Ben Rhodes, a former United States deputy nationwide safety adviser beneath President Barack Obama, famously known as Washington’s overseas coverage institution “the Blob” to explain its entrenched ecosystem of assume tanks, former officers, journalists and funders that perpetuate a slender imaginative and prescient of energy, world order and legit actors. This equipment not solely sustains conservative inertia but additionally defines the boundaries of what’s thought of potential in coverage. In Sudan’s two-and-a-half-year battle, these self-imposed boundaries are proving deadly.
A very insidious follow inside the Blob is the invocation of ethical and rhetorical equivalence, portraying the Speedy Assist Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) as comparable adversaries. This ostensibly balanced US stance, evident in institution analyses and diplomatic statements, represents not an neutral default however a deliberate political assemble. By equating a criminalised, externally backed militia with a nationwide military tasked with state duties, it sanitises RSF atrocities, recasting them as mere wartime exigencies slightly than orchestrated campaigns of ethnic cleaning, city sieges and terror.
Experiences from Human Rights Watch on ethnic cleaning in West Darfur, civilian killings, rape and illegal detentions in Gezira and Khartoum and United Nations fact-finding missions verify the RSF’s deliberate concentrating on of civilians. Moreover, a report by the Armed Battle Location & Occasion Knowledge (ACLED) monitor from late 2024 attributed roughly 77 % of violent incidents towards civilians to the RSF, underscoring this asymmetry, but the Blob’s discourse incessantly obscures it.
This notion has dominated US and worldwide discourse on Sudan’s conflict since its outbreak when the then-US ambassador to Khartoum, John Godfrey, tweeted within the first month of the conflict a condemnation of RSF sexual violence however vaguely attributed it to unspecified “armed actors”. By refraining from explicitly figuring out the perpetrators regardless of intensive documentation of the RSF’s accountability for systematic rapes, gang rapes and sexual slavery, his wording primarily dispersed accountability throughout the combatants and contributed to a local weather of institutional impunity. RSF militiamen perform their atrocities with confidence, figuring out that accountability will probably be blurred and its burden scattered throughout the events.
What drives this equivalence? The Blob’s establishments usually prioritise entry over veracity. Framing the battle symmetrically safeguards diplomatic ties with regional allies, significantly the RSF’s patrons within the United Arab Emirates whereas projecting an aura of neutrality. Nonetheless, neutrality amid uneven criminality will not be objectivity; it’s tacit complicity. Elevating an internationally enabled militia to parity with a sovereign army confers undue legitimacy on the RSF, whose strategies – together with the besieging and ravenous of cities comparable to el-Fasher, the systematic use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of conflict, the deployment of drones towards mosques and markets, and acts of genocide – are demonstrably systematic, as corroborated by investigative journalism and human rights documentation. To subsume these beneath “actions by each events” distorts empirical actuality and erodes mechanisms for accountability.
Compounding that is the Blob’s uncritical assimilation of RSF propaganda into its interpretive frameworks. The RSF has strategically positioned itself as a vanguard towards “Islamists”, a veneer that conceals its historic legal nature, patronage networks, illicit useful resource extraction and overseas sponsorship.
In an identical vein, the RSF has publicly expressed sympathy and robust assist for Israel, even providing to resettle displaced Palestinians from Gaza in a bid to align with US pursuits. This discourse serves as an overture to the Blob, leveraging shared geopolitical priorities to painting the RSF as a practical companion in regional stability.
Sure institution pundits and diplomats have echoed this narrative, casting the RSF as a viable bulwark towards an “Islamist resurgence”, thereby endowing a power implicated in conflict crimes with strategic and moral credibility. When the Blob internalises this “anti-Islamist” trope as analytical shorthand, it legitimises an rebel militia’s rationalisations as geopolitical truths, marginalising the fact of the conflict and the Sudanese who repudiate militarised binaries and sectarian lenses.
Distinction this with the recurrent accusations of exterior backing for the SAF from an ideologically disparate coalition, together with Egypt, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Iran. These claims, usually amplified in mainstream media narratives and aligning with RSF discourse, expose profound inconsistencies: Egypt’s secular anti-Islamist state, Turkiye’s Islamist-leaning authorities, Saudi Arabia’s Sunni Wahhabi monarchy and Iran’s Shia theocracy embody clashing regional rivalries, evident in proxy wars from Yemen to Libya, rendering their purported unified assist for the SAF implausible except opportunistic pragmatism overrides ideology.
