Sudan’s civil war erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). On 26 October 2025 the RSF seized the SAF’s last stronghold in the west Sudan (Darfur) town of El Fasher, home to 1.5 million people, as the SAF pulled out after an 18-month-long siege. The siege had cut off food and other supplies to the 260,000 people trapped inside. The UN has received credible reports of one of the war’s worst atrocities committed by the RSF including summary executions; widespread killings of over 2,500 people including children as young as two; a massacre of 460 people at Saudi Maternity Hospital; sexual violence and looting. The RSF stands accused of committing war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide, with blood-soaked earth visible on satellite images and documented by the Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab. The takeover of Darfur by the RSF could lead to a further split of Sudan into two with both warring parties forming parallel gov-ernments.
The British Labour government continues to fuel the civil war. The warring parties have been armed by proxies of Britain namely the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Britain has continued to pump weapons into its proxies despite evidence that these arms have been used to commit war crimes in Sudan. Sudan’s geostrategic position near the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and Yemen, as well as its abundant natural resources (agricultural land, gold, uranium and oil), makes control of Sudan very important to the imperialists, hence the interests of its population take a backseat to imperialist interests.
Both RSF and SAF commit atrocities
The RSF was set up by former President Omar al-Bashir in 2013. It was formed from the Darfuri Janjaweed militia that is accused of committing genocide in Darfur in 2003-2005. RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, was a Janjaweed fighter himself. The head of the SAF is Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Mass protests in 2018-2019 called for the removal of President al-Bashir. Instead Burhan and Hemedti took power in a coup in 2019 to prevent the mass protest movement from toppling the state. The imperialists backed them and opposed the demands that the army be excluded from any democratic elections that followed the coup. The SAF and RSF then fell out over who would hold real power from behind the scenes following any ‘elections’.
The civil war has led to an estimated 150,000 deaths and has internally displaced over 14 million people out of a population of 51 million. Over 3.2 million people have fled the country. As of September 2025, famine is confirmed by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Famine Review Committee, where over 21 million people are starving.
A September 2025 report to the UN Human Rights Council, A War of Atrocities, found that both the SAF and RSF and allied militias were responsible not only for direct and large-scale attacks against civilians, but also for the extensive destruction of essential infrastructure: ‘Both sides have deliberately targeted civilians through attacks, summary executions, arbitrary detention, torture, and inhuman treatment in detention facilities, including denial of food, sanitation, and medical care. These are not accidental tragedies but deliberate strategies amounting to war crimes. The RSF has further committed crimes against humanity …rising to persecution and extermination.’
The role of Britain
The UAE is a client state of imperialism, with strong ties to British and US imperialism. The US has historically been a major arms supplier to the UAE. Arms worth $9.4bn between 2016-2020, and $23bn since 2020. The UAE has armed and supported the RSF through military bases in Chad, Libya, Somalia and Uganda. The UN security council has received evidence in January 2024 and March 2025 that British military equipment supplied to the UAE has been found in Sudan. The British equipment was made by Militec, a manufacturer of small-arms training and target systems based in Mid Glamorgan, Wales. Militec has been exporting items to the UAE since 2013. Between January 2015 and September 2024, Britain issued 26 licences to 14 companies for military exports to the UAE. The US is the UAE’s main arms supplier, providing 55% of major conventional weapons, followed by France at 14%. Britain has issued £825m worth of single export licences for arms to UAE between 2020 and 2024.
Britain also has a deep military relationship with Egypt. Between 2019 and 2023 Britain licensed at least £237m worth of arms to Egypt, despite Egypt’s widespread use of torture. The imperialists and Gulf dictatorships view Egypt as a lynchpin of ‘security’ in the Middle East and Africa. Saudi Arabia and Qatar each invested $5bn in Egypt in 2022. The UAE invested $35bn in 2024. Egypt is the third largest arms importer globally and has supplied the SAF with weapons since the very start of the war.
Turkiye is a major importer of British arms worth over £2.5bn since 2013. Turkiye has since 2024 also supplied the SAF with military drones, air-to-surface missiles and command centres. So, Britain is knowingly supplying arms that end up in the hands of both sides in the Sudanese civil war.
Hold perpetrators accountable
The ‘Quad’ of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the US are attempting to negotiate a peace deal. The US imperialists have been forced to act as media coverage of the atrocities in El Fasher has brought global attention to the war in Sudan. The US has put pressure on the UAE to rein in its RSF proxies, and has offered the Sudan government a lifting of sanctions and ‘investment opportunities in mining’ in return for a peace agreement to end the war. The Sudanese Communist Party has condemned the withdrawal of the army from El Fasher in the face of the RSF, as ‘an irresponsible act deserving condemnation’. The British government is exposed once again putting the corporate interests of the British arms industry and its own imperialist interests ahead of the lives of the people of Sudan.
British imperialism out of Africa!
Charles Chinweizu
