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In comments to Fox News Digital, the State Department’s position on Sudan’s warring parties has hardened, as a 500-day siege of the Darfur city of El Fasher has trapped hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Sudan suffers from the world’s largest displacement: Between 13 million and 15 million people have been ripped from their homes, and an estimated 150,000 people have been killed since the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese government’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) started fighting in April 2023. The civil war’s roots lie in tensions following the 2019 ousting of President Omar al-Bashir.
“The RSF, during the siege of El Fasher and surrounding areas, committed myriad crimes against humanity, including murder, torture, enslavement, rape, sexual slavery, sexual violence, forced displacement and persecution on ethnic, gender and political grounds,” an Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan reported to the U.N.’s Human Rights Council last Friday.
LANDSLIDE KILLS OVER 1,000 PEOPLE AND LEVELS ENTIRE VILLAGE IN SUDAN’S CENTRAL DARFUR
Sudanese residents gather to receive free meals in Al Fasher, a city besieged by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for more than a year, in Darfur region, on August 11, 2025. RSF attacked a famine-hit refugee camp in North Darfur state on August 11, 2025, killing at least 40 civilians and injuring 19 others, rescuers said. Al-Fasher is the last city in the western Darfur region still held by the Sudanese army, at war with the paramilitary group since April 2023. (STR/AFP via Getty Image)
The report agreed with other accounts that the RSF is trying to starve El Fasher’s residents to death, stating, “The RSF and its allies used starvation as a method of warfare.”
Aid is being blocked from going into El Fasher, the U.N. Secretary-General’s spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, stated Aug. 29 “Supplies are pre-positioned nearby but efforts by the United Nations and its partners to move them into El Fasher continue to be hampered.
“The situation in El Fasher remains dire,” Mariam Wahba, research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital. “The RSF has effectively encircled the city, cutting off key supply routes and subjecting civilians to indiscriminate shelling. Satellite images indicate a wall is being built to trap civilians inside, consistent with RSF tactics used elsewhere. These “kill zones” leave residents with no means of escape. El-Fasher is the last major SAF-held city in Darfur. If it falls, the RSF would control nearly all of Darfur, consolidating both territory and economic assets, particularly lucrative gold mines.”
President Donald Trump’s Special Advisor for Africa, Massad Boulos, met Sudan’s army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Switzerland last month. From the tone of the State Department’s responses to Fox News Digital’s questions on Sudan this week, there appears to be little progress on the path to peace.
A spokesperson stated, “since the April 2023 outbreak of conflict in Sudan, we have witnessed significant backsliding in Sudan’s overall respect for fundamental freedoms, including religious freedom.
Cholera infected patients receive treatment in the cholera isolation center at the refugee camps of western Sudan, in Tawila city in Darfur, on August 12, 2025. Cholera is ripping through the camps of Tawila in Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of people have been left with nothing but the water they can boil, to serve as both disinfectant and medicine. (AFP via Getty Images)
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“In order to safeguard U.S. interests, to include the protection of religious freedom in Sudan, U.S. efforts seek to limit negative Islamist influence in Sudan’s government and curtail Iran’s regional activities that have contributed to regional destabilization, conflict, and civilian suffering.”
Wahba is also concerned about the activities of foreign “bad actors” in Sudan. “Iran has provided the SAF with drones and technical support. Emerging reports point to Iranian interest in helicopter facilities. Iran sees its involvement in Sudan as a gateway for extending its footprint in Africa.”
Wahba continued, “Russia has played both sides of the conflict. It has pursued a naval base on Sudan’s Red Sea coast, which would give Moscow direct access to critical shipping lanes, while also profiting from gold smuggling through RSF-linked networks.”
TOPSHOT – Fighters of the Sudan Liberation Movement, a Sudanese rebel group active in Sudan’s Darfur State which supports army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, attend a graduation ceremony in the southeastern Gedaref state on March 28, 2024. Sudan’s war has already killed thousands, including between 10,000 and 15,000 in a single city in the western Darfur region, according to UN experts. The war pits army chief al-Burhan against his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, known as Hemeti, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)
“Regional powers are also advancing their own interests. Egypt has publicly backed the SAF, aligning with Sudan’s ruler, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Saudi Arabia is aligned with Egypt in backing al-Burhan. The United Arab Emirates, on the other hand, has provided significant support to the RSF, viewing its commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – widely known as Hemedti – as the custodian of Sudan’s gold exports and the path to its plans for port development along the Red Sea coast.”
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Wahba concluded, “Burhan’s willingness to engage with Washington is a potential opening. This does not mean the U.S. should unconditionally back the SAF, but it could form the basis for a more defined U.S. strategy, one that makes U.S. engagement contingent on the SAF reining in, or removing, its Islamist militias and leadership.