In Sudan, nine thousand dead can fit inside a number. Nine thousand names would force us to look at the country, the war, and the responsibilities differently. That is why statistics are so useful: they turn Sudanese lives into volume, grief into data, and a human tragedy into something the world can read, file away, and continue to ignore.”
I. 9,000
On October 26, 2025, El Fasher fell after eighteen months under siege. The final offensive by the Rapid Support Forces, RSF, left killings, executions, disappearances, sexual violence, displacement, and detentions in its wake. In February 2026, the United Nations reported that it had documented more than 6,000 deaths during the first three days alone: at least 4,400 inside El Fasher and another 1,600 along the routes used by those attempting to escape. The actual figure, the UN itself warned, was probably higher. (United Nations Sudan)
But there is another number. On May 21, 2026, the United Nations Special Procedures registered an allegation concerning approximately 9,000 people, including women, reportedly arbitrarily detained by the RSF at Shala Prison in El Fasher. The communication cites allegations of deaths in custody, torture, ill-treatment, and life-threatening conditions caused by a lack of food, water, and medical care. The public record lists 9,000 alleged victims, but it does not provide a public list containing nine thousand names.
That precision must be maintained: we are no dealing with nine thousand individually verified cases established through an independent judicial investigation. We are dealing with a formal allegation received through United Nations mechanisms concerning approximately nine thousand people whose situation requires clarification. We do not publicly know how many remain there, how many were transferred, released, disappeared, or died.
And Shala is not isolated from the world. The United States sanctions RSF leaders; Chinese-manufactured weapons have appeared in the conflict; Russia has political and strategic relations with Sudan. All three are permanent members of the Security Council. That is why the first question is both local and global at the same time: where are the 9,000?
“Nine thousand people fit perfectly inside a number. It is an extraordinarily efficient way to avoid the discomfort of knowing their names.”
II. DARFUR AGAIN
Darfur should produce a particular kind of discomfort because this has already happened. Since 2003, the region has known destroyed villages, killings, sexual violence, ethnic persecution, and mass displacement during the war between the Sudanese government, rebel groups, and the militias known as the Janjaweed. There were international investigations, United Nations resolutions, an arms embargo on Darfur, and proceedings before the International Criminal Court. The world knew the name, knew the images, and knew enough of the history that it cannot claim surprise twenty years later.
Today’s RSF has historical roots connected to those paramilitary structures, although it would be incorrect to claim that every current fighter belonged to the Janjaweed. Since April 2023, the RSF has been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces, SAF. International investigations have attributed serious violations to both sides, while the events in El Fasher have produced particularly grave accusations against the RSF. In February 2026, Washington sanctioned three RSF commanders for their role in the siege and capture of the city and described ethnic killings, torture, starvation, and sexual violence.
Darfur did not return because the world did not know its history. It returned after the world had twenty years to learn it.
“Darfur had the courtesy to repeat its history. That way, no one could claim this time that they had not been given enough time to learn it.”
III. HUNGER ALSO SHOOTS
A bullet needs seconds. Hunger needs days or months, but it can ultimately produce the same result. During the siege of El Fasher, commercial and humanitarian routes were cut off, markets were destroyed, farmers lost access to their land, and thousands of families progressively exhausted their food supplies. The war entered the kitchens long before the fighting ended. In 2026, nearly 19.5 million Sudanese, around 41% of the population analyzed, faced high levels of acute food insecurity; more than five million were in Emergency and around 135,000 people were in Catastrophe between February and May.
Children reveal the most brutal dimension of those figures. FAO, WFP, and UNICEF estimated that 825,000 children under the age of five would suffer severe acute malnutrition during 2026, 25% above prewar levels. Around 40% of healthcare facilities were not functioning, and some 17 million people lacked access to safe drinking water. Sudanese hunger cannot be explained solely by insufficient production: conflict, displacement, destruction of infrastructure, and restrictions on humanitarian access are central parts of the problem. (World Food Programme)
WFP needed hundreds of millions of additional dollars to maintain its operations. The difference is simple: a declaration feeds no one. Hunger also shoots; it simply does so more slowly.
“Hunger has one diplomatic advantage over bullets: it kills slowly enough to allow everyone to express their concern.”
