As the civil war in Sudan, ongoing since April 2023, takes on an even darker hue with the fall of El Fasher and the massacre of civilians there, the spotlight is turning more and more towards countries helping to fuel the conflict. Increasingly, that means examining the role Britain plays in the war in Sudan.

Britain rejected warnings about massacre in El Fasher

In early November, The Guardian reported that it had seen a report that indicated that the British government had turned down plans to prevent atrocities in Sudan despite “intelligence warnings that the city of El Fasher would fall amid a wave of ethnic cleansing and possible genocide”.

Government officials had rejected the plans six months into the 18-month siege of El Fasher preferring the “least ambitious” option of four presented instead.

By late October El Fasher had been captured by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which “immediately embarked on ethnically motivated mass killings and rapes. Thousands of the city’s residents are missing”.

An internal British government paper, prepared last year, outlined four options for increasing “the protection of civilians, including atrocity prevention” in Sudan.

Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) evaluated these in autumn last year, included the introduction of an “international protection mechanism” to safeguard civilians from crimes against humanity and sexual violence”.

However, FCDO officials chose the “least ambitious” plan to protect Sudanese civilians, with aid cuts being given as the reason.

Consequently, the review of UK aid to Sudan, presented by the    Independent Commission for Aid Impact, published in October, stated:  “Given resource constraints, [the UK] has opted to take the least ambitious approach to the prevention of atrocities, including CRSV [conflicted-related sexual violence].”

Manchester City and the slaughter in Sudan

Writing in The Guardian in early November, Barney Ronay argued that the owners of Manchester City, the United Arab Emirates, who are accused of supplying weapons to the rebel RSF responsible for the massacre at El Fasher, are effectively being allowed to ‘get away with’ allegations of complicity in a genocidal war.

Ronay noted that this does “feel like another level”, before going on to ask what the response should be given Manchester City’s ownership structure.

He also pointed out that the government has been asked to reveal what steps it has taken to investigate whether Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour assisted wealthy Russians it has sanctioned in moving their assets to the United Arab Emirates.

Ronay emphasised that Manchester City are owned by the state-run offices of Abu Dhabi, and that claims to the contrary are meaningless and tedious. The United Arab Emirates is a centralised inherited monarchy, a place where no power is independent of the state. The vice-president of the UAE, Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, is also the owner of Manchester City football club.

Sheikh Mansour is thus implicated directly in a letter addressed this week to the British government by the MP for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn. In this letter Corbyn repeats a conclusion already drawn by the UN and the US Department of State, that the UAE (and thereby the owner of Manchester City) is providing resources and support for ethnically targeted mass killings in Sudan so vicious they can be seen from space.

A shocking failure in monitoring UK arms exports licences

As if these two connections with the massacres in Sudan weren’t bad enough, it has also been pointed out that while at present western countries do not directly arm either party in Sudan, and the UK, US and the EU all have arms embargoes on the country, UK-made military equipment is finding its way into Sudan.

The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), a UK-based organisation has demonstrated that in a shocking failure in UK export controls, UK military equipment can in fact be supplied to the UAE and then transferred to the RSF.

Evidence for those concerns has recently come to light in two dossiers of material seen by the UN Security Council showing that “UK military equipment exported to the UAE has been found in the hands of the RSF”.

The equipment has been produced by Militec in Mid Glamorgan, and is said to include military training equipment while engines for UAE-produced Nimr armoured vehicles produced by the UK subsidiary of US company Cummins Inc were also highlighted as ending up with the RSF.

This is said to be the first time UK equipment has been found in Sudan via the UAE, as evidence has mounted over the past few years of “UAE arms supplies to the RSF”.

Mike Lewis, a researcher and former member of the UN panel of experts on Sudan, has been reported as telling the Guardian:

“UK and treaty law straightforwardly obliges the government not to authorise arms exports where there is a clear risk of diversion – or use in international crimes.

“Security council investigators have documented in detail the UAE’s decade-long history of diverting arms to embargoed countries and to forces violating international humanitarian law,”.

Given the growing evidence of UK complicity in the ongoing tragedy in Sudan, it is perhaps little wonder that there was a major protest against such complicity in London on 8 November.

It is also true that concerns were voiced about the possibility of genocide in El Fasher, long before the city was taken by the RSF in late October.

Comment

That the UK is, in one way or another, complicit in the ongoing tragedy in Sudan seems indisputable.

Cuts to Foreign Aid are deadly and cause unnecessary hardship and suffering. In Sudan we are seeing the direct evidence of that as UK response to the civil war has been scaled down from what it could have been a few years ago to the least ambitious plan for protecting innocent civilians in places like El Fasher.

We have seen only too well in recent weeks, just how brutal and callous the Saudi regime that owns Newcastle United are and rightly a spotlight has been trained on them and the appalling human rights abuses they cause. But is it not time to shed a similar light on the activities of Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the also the owner of Manchester City football club, who is also the vice president of the United Arab Emirates, a state that UN experts and human rights groups have accused of supplying arms to the RSF, the militia responsible for massacres and other atrocities in Sudan.?

Meanwhile, there surely must be a tightening of arms exports and the closing of the kinds of loopholes that have allowed UK-made equipment to end up with forces accused of massacres and other grave abuses in Sudan.

At a time when we have seen major demonstrations against asylum seekers isn’t it reasonable to ask whether the view that a civil war in Sudan is not our problem is really true?

What can you do?

You can sign a petition asking the UK government to stop selling arms to the UAE here.

To find other ways you can help the people of Sudan please see:

Red Cross Sudan appeal here.

United Nations Refugee Agency for Sudan appeal here.

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