Furthermore, the evidentiary threshold falls in need of the strong, impartial documentation implicating the UAE in RSF operations, relying as an alternative on partisan assertions and circumstantial experiences that seem designed to muddy asymmetries. Critically, any verified SAF help sometimes includes typical arms transactions with Sudan’s internationally recognised authorities in Port Sudan, a sovereign authority, versus the unchecked provisioning prolonged to the RSF, a nonstate actor formally designated by the US as genocidal. This elementary distinction highlights the Blob’s contrived equivalence, conflating professional state-to-state engagements with the illicit empowerment of atrocity perpetrators.
Much more corrosive is the Blob’s propensity to credential “pseudo-civilian” entities aligned with the RSF and its exterior sponsors, significantly these bolstered by UAE affect, comparable to Somoud, led by former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who additionally chairs the Emirati business-promotion organisation, the Centre for Africa’s Improvement and Funding (CADI). These networks are sometimes introduced in Blob boards as “civilian stakeholders” or “pragmatic moderates”, sidelining genuine grassroots entities inside Sudan.
This curation of externally amenable proxies transforms mediation into theatre, channelling worldwide validation in the direction of RSF-aligned positive factors and ignoring Sudanese company slightly than supporting any actual civic architects of Sudan’s democratic aspirations. Documented UAE-RSF logistical and political linkages alongside Gulf-orchestrated narrative amplification ought to function a warning towards endorsing such fabricated authority.
These lapses aren’t merely mental; they yield tangible harms. Legitimising the RSF by way of equivalence or narrative cooption dilutes authorized and political instruments for redress, confining coverage choices to performative ceasefires and superficial stability blueprints that protect conflict economies and armament flows. It defers real deterrence, comparable to focused interdictions, strong arms embargoes and the publicity of enablers till atrocities turn into irreversible.
The repercussions don’t finish there. They deepen, fuelling the militia’s authoritarian ambitions in alliance with its civilian companions. Drawing on this contrived equivalence, they’ve just lately declared Ta’asis, parallel governing constructions in western Sudan, claiming a layer of legitimacy whereas, at the very least rhetorically, brandishing the specter of partition regardless of the clear worldwide consensus towards recognising such authority.
To counter the Blob’s pathologies, a paradigm shift is crucial. Analysts and policymakers should abjure false symmetry, distinguishing symmetric warfare from uneven atrocity campaigns. The place proof is discovered of systematic rights abuses, worldwide rhetoric and actions ought to replicate this imbalance by way of focused sanctions and disruptions whereas avoiding generic “both-sides” statements.
They need to additionally repudiate RSF narratives. The “anti-Islamist” rhetoric is partisan sloganeering, not goal evaluation. US engagement ought to centre on civilian safety, privileging genuine civil society testimonies over manufactured proxies. The query of who governs Sudan is, at the beginning, the prerogative of the Sudanese folks themselves, who in April 2019 demonstrated their sovereign company by toppling Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist regime with out soliciting or counting on exterior help.
Equally vital is to withhold recognition from contrived civilians. Mediation roles ought to hinge on verifiable grassroots mandates. Entities tethered to overseas patrons or militias advantage no elevation as Sudan’s representatives.
Lastly, policymakers should dismantle enablers. Rhetorical and authorized measures should be matched by enforcement by way of clear embargo oversight, flight interdictions and sanctions on provide chains. Justice with out implementation presents solely solace to victims.
Ought to the Blob show intransigent, various forces should intervene. Sudanese civic coalitions, diaspora advocates, impartial media and moral coverage networks can amass proof and exert stress to compel a recalibration of world approaches. A diplomacy that cloaks complicity in neutrality perpetuates atrocity equipment. Just one anchored in Sudanese company, empirical reality and unyielding accountability can forge a viable peace.
Sudanese search no sympathy, solely a recalibration among the many influential: Stop equating aggressors with guardians, amplifying perpetrator propaganda and supplanting vibrant civic realities with orchestrated facades. Till Washington’s elite perceives Sudanese not as geopolitical topics however as rights-bearing residents demanding justice, its epistemic maze will proceed to license carnage over conciliation.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial coverage.
