UAE-backed militia deliberately starving Sudanese civilians, report finds

The UAE-backed Rapid Support Force (RSF) has deliberately starved civilians in Sudan. Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab has found damning evidence against the genocidal paramilitary force. Their new report said RSF are guilty of “extraordinary cruelty.”

At least 41 communities have had their crops razed by RSF. As a result, patterns of life analysed through satellite imagery have diminished substantially.  This is part of what two legal scholars say is deliberate removal of the means to live by RSF.

Co-author professor Tom Dannenbaum told the Guardian:

The destruction of the villages, farming equipment and infrastructure all provide strong evidence of a “starvation strategy” against a population already struggling with food insecurity because of the war.

People were at the brink of starvation and objects indispensable to their survival were being destroyed.

He added was it is:

not merely the fact the villages had been attacked but the targeted destruction of livestock enclosures, as well as the forced displacement of the farmers, that led to reduced farming activity that suggested a deliberate attempt to prevent the villages from being able to produce food.

Report co-author professor Oona Hathaway said:

It’s evidence of extraordinary cruelty and the real horrors people have been facing.

Adding:

The report provides a unique level of fine-grained, over-time analysis documenting exactly what was attacked, going far beyond our general knowledge of the fighting … [it] is of a quality that could be submitted in a court for criminal prosecution.

Resource wars

An RSF drone attack killed “dozens” of civilians on 12 March on Kordofan, one of the most heavily affected provinces in the south of the country.

French outlet Le Monde said:

The Kordofan region, home to oil deposits, arable land and the RSF’s most powerful paramilitary allies, connects RSF strongholds in the Darfur region to the country’s army-controlled east. The RSF controls West Kordofan and has for months pushed eastwards in an attempt to recapture Sudan’s central corridor.

According to Sky News:

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, an independent global monitor, has documented at least 198 drone strikes in Sudan launched by both sides in the first two months of 2026. At least 52 of them involved civilian casualties, killing 478 people.

Also in the southern provinces, a drone strike killed 17 schoolgirls and a group of medical workers. Associated Press said on 11 March:

The war-tracking Sudan Doctors Network reported the strike first, saying those killed included two teachers and a health care worker. The group said there was no military presence in the village.

Both the medical group and al-Majeri blamed the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces for the strike. The RSF didn’t respond to a request for comment.

But this war has a complex international dimension.

Colonial warfare

As the Canary has said in our previous coverage of this poorly-understood genocidal war:

The war in Sudan is theoretically between the Arab supremacist RSF and the Sudanese government. But foreign states pursuing their own interests are backing the combatants. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), for example, backs the RSF with arms and equipment. Egypt backs the government, alongside Russia, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Israel has backed both sides at different times.

The mounting death toll is similarly mindboggling:

RSF has killed Sudanese civilians in vast numbers. And some estimates say 150,000 people have died and over 10mn have been displaced by fighting.

The people of Sudan find themselves living – and dying – at a nexus of colonial interests.

As another genocide continues in Gaza, and the war against Iran by a rudderless alliance accelerates, the horrors in Sudan drift in and out of the news cycle. But the Canary means to keep reporting on this often-forgotten colonial atrocity.

Featured image via the Canary