IV. THE WOMEN
For the women of Darfur, there is a war within the war. In addition to bombardment, hunger, and displacement, international investigations have documented rape, abductions, sexual exploitation, sexual slavery, and assaults against women and girls. Amnesty International interviewed survivors and concluded that the RSF had committed widespread sexual violence within a broader pattern of crimes carried out during its campaign in North Darfur. Minors appear among the documented cases.
The destruction of healthcare services then multiplies the damage. A pregnant woman fleeing El Fasher may travel miles without prenatal care; a survivor of sexual violence may reach a facility without medicine, sufficient personnel, or surgical capacity. Hunger also affects mothers who must feed children while they themselves are malnourished. In this way, the boundary between military violence, sexual violence, and a health emergency quickly disappears.
International condemnations exist. What does not yet exist is a mechanism capable of preventing a woman in Darfur from suffering tomorrow what governments publicly condemn today.
We are not talking only about gender statistics. We are talking about women searching for food, water, and shelter while keeping entire families on the move. The war has managed to turn even basic necessities into instruments of vulnerability.
“When food, water, and shelter become instruments of power, even a woman’s body acquires strategic utility. War has always had imagination for such things.”
V. THE WEAPONS
Sudan does not manufacture everything that is destroying Sudan. Amnesty International has identified recently manufactured weapons and ammunition originating from China, Russia, Turkey, Serbia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. In May 2025, it identified Chinese GB50A guided bombs and 155-millimeter AH-4 howitzers manufactured by Norinco, a Chinese state-owned company. Amnesty concluded that those weapons were almost certainly re-exported from the United Arab Emirates to the RSF. The Emirates has denied providing military support to the RSF.
Precision matters again. Finding a Chinese-manufactured weapon does not automatically prove that Beijing decided to deliver it to the RSF. In the case of the AH-4s, Amnesty traced a different chain: China exported them to the Emirates in 2019, and they later appeared in the hands of the RSF. The organization maintains that China, as a State Party to the Arms Trade Treaty, must take measures to prevent further diversion. Russian weapons have also been identified in the conflict, along with matériel originating from other countries. (Amnesty International)
Washington uses financial sanctions against commanders and networks connected to the war and calls for a ceasefire. Russia and China, in addition to being major arms-producing powers, hold permanent seats and veto power on the Security Council. Amnesty has explicitly called on the United States, Russia, and China, among other actors, to apply pressure to stop the flow of weapons to the Sudanese parties. (Amnesty International)
Every weapon has a manufacturer, buyer, transportation, financing, and end user. That is why Shala begins in a prison but inevitably leads toward the international industry that keeps the war armed.
“Weapons do not arrive by themselves. They need manufacturers, sellers, transporters, financiers, and distracted borders. The trigger, curiously enough, is usually the most visible part of the business.”
VI. THE NEIGHBORS
Sudan shares borders with seven countries and connects the Sahel, Central Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Nile Valley, and the Red Sea. The war displaced millions of people inside and outside the country and turned Chad, Egypt, South Sudan, Libya, Ethiopia, and the Central African Republic into the immediate recipients of its consequences. To the east, roughly 850 kilometers of Sudanese coastline place the country alongside one of the most strategic maritime routes on the planet.
Chad directly receives the human exodus from Darfur. Egypt watches the Nile and border security and maintains close relations with the SAF. South Sudan depends on oil infrastructure that crosses Sudan to reach the Red Sea. Libya connects with routes used for weapons, fighters, and smuggling. Ethiopia adds the regional dispute over Nile waters and its own internal conflicts. The Sudanese war stopped fitting inside Sudan’s borders a long time ago.
Sudan occupies a geographic position connecting Africa, the Middle East, and one of the world’s principal maritime routes. That alone guarantees that the conflict will never be merely local. Shala’s 9,000 are imprisoned in Darfur; the war surrounding them has dimensions far greater than that.
“The 9,000 remain imprisoned in Darfur. The war, considerably less respectful of borders, received permission to travel long ago.”
VII. THOSE WATCHING FROM OUTSIDE
The United States, China, and Russia know Sudan perfectly well, but they act differently.
The United States uses sanctions, diplomacy, and negotiations. On February 19, 2026, it sanctioned three RSF commanders for the atrocities in El Fasher and demanded a humanitarian ceasefire. In September, it also increased pressure on Abdel Fattah al-Burhan amid negotiations for a truce. Washington does not control the combatants, but neither can it be described as an observer detached from the conflict.
