Genocide now: The Darfur massacre is more international than it might appear

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A post by the English football club Manchester City calling on fans to come out and support the team in their match against West Ham has gathered nearly 200,000 comments, but only a handful of them are about the game. Instead, almost all are a combination of pleas to stop the war in Sudan and curses directed at Manchester City’s owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the ruling royal family of the United Arab Emirates.

The fifth son of the ruling monarch, a multimillionaire, and the vice president and deputy prime minister of the UAE, Sheikh Mansour is known not only for his more peaceful passions — football, Arabian horses, and luxury yachts. He is also the patron of one of the most brutal men on the planet: Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan ‘Hemedti’ Dagolo, who controls vast territories in western Sudan.

Mohamed Hamdan is the commander of a group that hides behind the neutral-sounding name Rapid Support Forces (RSF). In reality, he runs a gang of cutthroats that has unleashed a full-blown genocide on the territories under its control. In other words, the same Arab prince funds both one of England’s top football clubs and one of the African continent’s most bloodthirsty warlords. Under the circumstances, it comes as little surprise that Manchester City’s social media pages are boiling over with emotions that have nothing to do with football.

Sponsor of the massacre

The fact that Sheikh Mansour has been aiding Hamdan in his war against Sudan’s central authorities is hardly news. Last fall, American journalists revealed that the Emirati government had been supplying weapons to the RSF, reportedly using a warehouse disguised as a medical facility (the building was marked with red crosses). According to statements from UAE officials, it had supposedly been built at their expense on Sudanese territory to provide aid to local residents affected by the war and the resulting famine.

The UN has stated that it possesses evidence that the Emirates are violating the long-standing arms embargo on Sudan and are effectively siding with Hamdan. However, there have been no significant repercussions for the UAE government — nor for Sheikh Mansour personally.

Of course, it is money that has kept both parties out of serious trouble. Emirati petrodollars are vital to British football (not only Manchester City but also Arsenal depends on them), and the Americans sell billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to the UAE. The monarchy also plays a key financial role in the Gaza peace process. Quite simply, the UAE is too powerful and too wealthy to antagonize over an issue as geopolitically marginal as a genocide in Sudan.

Paradoxically, Sheikh Mansour was most likely driven to cooperate with Hamdan by the prospect of earning even more money for his country. It may seem nonsensical: one of the world’s richest states supporting outright bandits for potential profit. But in reality, the UAE’s economy is far more fragile than it appears from the outside.

Apart from oil, the UAE has virtually no natural resources of its own. The country is critically dependent on other states and their imports. Up to 90 percent of the food sold in the Emirates is imported. The Emirates' trademark jewelry — a regional staple — is made from foreign gold, as the country has no precious metal deposits. Oil fuels its economic prosperity — that resource is not limitless, nor are the revenues it brings. With the rapid adoption of alternative energy sources and the expected decline in humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels, the disappearance or even sharp drop in oil income portends turbulence for this luxury-accustomed nation.

Diversifying the economy of a small desert state is nearly impossible due to its scarcity of resources — even when it comes to human capital. Migrants account for upwards of 80 percent of the UAE’s workforce. Some 150 years ago, the problem could have been solved by conquering a timid neighboring country rich in the needed resources. But today, annexations and occupations are the domain of fanatic autocrats, and instead of helping the economy, they only harm it through inevitable sanctions.

As a result, prudent politicians of today prefer building informal empires in which struggling states serve as cheap resource bases for the metropole. Sudan — with Africa's largest area of arable lands, rich deposits of gold and other metals, and access to the Red Sea (and, through the Suez Canal, to European markets) — is a perfect candidate for the jewel of the UAE’s informal empire.

But dragging an entire country into your sphere of influence is beyond the power of even wealthy Arab monarchies. Only one instrument can speed up this long and costly process: war. The recipe is simple: find a country that is both rich in the coveted resources and mired in civil war, and help one side win. If the bet pays off, you might keep the victor on the hook.

