Sudan Bleeds… Alone

From Madani and Al-Jili to El-Fasher – A Tragedy Exposing the Decay of International Conscience

Dr Abdel-Aaty Al-Manna’i
While the world manages its crises through emergency calls and urgent meetings, Sudan stands utterly alone, facing a war that is approaching its third year—without a single diplomatic seat shaking with the seriousness required to stop the fighting or the bloodshed.
Shattered streets, millions displaced, collapsed institutions, and the destruction of an entire state’s infrastructure… yet the international response remains confined to “concern,” “condemnation,” “deploring,” and “calls for restraint.” Words that neither feed the hungry nor save the dying.
And when we compare this silence to the world’s reaction to other conflicts, the contrast becomes stark.
The war between India and Pakistan was halted within days under intense pressure and urgent international engagement—because the interests of the powerful were at stake.
One phone call stopped a potential nuclear confrontation.
But Sudan—despite its prolonged bleeding and its clear regional impact—does not seem to possess enough “interest value” to capture global attention.
So, did the phone lines go dead when the issue became Sudan?
Or has the world’s moral credit simply run out?
The World’s Ledger: Interests First… Humanity Last
The international community is dealing with Sudan according to the logic of “crisis management, not crisis resolution.”
As long as the bleeding does not spill into energy markets, major maritime routes, or the direct security of global allies, the crisis is relegated to the margins.
Slow decisions, recycled statements, neutral committees, and donor conferences that return no displaced person to their home, treat no wounded civilian, and place no comforting hand on a terrified child.
This is how a war on Sudan’s scale is managed: with cold bureaucracy that equates victim and perpetrator, placing a national catastrophe in the waiting room of geopolitical priorities.
Madani and Al-Jili… Forgotten Warnings Before the Explosion
Before El-Fasher dominated global headlines as one of the century’s worst humanitarian disasters, Sudan witnessed a series of bloody events that mapped the country’s descent:
Madani:
The agricultural city was transformed into a major point of collapse—killings, looting, displacement, hospitals out of service, and civilians fleeing to the open with no protection.
Al-Jili:
One of Khartoum’s most important refineries suffered a similar fate—raids, terror, mass flight, and the total absence of international protection or humanitarian response.
Between these two cities lie dozens of towns and villages that vanished from the global record, even though each was a clear sign that Sudan was sliding into a deeper crisis.
These were not isolated incidents—they were successive preludes to a larger catastrophe.
El-Fasher… The City that Became a Mirror of International Failure
As the crisis entered its most brutal phase, El-Fasher emerged as the open wound the world could no longer ignore.
A city besieged for nearly two years.
Tens of thousands of civilians under constant fire.
Roads blocked, hospitals shut down, wounded dying for lack of medicine, families fleeing at night in search of any patch of safety.
The massive displacement, the fires consuming markets and neighbourhoods, and the testimonies of widespread atrocities… all should have triggered a global emergency.
Yet the world watched—and condemned—from afar.
El-Fasher was not just a city at war; it was a test that exposed the fragility of the international system, the weakness of intervention mechanisms, and the inability of global institutions to protect civilians even in their darkest hour.
Why Doesn’t the World Intervene?
The answer is painful, but unmistakably clear:
Because the war in Sudan does not yet threaten the interests of the major powers.
No nuclear facilities.
No gas pipelines.
No strategic trade corridors at risk.
And so intervention remains minimal, leaving civilians to their fate.
But the more important question is this:
Can a world that claims to protect international peace ignore a war of this scale?
And can a catastrophe in the heart of Africa truly remain outside the circle of global action?
How Does the War End?
Wars do not stop by coincidence, nor do they wait for a sudden awakening of the world’s conscience. They end through three interwoven paths:
1. A Sudanese will to open the door to a political settlement
One that excludes no one—because all are under the Sudanese flag—and that halts the haemorrhaging of the cities and ends the wager of war on the lives of civilians.
2. Real regional pressure proportionate to the scale of the tragedy
Not to the size of the world’s conscience, which sadly has neither weight nor volume.
This means stopping military support, cutting off fuel to the conflict, and reinforcing pathways to stability.
3. A firm, binding international intervention
Not with statements, but decisions that hold actors responsible for perpetuating the conflict, and that link accountability to compliance with a ceasefire—by force if necessary.
Are the seas of blood, visible from satellites for the first time in history, not enough?
There is a known rule in war management:
“A war ends when continuing it becomes more expensive than stopping it.”
In Sudan, weapons are still cheaper than peace, and chaos is profitable for certain parties.
El-Fasher Is Not the End… But the Final Warning
Sudan’s tragedy will not disappear unless voices—both domestic and international—rise.
Media, writing, and public pressure are all tools to break the silence and remind the world that what is happening is not a passing event but an ongoing crime.
What we write today is not a luxury.
It is documentation of black days that must not be forgotten.
A nation that is not defended through narrative
will be killed again through oblivion.
Sudan is not waiting for a miracle…
It is waiting for justice, conscience, and a courageous decision that restores to its people the simple right to live.
And until that happens, one haunting question remains:
Is the world really “out of coverage”… or are Sudanese lives simply not valuable enough to recharge the global conscience?

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=9499