China maintains economic and political relations with Sudan. In February 2026, it called for an immediate ceasefire, condemned attacks against civilians, and demanded that external forces stop providing military support and seeking benefits from the war. That position coexists with another reality: Chinese weaponry has appeared on the ground, although in some documented cases the identified chain leads through re-exports from third countries rather than through a demonstrated direct delivery from Beijing to the RSF.
Russia has followed a different path. In November 2024, it was the only member of the Security Council to veto a resolution supported by the other fourteen members, including China, intended to strengthen civilian protection and humanitarian access in Sudan. Moscow argued that the text interfered with Sudanese sovereignty. The resolution also demanded an end to RSF attacks against civilians in El Fasher.
None of these facts automatically makes the United States, China, or Russia responsible for Shala. But they demonstrate something different: all three know the war, possess influence, and participate in the arena in which that war continues.
“The United States, China, and Russia do not bear the same responsibility. They share only one exquisite coincidence: Sudan always seems important enough for their interests and distant enough for their consciences.”
VIII. HUMAN RIGHTS FOR WHOM?
Human rights are defined as universal. A woman raped in Darfur possesses the same dignity as a woman attacked in any other war, and a child killed in El Fasher is worth exactly as much as a child killed in Gaza or Ukraine. Yet international attention does not operate with that same universality. Some wars remain daily fixtures in governments, parliaments, and the media; others need a new massacre to return for a few hours to the global conversation.
We do not need to compete over bodies. Sudan’s humanitarian dimensions are already large enough to make invisibility indefensible.
Darfur showed twenty years ago what could happen. Now we once again know of killings, hunger, sexual violence, displacement, and mass detention. That is why the question “human rights for whom?” is not intended to diminish any other tragedy. It seeks to recall one elementary rule: if rights depend on nationality, strategic interest, or the number of cameras present, they have ceased to be universal.
“Human rights are universal. The exception begins exactly where strategic interest begins. That is where the footnotes appear, along with cautious interpretations, diplomatic silences, carefully measured condemnations, and emergencies that can wait. Universality remains intact in the speeches; what changes is the speed with which it is applied, the intensity with which it is denounced, and, of course, the name of the country sitting on the other side of the table.”
IX. SHALA
After moving through weapons, hunger, women, neighbors, and great powers, we must return to the place where this column began. Shala is not a metaphor. It is a real prison in El Fasher. Communication OTH 45/2026 from the United Nations Special Procedures records allegations concerning approximately 9,000 people, including women, arbitrarily detained by the RSF and subjected to potentially deadly conditions caused by a lack of food, water, medical care, and humane conditions of detention. It also records allegations of torture, ill-treatment, and deaths in custody.
The international community therefore has a dated document, a location, and an approximate magnitude. It cannot simply open Shala’s doors tomorrow, but neither can it claim that this is happening in some inaccessible place about which nobody knows anything.
The first requirement is much more elementary: establish who is being detained, since when, for what reason, and in what physical condition; allow independent humanitarian access; determine who died in custody; locate those who were transferred and communicate that information to their families. Investigations and accountability can follow.
We can debate for years over who will govern Sudan. To answer where a detained person is, we do not need to wait for the war to end. Shala first demands a list, independent access, and nine thousand answers.
“Shala first asks for a list. It hardly seems an excessive demand: it merely seeks to know who is still alive before someone elegantly drafts the number of those who died.”
X. AND WHAT ABOUT THE FOUR LIONS AND THE SUDANESE SAVANNAH?
The United States, China, Russia, and the European Union like to speak the language of power. They speak of the international order, strategic stability, sovereignty, security, development, rules, markets, influence, and the future. Sudan offers them a rather inconvenient test: what is all that power actually worth when the objective is not to control a port, secure a mineral, protect a trade route, contain a rival, or win a diplomatic vote, but simply to keep human beings alive?
Perhaps we chose the wrong planet for Sudan.
Because the four lions have no difficulty finding Sudan when the map contains gold, the Red Sea, military influence, commercial interests, strategic corridors, migration, energy, or regional security. Suddenly the coordinates become perfectly clear. The country is visible. The generals have names. The ports have value. The routes matter. The calculations are made.
But when the map contains hunger, rape, displaced families, destroyed hospitals, children without food, and thousands of people whose names we still do not know, Sudan somehow becomes farther away.
That is the obscenity.
