The Foreign Office has condemned the drone strike on a funeral procession in Sudan, urging British nationals to flee the country. This is the predictable endgame of a state that has been in terminal decay since the fall of Omar al-Bashir. The spectacle of a funeral bombed by drones is a macabre metaphor for the collapse of the post-colonial nation-state in Africa.
We are witnessing not a civil war but a Hobbesian war of all against all, where even the dead are not safe. The British government's advice to flee is sensible, but it underscores a deeper truth: the international community has no appetite for intervention. Sudan is becoming a graveyard for both its citizens and the liberal international order's pretensions.
The Victorian era would have called this 'the white man's burden.' Today, we call it a humanitarian crisis and look away.