The UAE is also using this playbook in Yemen and Libya, but Sudan appears to be the most promising bet it has made so far. Still, ensuring your side's victory is not enough — you also need to make sure it does not object to being folded into your informal empire. For that, you bet on real cutthroats — those who will struggle to forge other alliances because few would want to tarnish their reputations by associating with them. Those bandits will have no choice but to become clients of the principal sponsor. Sudanese General Hamdan and his RSF are exactly that kind of thug.

Heirs of a dictator

Mohamed Hamdan began his military career under President Omar al-Bashir, a usurper who went down in history as the first sitting head of state against whom the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant on charges of crimes against humanity. When Bashir was overthrown in 2019, General Hamdan swiftly declared himself a supporter of democracy and disavowed his former patron.

Hamdan was most likely already plotting his own rise to the presidency and quietly began consolidating loyal forces and mercenaries around himself, including Russians from the Wagner Group. In exchange for gold extracted from mines controlled by the general’s men, Wagner fighters provided Hamdan with protection and supplied his units with weapons.

These units were largely made up of militias that had been organized into more or less combat-ready formations back under Bashir’s government. They were created to counter the armed movements of Sudan’s non-Arab ethnic minorities in the Darfur region — groups that had faced systemic discrimination throughout the country’s modern history.

The struggle of Sudan’s non-Arab peoples against the country’s central government has been one of the bloodiest conflicts of modern times. It became known by the ironic nickname “the Land Cruiser War” because all sides made heavy use of Toyota Land Cruiser vehicles. Since 2003, the conflict has claimed an estimated 300,000 lives, according to the UN. Arab militias carried out full-scale ethnic cleansing, wiping out entire villages with predominantly Black populations. In 2004, the United States officially declared these atrocities a genocide.

In 2013, the informal Arab militia units were granted official status, along with a new name: the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). They were established as an independent security service outside the armed forces’ command. Instead of receiving funding from the central budget, the new structure was handed several gold mines in Darfur. Mohamed Hamdan, the militias’ overseer in the central government, headed the new force.

Hamdan’s timely renunciation of Omar al-Bashir in 2019 allowed him to keep both his position and the extensive network of criminal businesses protected by the RSF. After Bashir was overthrown by a military junta, Hamdan quickly found common ground with his fellow officers and even helped them stay in control by sending his men to crush opposition activists demanding an immediate end to military rule. The brief period of democratization that began under international pressure, with civilians admitted into the government and even promises of elections and a completely new administration, ended just a few months later with yet another coup.

The head of the military council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, simply dissolved all civilian government institutions and concentrated full political power in his own hands. He also turned on the security forces, demanding that the RSF give up its status as an independent entity and merge with the army. For Hamdan, this would have meant losing not only his influence but also the revenue he received from the gold mines granted to the RSF under Bashir, as well as funds generated from illicit activities such as smuggling, racketeering, and looting. On Apr. 15, 2023, General Hamdan launched an uprising against the central authorities — one that very quickly escalated into a bloody civil war.

War of the juntas

In February 2023, at a moment when the RSF was already actively mobilizing its supporters across Sudan and preparing defensive lines in the territories it controlled, Hamdan traveled to the UAE. He stayed at the villa of Sheikh Mansour, whom he already knew. There is even a video showing the sheikh and the general strolling through the pavilions of an arms exhibition in the Emirates in 2021, accompanied by none other than Ramzan Kadyrov.

What exactly the two men discussed in February 2023 remains unknown. However, subsequent events make it clear that their talks were not about football. As early as March 2023 — a few weeks before the war began — $50 million was transferred from Sudan to accounts at Al Khaleej Bank in the UAE. Later, the U.S. government reported that this financial institution was closely cooperating with the RSF and that the Sudanese funds were likely an advance payment for arms deliveries to Hamdan’s forces. In June 2023, cargo planes began arriving in Sudan via a complex route from the UAE through Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Chad. Officially, their manifests listed equipment for a hospital in Darfur — the very same facility that was, in reality, the RSF’s supply base. Data collected by experts indicates that under the guise of medical equipment and humanitarian aid, the planes were carrying small arms, mortars, MANPADS, and possibly heavy weaponry. After human rights organizations raised an outcry, flights along this route ceased. The last shipment was recorded late in the fall of 2023. But that does not necessarily mean the UAE abandoned Hamdan — the shipments may well have begun traveling by other, less visible routes.