The lions of tomorrow should inherit something better than this selective eyesight. Power in the twenty-first century cannot continue to mean merely the capacity to impose, sanction, veto, finance, arm, negotiate, or protect interests. It must also mean the obligation to act when human beings are being destroyed and no strategic prize is waiting at the end of the intervention.
Aid cannot remain charity. Commitment cannot remain a communiqué. Loyalty to human life cannot depend on geography, minerals, alliances, or television audiences.
If the lions that come next fail to understand that, they may keep their summits, their declarations, their doctrines, their vetoes, and their magnificent speeches about the future.
“Sudan will have already explained what all that power was worth when somebody simply needed it to save a life.”
XI. HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO DESTROY SUDAN?
Sudan has around 51.7 million inhabitants and a nominal GDP of approximately USD 60 billion. It is not a gigantic economy, but neither is it an empty territory waiting for assistance. It possesses gold, oil, agricultural land, livestock, sesame, gum arabic, and other mineral resources. Among its main exports are precisely gold, sesame, livestock, and oil.
The war that began in 2023 shattered that economic base. Real GDP fell by approximately 29.4% in 2023 and another 14% in 2024. That means that, in barely two years, the economy lost close to 39% of its real output** compared with its prewar level. And the cost does not end there: even with peace in 2026, UNDP estimates that Sudan would still carry around USD 18.8 billion in cumulative lost GDP through 2043. If the war were to continue until 2030, the loss compared with a no-conflict trajectory would reach roughly USD 34.5 billion by 2043.
It is a familiar paradox: a country rich in resources can remain poor when war destroys production, displaces its population, and turns gold, trade, and transport routes into fuel for those doing the fighting. The United Nations warned in 2026 that the exploitation of territory, routes, and commodities is sustaining a “war economy” that prolongs the conflict.
“The British had already perfected the formula in Gezira: produce African raw materials to feed distant industries. A century later, the cotton changed, the buyers changed, and the intermediaries changed; Sudan is still learning how much it costs to possess wealth when others learned first how to take it away.”
XII. NINE THOUSAND NAMES WE DO NOT KNOW
We began with a number and must end by destroying it. 9,000 helps us understand the scale, but it does not help us understand the people. Each number potentially represents someone who, before Shala, had a name, a family, a home, an occupation, children, parents, and a story that did not begin when that person was detained. The United Nations public record lists approximately nine thousand alleged victims; it does not publish nine thousand individual identities. That is precisely one of the gaps that must be closed.
To reach them, we passed through Darfur, El Fasher, hunger, women, weapons, borders, and the international system. We found foreign-made weapons, interests in the Red Sea, sanctions, diplomatic decisions, and international institutions with enormous power. We also found humanitarian organizations trying, with insufficient resources, to sustain millions of people who eat, become ill, flee, and survive while the geopolitical discussion continues.
There is no evidence that external powers ordered what happened in Shala. But it is legitimate to ask what those who know about the catastrophe are doing when they possess diplomatic, economic, or political capacity to influence the actors around it.
Someday Shala will have to be opened to a full investigation, detainees and the dead identified, families informed, and individual responsibilities determined. Until then, the number will remain both an accusation and a debt. Because when the resolutions, vetoes, sanctions, weapons, and geopolitics end, what remains is what this column has sought from its first line: they are not 9,000 numbers. They are 9,000 names we still do not know.
“They are not 9,000 numbers. They are 9,000 people. The number belongs to the report; the names, inconveniently, belong to humanity.”
Author: Mauricio Herrera Kahn
BIBLIOGRAPHY
· United Nations, Special Procedures, OTH 45/2026, communication concerning Shala, May 21, 2026. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, El Fasher, February 2026.
· United Nations, Security Council, documentation on Sudan and the Russian veto of November 18, 2024.
· World Food Programme, FAO, UNICEF, and IPC, Sudan food security reports, 2026.
· Amnesty International, *New Weapons Fuelling the Sudan Conflict*, 2024; investigation into Chinese weapons and the United Arab Emirates, May 2025; investigations into El Fasher, North Darfur, and violence against civilians, 2025–2026.
· U.S. Department of the Treasury, sanctions related to El Fasher and the RSF, February 2026.
· Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, statement before the Security Council on Sudan, February 2026.
· World Bank — *Sudan Economic Update*, 2025–2026.
· UNDP — *Sudan: Economic and Social Impact of the War*, 2026.
