Sudan: Blood on Foreign Powers’ Hands

A group of armed defectors from the RSF arrives in the west of Omdurman on 19 August 2026. Credit: Ebrahim Hamid/AFPOpinion by Andrew Firmin (london)Monday, September 21, 2026Inter Press Service LONDON, September 21 (IPS) - Sudan’s civil war grinds on. It’s close to three and a half years since the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia began their battle for supremacy, and the two forces and their allies continue to slaughter civilians with impunity. As a recent UN report makes clear, the killing is enabled by numerous foreign powers that continue to supply weapons, personnel and logistical support. They have made a civil conflict their proxy war, and their self-interest is sustaining the killing. Drone warfareThings are relatively quiet in the capital, Khartoum, where the curfew was recently lifted following its recapture by the SAF last year, but the RSF still controls significant areas, with fighting concentrated in the Darfur and Kordofan regions to the west and Blue Nile state in the southeast.Both sides now extensively use drones to kill civilians. In February, a suspected RSF drone strike on an aid convoy in South Kordofan killed three humani...