These shipments helped the RSF maintain its combat capability — and even stage successful offensives in multiple directions. Within just a few months, Hamdan’s forces seized control of almost all of Darfur. The government army kept only one major stronghold — the city of El Fasher, which had taken in many refugees from RSF-occupied areas. In the spring of 2024, just a year after the war began, this last bastion of government forces was encircled by Hamdan’s troops and placed under siege. The UN reported the onset of famine in El Fasher and indiscriminate bombardments of the city by surrounding RSF units, which were killing civilians daily. During the blockade, El Fasher also struggled with drinking water shortages. All attempts to break the encirclement failed.

On Oct. 28, 2025, a year and a half after the city was blockaded, the commander-in-chief of the Sudanese army and de facto head of state Abdel Fattah al-Burhan announced the withdrawal of the remaining government forces from El Fasher, citing humanitarian reasons. According to him, the remnants of the army were pulled out so that the enemy, upon taking the city, would lift the siege and stop the shelling.

But the troop withdrawal did not bring salvation to El Fasher — a city of 250,000 people, roughly half of them minors. RSF units, originally created to massacre Sudan’s non-Arab population, entered a city largely inhabited by members of non-Arab African tribes. Instead of ending the people’s suffering, Hamdan’s men, armed by a wealthy oil monarchy, began engaging in looting, rape, and executions on a massive scale.

The Sudanese government has vowed to retake the city and avenge the people’s suffering, but for now those promises look unrealistic. Al-Burhan lacks the weapons and vehicles for a counteroffensive and has nowhere to obtain them, since Sudan’s military ruler is under U.S. sanctions for many of the same crimes his opponents are accused of: shelling schools, hospitals, and markets, and blocking access to humanitarian aid. Incidentally, Hamdan’s press office widely welcomed the imposition of those sanctions (while omitting the fact that their boss is on the very same U.S. sanctions list).

Out of desperation, Al-Burhan has resorted to cooperating with the allies of his main enemies. In 2024, he agreed to let the Russians build a naval base on the Red Sea coast in exchange for weapons, ammunition, and spare parts for the types of Soviet-made vehicles still widely used by the Sudanese army. The decision was controversial, to say the least, given Moscow’s role in strengthening the RSF through arms supplies, militant training camps, and the direct involvement of Wagner Group mercenaries.

Quite possibly, the Russians have not abandoned Hemedti and continue to assist him as well, profiting from cooperation with both sides of the conflict. Russian mercenaries fighting on Hemedti’s side have been captured as recently as 2024. Interestingly, the Russians in Sudan were taken prisoner by Ukrainian special forces, who had also unexpectedly appeared in the region and joined the fighting.

Admittedly, in the context of the war Russia is waging against Ukraine, the contribution of Ukrainian servicemen to the fight against Russian mercenaries fits neatly into the concept of “eliminating Russian war criminals around the world, wherever they may be,” voiced by the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov.

However, neither Russia nor Ukraine has the strength or the resources to change the course of the war in Sudan. Sheikh Mansour, by contrast, acts cautiously and discreetly, refraining from large-scale arms deliveries to his clients. He fully understands that he is playing with fire and could find himself joining Hemedti and al-Burhan on the U.S. sanctions list at any moment.

That is why the struggle between the two armies, each led by a war criminal, is unlikely to end anytime soon — this despite having already claimed more than 150,000 lives and created tens of thousands of refugees, thousands of whom, in turn, were killed during the capture of El Fasher.