The New Yorker:

By Nicolas Niarchos
Niarchos, who has reported extensively in Africa, has contributed to The New Yorker since 2014.

Last week, drones darkened the sky over Sudan, destroying power stations near the capital. In recent days, the Rapid Support Forces, a powerful militia that is vying for control over the broken country, has used Chinese-made suicide drones to bomb Port Sudan, the main entry point for aid into the country. Such drones, and other sophisticated weaponry, have been provided to the R.S.F. by the United Arab Emirates, an ally of the United States. Abu Dhabi, the U.A.E.’s capital, was one of President Trump’s stops during a trip to the Middle East last week, where he reportedly inked two hundred billion dollars’ worth of deals, including for commercial aircraft and an artificial-intelligence data center.

Estimates place the death toll of the war in Sudan at up to a hundred and fifty thousand, but that figure could be low, because resources to count the dead are scarce. According to the U.N. World Food Program, 24.6 million people are suffering from acute hunger in the region, and famine has been declared in ten areas. Rape, torture, and abuse by the R.S.F. and the government’s Army are common. There seem to be few good actors in the conflict; in January, the United States declared that the R.S.F. was committing genocide against civilian populations. Meanwhile, its chief rival, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the top general in the Sudanese Armed Forces, was placed under U.S. sanctions.

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