Sudan's Generals and Foreign Backers Are Bombing Civilians From the Sky

Consider a family in Darfur or Kordofan tonight. They have learned the sound of a drone the way our grandmothers learned the sound of thunder. It hums overhead, and then the mud walls come down on whoever is inside. Nobody in Geneva will hear that sound this week. The diplomats will have their name tags, their interpreters and their carefully worded communiqués. The children under that sky will not have a ceasefire.

Sudan has now been at war for four years. On Wednesday, nearly two dozen countries sat down in Geneva to discuss a path to a ceasefire and a civilian-led transition. Switzerland and the United Nations co-hosted the meeting. Neither the Sudanese government nor the Rapid Support Forces was in the room. Some of the people who fund, arm and shelter the two sides were nearby, on the margins, taking their own meetings. We should be asking why the men with the most blood on their hands get the best seats at the table.

The war began in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. These two organizations were partners. Together they seized power in a 2021 coup that ended Sudan's brief experiment with civilian rule, and then they turned on each other when the spoils of that coup were divided. That is the origin story of this war. It was not a spontaneous explosion of ethnic hatred. It was a military power grab, and it was carried out by men who had already shown they would overthrow a transition rather than share power with civilians.

What has changed since is the weapons. Swiss State Secretary Alexandre Fasel told the Geneva meeting that Sudan has become a "drone war" that kills mostly civilians. That phrase should shock us, because it means the front line is no longer only the trench or the town square. It is the market, the hospital, the water tank and the school. Drone strikes on civilians and public infrastructure have been documented repeatedly by UN human rights officials and humanitarian agencies. Each one is a decision made by someone who knows exactly who is standing below.

The numbers are not abstractions. OCHA says almost 34 million Sudanese people need humanitarian assistance, which is roughly two out of every three citizens of this country. UNICEF reports that eight million children are out of school. Think about what that means for a generation. Eight million children are not learning to read, to count, or to imagine a different future. A nation is being robbed of its next doctors, engineers, judges and farmers, and the thieves are wearing uniforms. Famine-like conditions persist in Darfur, in Kordofan and elsewhere. This hunger is not a natural disaster. As Mr. Fasel put it, it is the war that drives it. Armies that block roads, loot grain stores and bomb markets are manufacturing famine on purpose.

Sexual violence has also returned as a weapon of terror. Survivors are targeted along ethnic lines and perceived political affiliations. Women are violated to humiliate entire communities, and that humiliation is then used to drive them from their homes. This is a strategy, not a side effect, and the international community has heard the testimony for years.

Now ask yourself who is supplying the drones, the fuel, the ammunition and the money. The UN Panel of Experts on Sudan has documented flows of weapons and funds across borders and through third countries, and it has pointed to the United Arab Emirates as a source of support to the RSF. The UAE denies this. The Sudanese army, meanwhile, has relied on drones and other support from outside actors, including Turkey and Egypt, and the army's leadership has its own foreign patrons. Sudan's war is not being fought by two local armies in isolation. It is being fed by a regional market for violence, and the prices are paid in Sudanese lives.

Here is the most bitter irony of Geneva. The Quad mechanism that the UN envoy is working with includes the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. The Quintet includes the African Union, IGAD, the United Nations, the European Union and the League of Arab States. We should welcome coordination. But when one of the four Quad members is credibly accused of arming one of the warring parties, mediation starts to look like a negotiation between the arsonist and the fire brigade. If the people funding the war are also writing the peace, the peace will be designed to protect their investments, not Sudan's future.

This is also a story about the continent we share. The African Union has suspended Sudan before, after coups. Its own charter rejects governments that take power by force. Yet we have watched Sudan's generals treat that charter as a suggestion. Every time an African institution defers to foreign mediators instead of leading its own process, it signals to the next putschist that the price of a coup is merely a few months of diplomatic inconvenience. We cannot preach democracy in Addis Ababa and then wait politely in Geneva for outsiders to decide whether Sudanese civilians deserve to live.

So what must happen? The answer is not complicated, but it is demanding. First, the UN Security Council must enforce its existing arms embargo on Darfur, which has been in place for two decades, and extend it into a full ban on the drones, fuel and financing that keep this war airborne. Any state or company found supplying weapons to either side should face asset freezes and travel bans. Second, the Quad and the Quintet should publish their conflicts of interest. Any member that is supplying arms cannot also be a mediator. Third, humanitarian access must be unconditional. Aid convoys, medical teams and food shipments cannot wait for a political deal, as the Geneva Conventions already require. Fourth, the ICC and independent investigators must have the resources to document drone strikes and sexual violence so that commanders know the evidence is being kept.

Sudan's neighbours also have models to learn from. Botswana built one of Africa's most credible democracies on a foundation of cattle, diamonds and disciplined institutions, with a professional civil service and an independent judiciary. Mauritius shows that a small, diverse island nation can build prosperity through open markets, property rights and rule of law. Senegal has twice transferred power through elections when many predicted it would not. None of these countries is perfect. But each proves that Africans can build states where the army answers to the constitution and the ballot box decides who governs. Sudan's civilians have already shown they want that future. In 2019 they filled the streets of Khartoum demanding civilian rule, and they were met with bullets.

Civil society must keep the pressure on. The Sudanese resistance committees, women's groups, doctors and lawyers who have kept hospitals and courts running under fire deserve a seat at every table, not only in the rooms where the generals' conditions are negotiated. The private sector across Africa should stop sheltering war profits, whether through shell companies, gold trading, or real estate. And citizens across this continent should demand that their own governments publicly condemn drone strikes on civilians and oppose any foreign arms supply to either side in Sudan.

Here is the question that should keep every African leader awake tonight. How many more children must be buried under the rubble before we stop calling this a complex conflict and start calling it what it is: a war made by men who sold out their own country and a world that kept buying the weapons? Sudan does not need another communiqué. It needs an arms embargo with teeth, a civilian transition that the generals cannot veto, and African leaders brave enough to say that a coup is a crime, not a negotiating position. We are the ones who will live with the outcome. We should be the ones demanding it.

Based on reporting by UN-NEWS