Sudan's Forgotten Sky-War
Twenty-eight lives were extinguished in a drone attack on a market in El-Obeid, North Kordofan, a tragedy widely reported as another casualty of Sudan's brutal civil war. The New Arab, like many outlets, frames the perpetrators as 'unknown,' leaving a gaping hole in understanding who wields such deadly, advanced technology in a conflict supposedly fought between local factions. This convenient
ambiguity ignores the elephant in the room: modern drone warfare doesn't spring from thin air. Records from 2021, for instance, show the United Arab Emirates significantly boosting military ties with Sudan, including drone technology. The conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, which erupted in April 2023, has become a proxy battleground where sophisticated aerial
assets are readily deployed, strongly suggesting external patrons are providing, maintaining, or even operating them. This echoes the Libyan civil war a decade prior, where undisclosed foreign powers funneled arms and drones to warring factions, prolonging suffering and obscuring accountability. When Western media highlights civilian casualties but scrupulously avoids identifying the source of
weapons enabling them, a double standard emerges. The same outlets that decry 'foreign interference' when it suits a geopolitical agenda become remarkably incurious when the intervention involves advanced weaponry quietly supplied by U.S. allies in the region. This omission shields the powerful actors who profit from conflict and exacerbate humanitarian crises, painting domestic factions as solely