Massad Boulos, the Trump Administration's top adviser for Africa and point man on Sudan, recently spoke before the United Nations Security Council and warned that the international community “cannot sit back” while El Obeid, a city of over roughly half a million people, becomes another El Fasher.
El Fasher was the last major city in Sudan’s Darfur region still outside the control of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary force that has been fighting Sudan’s national army, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), in a civil war that recently entered its fourth year. The war has morphed into a regional proxy conflict, with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) backing the RSF, while Egypt and Turkey have emerged as the army’s primary backers, providing weapons, drones, and training.
When El Fasher fell in October 2025, more than 6,000 civilians were killed in three days. The U.N. said the campaign bore the “hallmarks of genocide.” The Biden administration also determined that the RSF had committed genocide in other parts of Darfur in 2024.
The same day that Boulos spoke before the Security Council, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions on individuals and entities linked to both sides of Sudan’s civil war. Four days before that, State Department Spokesman Tommy Piggot warned that “mass atrocities could be imminent” in El Obeid.
At the time of these warnings from Trump administration officials, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had just completed a Gulf tour, reassuring allies shaken by the U.S.- Iran war. During the trip, Rubio told reporters in Kuwait that Washington “continues to engage” on Sudan with Gulf states at every opportunity.
At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing weeks earlier, Rubio acknowledged that Sudan’s war had “turned into a proxy war” where “the divisions between the UAE and Saudi Arabia have truly complicated our ability to bring that to an end.” But rather than take the lead in resolving those differences, his proposed solution was identifying safe zones for aid distribution.
Saudi Arabia backs Sudan’s military politically, while the UAE is the RSF’s principal supplier of arms and mercenaries — a finding that Washington effectively endorsed through its own sanctions, having designated multiple UAE-based companies in January 2025 for providing the RSF with weapons and financial cover.
Despite Washington’s own warnings of what's to come, the political inaction means that the situation for the people of El Obeid is bleak. The RSF has set its sights on El Obeid because of its strategic location, linking Darfur to the Nile Valley and the capital, Khartoum. Whoever controls the city controls the central axis of movement across Sudan.
The RSF has been striking the city with drones for weeks, destroying the main power transformer, fuel stations, bridges and supply routes into the city. Food and water prices have risen dramatically and a hunger crisis looms. Against this background, Britain and six European Governments issued a joint call for an immediate halt, stating that “this is a critical moment, and the international community must act.” The U.N. secretary-general’s personal envoy for Sudan, Pekka Haavisto, called the RSF’s leader directly. The RSF commander assured him that civilians would not be targeted. He said the same to diplomats before the genocides of El Fasher and El Geneina. Friday’s Treasury sanctions, meanwhile, reflect how much Washington knows and how little it chooses to act. On the RSF side, the Treasury sanctioned the middlemen who recruit Colombian mercenaries to fight for the RSF, but those designations ignore the Abu Dhabi-based security company that recruited, trained, and transported them from Emirati airports to the battlefields of Darfur. An investigation by The Sentry found that Ahmed al-Humairi, a senior Emirati official, founded and once fully owned the company at the center of that network. He has since divested his shares, but he remains closely linked to the company’s current CEO, fellow Emirati businessman Mohamed Hamdan al-Zaabi. The UAE denies all of this, but members of Congress and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have all openly acknowledged the UAE’s role in arming the RSF. Despite the fact that this is now public knowledge, arms sales to the UAE have not been conditioned, nor has Abu Dhabi faced any real consequences from Washington. The reason is not hard to find. The UAE has pledged $1.4 trillion in investment in the U.S. — a commitment reaffirmed even as the U.S-Israel war on Iran left UAE infrastructure dangerously exposed to Iranian strikes. At the G7 summit in mid-June, President Trump met Emirati President Mohammed bin Zayed, called him a “warrior,” and marveled at his wealth, saying: “when you’re that rich, you can speak that low.” The United Kingdom is running the same calculation as Washington. This has prevented any serious action at the U.N. Security Council, where the U.K. holds the most consequential position as Sudan’s penholder, meaning it is the country formally responsible for leading the international response. In recent testimony before a British parliamentary committee, Yale Human Rights investigator Nathanial Raymond revealed that the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office has suppressed evidence linking the UAE to the RSF due to its prioritization of “economic, security, and diplomatic relationships with the UAE above preventing the intentional starvation, forced displacement, and the genocidal slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians living in El Fasher and its surrounding communities.” But Raymond’s testimony implicates Washington equally. He shared information linking UAE facilities to the RSF directly with the U.S. Treasury and State Departments, which in turn used the data to sanction RSF-linked companies in 2025. The Guardian reported separately that the State Department had blocked its own intelligence assessments on El Fasher that would have produced a formal genocide determination — one that would have potentially triggered mandatory government-wide responses under the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act, a law that President Trump himself signed into law in 2019. A source told the Guardian that the assessment was stopped in order to protect the strategic relationship with the UAE. Given the inaction at the executive level, it has fallen to Congress to try to force a different accounting. So far, it has failed. In the House, the U.S. Engagement in Sudanese Peace Act, led by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) alongside 32 Democratic co-sponsors, would require the administration to name the countries arming the RSF and stop selling them weapons. It also demands a report tracing how American weapons ended up in Sudan. But the same legislation contains a presidential waiver. If sanctioning a country is deemed against the national interest, the president notifies Congress within fifteen days and walks away. The bill, it seems, was designed to corner the UAE, but the waiver also allows it to escape actual consequences. The Senate’s Preventing External Aggression and Conflict Escalation in Sudan Act of 2026, known as the PEACE in Sudan Act, is even softer on foreign arms suppliers. Where the House bill mandates sanctions, the Senate bill gives the president discretion: he “may” impose sanctions, according to the language of the bill. The national interest waiver is also present here. At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee markup in mid-June, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) tried to harden the government's obligations, when he introduced an amendment to the PEACE in Sudan Act that would have barred arms transfers to the UAE explicitly while it continues supplying the RSF. It failed in a 15-7 vote. Van Hollen’s response was the most concise summary of American policy on Sudan offered by a government official: “The United States shouldn't just be talking about ending the slaughter in Sudan. We should actually be using our leverage." Despite the growing movement at the congressional level, the administration has shown at every turn that Gulf relationships come first. The civilians of El Obeid know none of this will save them. They are simply listening for drones and hoping they are not the next El Fasher.