The war in Sudan has reached 1,000 days. The United Nations has described the atrocities being committed as bearing the hallmarks of genocide. The International Criminal Court has reported war crimes in El Fasher. New evidence of starvation crimes in Darfur has been published by the legal research institute Just Security.
And this week, the New York Times exposed a secret Egyptian air base that has been fueling Sudan’s drone war. Egypt — a major US ally and recipient of over $1.3 billion in annual American military aid — has been operating a covert facility supporting one side of a conflict the UN says looks like genocide.
The implications of that last point deserve to sit for a moment. American taxpayer dollars fund Egyptian military capacity. Egyptian military capacity is being used to fuel a conflict the UN has described in terms reserved for the worst atrocities in human history.
Sudan has no oil leverage. It holds no strategic chokepoint. Its population has no powerful diaspora lobbying Western capitals. And so 1,000 days of what the UN calls potential genocide proceeds with functionally zero international intervention.
The World Food Programme estimates that over 25 million Sudanese face acute hunger. Refugee flows are destabilizing Chad, South Sudan, and Egypt itself. The humanitarian crisis is among the worst on the planet.
One thousand days. Hallmarks of genocide. A secret air base run by a US ally. And the world’s attention is elsewhere.
