Amnesty International has done what the international community has for years shirked: it has named the crime. In a report released this week, the human rights watchdog accuses Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of crimes against humanity in el-Fasher. The UK, to its fleeting credit, has backed an ICC probe. But let us not mistake a statement for action, nor a gesture for justice.
The RSF, heirs to the Janjaweed militias that ravaged Darfur two decades ago, have been waging a campaign of unspeakable brutality in the city of el-Fasher. Mass executions, systematic rape, and forced displacement are not the collateral damage of war but the instruments of a deliberate policy. The Amnesty report documents how the RSF used hunger as a weapon, cutting off food supplies, looting markets, and shooting anyone who dared to flee. This is not the chaos of battle. This is the cold logic of ethnic cleansing.
We have seen this before. The pattern is as old as empire and as recent as Bosnia. A government, backed by foreign patrons, unleashes paramilitaries on a civilian population. The world wrings its hands. The UN passes resolutions. And the killers, emboldened by impunity, continue their work. Sudan’s RSF is no aberration. It is the culmination of a global system where sovereignty protects tyrants and justice is reserved for the weak.
The UK’s support for an ICC investigation is welcome, but let us be honest. The ICC is a tribunal for the powerless. It indicts African warlords, not Saudi princes. It prosecutes Bosnian Serbs, not Israeli generals. And when it does pursue a sitting leader, like Omar al-Bashir, it issues warrants that are ignored. The court has no police force, no army, no teeth. It relies on the goodwill of states, which is as scarce in The Hague as it is in Khartoum.
But perhaps I am too cynical. Perhaps the ICC’s involvement, however imperfect, will deter future atrocities. Perhaps the UK’s support signals a return to liberal interventionism, a willingness to uphold the norms we claim to cherish. Or perhaps it is mere virtue signalling, a cheap headline to distract from cuts to aid and the moral squalor of the Rwanda deportation plan.
The people of el-Fasher do not need our words. They need our power. They need a no-fly zone, a protection force, a blockade of RSF supply lines. They need the kind of robust intervention we have seen in Ukraine but which always seems too risky, too costly, too “difficult” in Africa. And until the West is willing to treat Sudanese lives as equal to Ukrainian ones, we should spare them our sanctimony.
The RSF are not a rogue militia. They are a branch of the Sudanese state, armed by the UAE, backed by Russia. Their crimes are not the product of ancient hatreds or tribal strife. They are the product of geopolitical calculation, of arms deals and gold mines. This is the real face of our international order: a system that profits from chaos and then feigns horror when the bodies pile up.
So yes, let the ICC investigate. Let the UK pat itself on the back. But let us not pretend that a court in The Hague will save el-Fasher. The only thing that can save el-Fasher is the same thing that saved Srebrenica too late: a willingness to use force against evil. And that, it seems, is a crime we will never commit.
