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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Turkey, (EDIT: the UK, indirectly) and Egypt have each also supplied weapons into this conflict [1]. Presumably due to Sudan’s position on the Red Sea. (China and the UAE seem to be alone in supplying the RSF, though.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudanese_civil_war_(2023%E2%80...

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The other complication is the surprising contributions of various African countries. Ethiopia had supported the RSF until 2024, and Kenya hosted an RSF conference in Feb 2025. Haftar in Libya supported RSF before the war, but may have changed positions as his Russian backers turned against the RSF in 2024. The RSF also has some ties to rebels in South Sudan as well as in Chad. Chad in particular gave shelter to the RSF at the behest of the UAE, but has also seized arms shipments that were intended for the RSF. Russia as noted was sympathetic to the RSF until mid-2024, when they switched sides.

When the war initially broke out, some articles in The Economist seemed somewhat agnostic between the two sides, noting that both had serious corruption issues and had committed many abuses. But as the war has progressed, the RSF seems to have revealed itself to be the far more vicious faction, and the red E along with the rest of the Western media now sees their advances as a tragedy. Unfortunately, the one constant here is the general failure of foresight among nearly all countries of the global North (whether aligned with the West or Russia) getting involved in Africa. If the brutality of the RSF had been better anticipated in 2023, the current situation might have been prevented.

I don’t think there was, or is, a lot of stomach to more serious intervention in Sudan. Libya and Haiti went sideways.

From that Wikipedia (2023-):

- Significantly more than 150,000 total killed

- Estimated 522,000 children dead due to malnutrition

- 8,856,313 internally displaced

- 3,506,383 refugees

It's also likely that the US is kept at bay by trading UAE acceptance of Israel in return for diplomatic cover and military passivity. The US destruction of Libya has been quite important for the UAE:s ability to supply the RSF as well, a lot of the weapon transports pass through there.

> likely that the US is kept at bay by trading UAE acceptance of Israel in return for diplomatic cover and military passivity

Sudanese tensions predate the current mess in Gaza, as well as the Abraham Accords.

At this point I’m surprised we aren’t seeing people conclude that we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq because of Israel.

The last time Janjaweed-style gangs engaged in similar acts of apartheid and genocide in Darfur the US opposed it and openly called it a genocide. This was in 2007.

I'm not sure when UAE ramped up funding and equipping of similar groups in the Sahel and Maghreb, but when Libya collapses in 2011 they decided to do it there and a few years later they rebrand Janjaweed-militias as RSF and expects them to professionalise because they are provided with resources and diplomatic cover.

Unsurprisingly these gangs in Libya, Mali, Sudan and elsewhere don't stop doing racist murder and rape because it is made easier for them to get away with. Also unsurprisingly, the UAE sees the US as the main risk that they'll be stopped and held accountable, because the ICC and ICJ just don't work as a decent person would expect them to.

The US got (justifiably) yelled at for the war in Iraq, and again (less justifiably) in Libya and Afghanistan, and took the leas that military interference is always wrong, despite the obvious counterexamples of Syria and Crimes.

This is complicated by a lot of the yelling coming from US peace activists, who took advantage of their complete vindication in Iraq (and Vietnam before that) to pretend that there's a through-line and preventing a dictator from bombing dissidents or a naked land-grab-war-of-aggression is identical to starting our own naked-land-grab-war-of-aggression.

Actually, it is a very common belief on the left and the right of US politics that the Israeli lobby pushed the US to invade Iraq. You know, the whole if Israel/Jews didn't exist, US would be a peaceful nation, no sickness(money will go to the healthcare) and the world would be a heaven on earth.

You forgot US and UK.

I didn’t know British weapons made it to the RSF. Wow. Have American weapons been used in the war?

It would be very strange if American weapons weren't used in a conflict this big, which is a very different question from "did the US government sell weapons into this war".

Guess you are on the wrong side of things if you know your weapons are getting laundered through other countries to get to a conflict. And of course uk, us and china know this and always knew this.

I've looked for articles and don't see anything about US weapons. It would be very strange, indeed, but supposition isn't proof and I can't find anything suggesting the US is involved in anyway. Colour me surprised, tbh.

I wasn't here to 'provide proof'. Just pointing out that any conflict beyond a certain size almost certainly has some weapon from every large arms producer deployed in the field. I can't image how many tons of small arms we left laying around in Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest that are now being recirculated around the worlds conflict zones. I remember after the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan if you were in the right place and knew the right people you could get cases of NIB AKs for like $25 a rifle (no, I didn't). It's not politics...it's logistics.

Got evidence that they supplied weapons? GP’s Wikipedia article does not seem to say that they did (apart from an unclear reference to US military aid, which I don’t think refers to US military aid to Sudan specifically).

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/oct/28/u...

says it was not supplied by US/UK but rather UAE.

UK|US weapons via an intermediary has been an ongoing handwashing pretence for many decades.

eg: Very British bribery: the whistleblower who exposed the UK’s dodgy arms deals with Saudi Arabia

~ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/07/long-read-brit...

discusses some of that history back to the 1970s. It has gone on far longer than that.

Both the US and UK governments are aware of where their weapons are destined for, both pretend to have no knowledge or control.

That is like saying Russia is suppling Ukraine with weapons to kill Russians because Russia has exported weapons to X that then made it to Ukraine. That is just silly claiming Russia is a supplier of arms to Ukraine.

It's more like stating that Margaret Thatcher knew what her son was up to and could have stopped him had she wanted to.

It's exactly embracing the notion that five eyes track the volumes of their arms sales and are indiffeent to their arms being used to kill children, civilians, etc. as long as they're not being stockpiled for use against the originating nation in any significant volume.

I'd suggest that Russia is less adept here than the US or the UK if they're being harmed by thir own supply.

No, it is not. It is the exact same situation. Do YOU think it make sense to put a headline claiming Russia is supplying weapons to Ukraine? Is that an accurate description of reality?

China never directly supplied weapons either. Yet its weapons have been found on both sides. The RSF got them through the UAE and the SAF got it through Iran.

If GGP is going to count China as a supplier it's only fair to count the US. Js. Fwiw, both China and the US place sanctions on the RSF and denounce it as a genocide. Neither directly does business with either side.

Russia is involved directly in the conflict however, literally sending in Wagner mercenaries. They used to back the RSF but in early 2024 switched sides and now fully back the SAF. The sad truth is that most major international players don't care about the Sudanese people. They just want to have the support of whichever side comes out on top so they can continue exploiting the gold reserves of the country like they did before the dictator Omar al-Bashir was overthrown by a popular revolution.

Where is the UAE getting weapons from?

The UAE isn’t an arms manufacturing juggernaut.

I think it’s possibly fair to say the U.S. doesn’t want this war to continue and probably doesn’t even want the UAE to supply weapons to it, but that was likely true of Israel’s bombing of Gaza as well and no one batted an eyelid when holding the U.S. responsible there.

China?

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/05/sudan-advance...

I haven't found any articles implicating the US, which has export sanctions on Sudan. The only thing I could find was something about small arms from the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/oct/28/u...

This report https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/07/sudan-constan... lists

> Weapons from China, Russia, Serbia, Türkiye, United Arab Emirates and Yemen identified

Although that seems to be mixing it up a bit, since Turkey and Russia are supporting the SAF.

Also some France-made weapons: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sudan-civil-war-amnesty-interna...

> China?

More like UK: UK military equipment used by militia accused of genocide found in Sudan, UN told

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/oct/28/u...

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