Global Dispatches -- Conversations On Foreign Policy And World Affairs

About a year and a half ago, I published an episode of Global Dispatches titled "A Genocidal Massacre Is Looming in Darfur." At the time, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces had conquered nearly all of Darfur, in western Sudan, except for its largest city, El Fasher. The RSF was laying siege to the city in preparation for an assault, and everything we knew about how this group operates suggested that if El Fasher fell, a mass atrocity would follow. Earlier this month, as it became apparent that the RSF was poised to launch its final assault, I published another episode explaining what was at stake. On October 27, El Fasher fell. And now, hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in the city are being systematically killed. What is happening in El Fasher today was both predicted and predictable. The RSF are the rebranded Janjaweed—the same militia that carried out the first Darfur genocide twenty years ago. And since Sudan's civil war began in April 2023, every city in Darfur that has fallen to the RSF has