Global Hypocrisy Shields Sudan’s SAF From Justice
By Hussein Abdul Hussein
On October 19, a drone strike devastated a busy market in Abyei, the disputed border region between Sudan and South Sudan, killing at least 153 people. South Sudanese officials blamed the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), prompting Juba to summon Sudan’s ambassador. Khartoum initially offered no public response before denying responsibility days later. Then, on October 26, another SAF drone strike hit a crowded market in Nyala, where a Sudanese rights group reported more than 100 people killed. Despite a proven record of bloodshed, war crimes, and a formal American determination that Sudan’s government used chemical weapons, SAF seems to get away with murder. Meanwhile, its arch-rival, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), is treated by much of the Western political commentariat as the only toxic villain in Sudan’s civil war.
This selective vilification of one faction over the other often comes at the hands of biased Western pundits for reasons entirely irrelevant to the people of Sudan.
Pointing out this hypocrisy does not intend to defend the RSF. The United States has determined that RSF members and allied militias committed genocide, alongside war crimes and other atrocities. Like every party involved in Sudan’s pointless and devastating civil war, including SAF, the RSF bears responsibility for its share of immense suffering.
But why should the crimes of one faction obscure those of another? In December 2023, the U.S. State Department explicitly determined that members of both the SAF and RSF had committed war crimes. In 2025, Washington went further, formally determining that Sudan’s government had used chemical weapons in violation of international law.
Additional American sanctions followed in July 2026. As MidEastJournal has previously reported, the evidence and allegations surrounding chemical weapons use demand an independent investigation, not selective outrage that disappears whenever the perpetrators wear the uniforms of a recognized state.
The extreme brutality of Sudan’s civil war reflects a broader collapse of military discipline, civilian protection, and accountability. The warring factions, including the SAF, have repeatedly behaved less like modern military formations bound by a code of conduct and more like armed groups conducting tribal raids, where the winner takes all, kills indiscriminately, and burns everything down. The SAF may carry the name and insignia of a national army, but those symbols do not absolve it of responsibility for the bloodshed carried out by its forces.
The disproportionate Western venom directed at the RSF also raises an uncomfortable political question. The RSF is closely associated with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which normalized relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords. Allegations of Emirati military support for the RSF have been documented by international rights organizations, although Abu Dhabi denies supplying weapons to either side. Yet for some Western pundits already hostile to the UAE because of its relationship with Israel, Sudan becomes another convenient battlefield for their ideological grievances. Their antisemitism and hostility to normalization find a new outlet through the Sudanese conflict. The crimes of the RSF become an opportunity to attack the UAE, while SAF atrocities receive far less political attention.
Western commentators claim that their motive is humanity, ethics, or what former President Barack Obama called the “higher moral ground.” These Westerners behave as the sole judge and jury of global morality. They label one side, the RSF, as pure evil while looking away from another perpetrator of war crimes, the SAF, as civilians are slaughtered in marketplaces.
These same commentators pick and choose which global conflicts to judge based on political convenience.
While rescue workers in Abyei were struggling to recover bodies from the wreckage of a burning market, New York congressional candidate Brad Lander was engaging in political theater thousands of miles away in the West Bank.
On October 21, Lander joined Palestinian olive harvesters near Bethlehem, where Israeli authorities detained him along with dozens of activists. He turned the incident into a social media spectacle, amplified by American political figures eager to condemn Israel. Whatever the merits of the local dispute, the attention devoted to Lander's detention stood in grotesque contrast to the political response to the slaughter of more than 150 people at the Abyei market just two days earlier.
For these politicians, an olive harvest in the West Bank became an international cause célèbre, while dead Sudanese civilians struggled to command anything approaching the same outrage. Yet the politicians who apply these wildly different standards continue to claim moral superiority.
Civil wars usually end with a clear winner or a negotiated settlement, but Sudan is territorially enormous, making a decisive military victory exceptionally difficult. Its vast geography, competing armed factions, and foreign sponsors threaten to produce a prolonged stalemate and a de facto partition of the country. Neither outcome offers much hope for Sudan's exhausted population.
Alternatively, the international community could force both sides to stop warring and get out of the way so that other citizens—the ones without blood on their hands—can lead their nation toward peace.
Instead, too many nations have been actively obstructing peace in Sudan.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Egypt have extended varying degrees of political support or diplomatic legitimacy to the SAF-led authorities, while Egypt and Turkey have also been linked to military assistance. They continue to treat the army as the institution through which Sudan's state authority must be preserved, despite the war crimes attributed to its forces. Regional powers have turned Sudan into an arena for competing geopolitical interests rather than demanding that both military factions surrender power to civilian leadership.
The hypocrisy becomes even more glaring at the United Nations. While the UAE has been accused of backing the RSF, it has publicly joined the United States and European calls to expand the UN arms embargo across all of Sudan, explicitly including both the RSF and SAF, along with the networks supplying them. Russia and China, meanwhile, have resisted the American proposal and insisted on maintaining restrictions largely confined to Darfur. Egypt and Turkey, both associated with military support for SAF, continue to back the very army that would be constrained by a nationwide embargo. The contradiction is striking: the UAE publicly supports restricting weapons to both sides, including the faction it is accused of supporting, while other foreign powers defend the diplomatic and military interests of SAF.
On October 8, the UN Security Council renewed the existing Darfur-only arms embargo until December 11, rather than extending it nationwide. Russia and China opposed the broader American initiative, while other Security Council members also resisted changes. The embargo therefore remains geographically limited, even though Sudan's war has spread far beyond Darfur and foreign-supplied weapons continue to fuel the destruction.
The message to Sudan's warlords is unmistakable: international protection and diplomatic recognition can matter more than the blood of civilians.
As long as the world takes the side of one perpetrator of war crimes over another, justice will never be served, and the civil war will grind on indefinitely.
To stop the war, the world must speak with a single voice. International bodies must name and shame every warlord and faction responsible for atrocities, without granting immunity to those who enjoy diplomatic recognition or powerful foreign sponsors. Global powers must starve the warring factions of arms and ammunition while pressuring their leaders to stop fighting and step aside. Accountability cannot depend on whether the perpetrator is backed by the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, or any other foreign power.
Any other plan is just a settling of foreign scores on Sudanese soil, using Sudanese blood.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).