and alarm about the crisis in Sudan, stressed that “there can be no military solution” and called for accountability for atrocities and war crimes.  

It all sounds laudable, until one recalls the evidence indicating that the UAE has been supporting one of the antagonists in Sudan’s conflict—the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The RSF is more like a criminal mob than a political force. There is no realistic scenario in which the RSF governs anything like a stable Sudan. Atrocities are the RSF’s calling card. The undisciplined, marauding force is responsible for sexual violence on a massive scale and ethnic cleansing. Despite months of pleas from the African Union and the United Nations, the RSF continues its assault on El Fasher, the last major population center in Darfur not under its control.  

It gets worse. As the New York Times reported on September 21, the UAE is not just supporting the RSF with weapons, financing, and drones, it is doing so under the cover of providing humanitarian support for the Sudanese people, sullying the credibility of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, and as the Times put it, “publicly pledging to ease Sudan’s suffering even as it secretly inflames it.” That suffering is almost unimaginable in scale. Some twelve million people have been forced to flee their homes. Civilians are starving to death because neither party to the conflict takes seriously their obligation to allow for humanitarian access. Food security experts believe that millions of Sudanese may die due to famine in the months ahead.   

Why make Washington party to the UAE’s grotesque charade with a statement that suggests we are aligned partners for peace? How does the United States intend to hold the parties to the conflict accountable for the broken promises that have plagued mediation efforts when our government, too, makes statements that do not square with the facts? How would the U.S. government like Sudanese civilians, exhausted by nearly a year and a half of war, massive displacement, and imminent famine to understand its embrace of the UAE?  

One hopes that that the alternative reality described in the White House statement was part of the price of extracting a real commitment on the part of the UAE to stop pouring gasoline on the flames engulfing Sudan. On September 24, one day after his meeting with bin Zayed, President Biden told the United Nations General Assembly that, “the world needs to stop arming the generals, to speak with one voice and tell them: Stop tearing your country apart. Stop blocking aid to the Sudanese people. End this war now.” One hopes that he echoed that message to the Emirati leader behind closed doors, despite the rosy read-out. But in the absence of any evidence that this is so, it just makes Biden’s UN exhortation seem cynical. Read together, the two statements come across as a terrible betrayal, and a willingness to join a wealthy Gulf state in gaslighting the rest of the world.