"Never Again" my ass; Thoughts on the Sudanese genocide

The Rapid Support Forces, an evolution of the Janjaweed militias that were previously used by the Sudanese regime to suppress rebellion in the Darfur region, have in the past month carried out possibly more than 60,000 murders in the city of El Fasher (ironically, the RSF, along with the regular Sudanese Armed Forces, took part in the coup against the previous dictator Omar al-Bashir but were unable to come to an agreement about how to configure the country's security forces. El Fasher was the last stronghold of the current government in Khartoum). Satellite images show scores of locations with L, C and J shaped objects 1.3 to 2 meters in length, consistent with people being executed.

Arguably, the atrocities were enabled by the world's lax response to Russia's rampage in Ukraine and Israel's rampage in Gaza. The RSF likely saw that crime pays and were emboldened to carry out what may turn out to be the worse atrocity of the 21st century. As we experience democratic decline around the world along with the rise of populist ethnocentric authoritarianism, along with the destruction of empathy (with neo-Nazi tech mogul Elon Musk, himself a genocidal racist, calling it the West's greatest weakness, to say nothing of his political support for revanchist and fascist movements in the West), we should not be surprised if these sorts of crimes are repeated endlessly in this century.

With the effects of global warming (such as soil erosion, food and water insecurity, and loss of biodiversity) and extremes of wealth inequality likely to get worse, coupled with the rise of antidemocratic sentiment, the potential exists for a catastrophic feedback loop in which these problems exacerbate one another and for mass atrocities of the sort seen in El Fasher to metastasize in breadth and scope. Human rights, even as a conceptual category, could become a thing of the past, a brief bright spot in human history snuffed out by the return to despotism.

The United States seems unlikely to respond in a meaningful way to the tragedy. The United Arab Emirates, which is arming the RSF in exchange for gold (and probably also promises of access to Sudan's sea ports andother resources), has extensive energy and military arrangements with the US, which the latter would be reluctant to jeopardize. This gets to my next point: that the dependence/addiction to fossil fuels has ultimately enabled this disaster. Had the US committed to renewable and alternative energy over the past 30 years or so to replace its reliance on fossil fuels, instead of indulging in science denial, trash culture and stupidity, this historical crime would likely never have happened. Nor, had Europe done the same, would Russia's terrorist operation in Ukraine haven been able to get as far as it has (with Trump poised to reward Russian aggression and expansionism and putting Europe more broadly in peril through his appeasement and malignant narcissism).

The US also bears a great deal of responsibility in another way: its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were short sighted and culturally ignorant, and soured the appetite of Western polities for military intervention of any kind. The latter is unlikely to occur in Darfur because of this. Even if such an intervention were to be launched, many in the West and particularly in the United States would counter with a chauvinist and isolation position along the lines of, "Why should we sacrifice our sons for the sake of people who have been killing each other forever?" (of course, intervention need not be military, but could consist, for example, of diplomatic pressure on the UAE to cut the weapons flow, along with other measures), It is these reflexive isolationists, with their indifference to the suffering of others (especially those with black and brown skin) and their denial of scientific reality (making them incapable of facing the challenges confronting humanity and its profound effects on the natural environment) who the genocidaires are counting on to expand their grisly enterprise.