Why is the White House silent on Sudan? 150,000 dead, famine threatens but Biden spokesperson can’t answer questions and the president hasn’t issued a statement in a year

• Civil war brought Sudan to the brink of genocide and man-made famine
• The death toll rises and both sides are accused of horrific war crimes.
• Yet Biden has not made a statement on the crisis in more than a year.

More than 150,000 people have died, nine million more have been forced from their homes by a year of fighting, and millions more live in the shadow of famine.

The African nation of Sudan is once again on the brink of genocide as rival generals fight for power.

Yet when White House national security communications adviser John Kirby was asked what the Biden administration was doing to help alleviate a deepening humanitarian crisis, he had nothing to offer.

“I’m going to answer your question about Darfur… and get back to you, rather than trying to explain something that might make me look stupid,” he told a reporter on Thursday during a telephone press briefing.

“So I don’t want to do that. I want to do things right and answer the question for you.

It was an unusual moment for Kirby, who impressed reporters with his ability to move from one global crisis to the next, doling out talking points at will.

But for Sudan observers, who are desperate for the Biden administration to act, it is telling.

“This is a public expression of a private policy, that they are not prioritizing this crisis,” said Nicole Widdersheim, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Washington and former director of African affairs at the Council. national security office of the White House.

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She added that she was surprised that his briefing notes did not contain a boilerplate expression of concern and calls for peace.

She said: “You don’t have a compelling talking point about the biggest humanitarian crisis facing Africa, North Africa, and one that has frankly threatened Europe for decades?

White House officials reject any notion that they lack the capacity to deal with Sudan, even as fighting rages in Gaza and Ukraine. And they highlight the three statements made by President Joe Biden since the fighting began.

However, the most recent one was over a year ago.

And during that time, he tweeted about Sudan exactly four times — the exact same number he posted about the Kansas City Chiefs.

The Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee has demanded that the White House act to prevent a repeat of the genocide that ravaged the western region of Darfur two decades ago.

“The evidence strongly suggests that genocide is occurring in Darfur. The fact that the president’s spokesperson cannot express this indicates that they are not paying enough attention to Africa,” said Rep. Michael McCaul.

“As conflict escalates across Sudan, I once again call on the administration to present a clear strategy on how it will achieve a lasting ceasefire and return the country to normal. the path of a civilian-led regime.”

Sudan has been gripped by war since April 2023, when tensions between rival military leaders boiled over into violence.

It pits General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese armed forces, against the rapid support paramilitary forces led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, universally known as “Hemedti”.

The result is an already fragile nation pushed to the breaking point. Aid workers will tell you that this situation could be compared to the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s in terms of misery.

Last month, Biden’s own envoy told the Senate that up to 150,000 people had already died.

The UN World Food Program says 18 million people face acute hunger across the country, but humanitarian agencies cannot reach those in need because of the fighting.

Both camps are accused of using hunger as a weapon of war.

And the State Department has determined that both sides committed war crimes. Members of the RSF and their allied militias are notably accused of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

These battles are reminiscent of the genocide that struck the Darfur region, in the west of the country, 20 years ago.

The RSF, derived from the Janjaweed fighters who then burned and pillaged villages, are now surrounding El Fasher, where the UN says 800,000 civilians are trapped.

Add to this the fact that Egypt and Qatar support the SAF with the support of Saudi Arabia, that the United Arab Emirates is accused of supplying weapons to the RSF, and that Moscow has a foot in each camp, and the The result is a recipe for regional conflagration.

In this context, human rights groups and humanitarian agencies are increasingly speaking out against what they see as inaction by the White House.

An alliance of activists filed a petition with 15,000 signatures in April, the anniversary of the outbreak of war, demanding that Biden speak.

“Despite this, President Biden has remained almost silent on Sudan for over a year,” Amnesty International said.

His last statement, aside from asides in Eid greetings or broader messages on aid bills, was on June 20, 2023.

Widdersheim said Washington must pressure outside powers to end their support for warring parties, help implement an arms embargo and begin the process of designing a mission to protect civilians. .

“The United States is exerting enormous pressure that it is not exerting on the Gulf actors who are essentially the funders, supporters and gatekeepers of these generals,” she said.

This was the case, she added, before the Hamas attack on October 7 shifted attention to the Middle East.

“I can’t help but think that this is still the same old classic case of African mega-crises that just don’t rise to the level of priority for Western governments,” she said.

In previous briefings, Kirby refuted any suggestion that the administration was prioritizing other areas and neglecting Sudan.

“I would push back against the idea that we are so obsessed with what’s happening in the Middle East that we can’t focus on other places in the world, including Africa,” he said in January.

“We continue to engage diplomatically to ensure that we do everything we can to ensure that the aspirations of the Sudanese people are met and that the violence between these two sides ceases.”

Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow at the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said there was no excuse for not being able to comment on the situation in Sudan, just a day after The New York Times published a huge multimedia call to action in the face of an ongoing context. disaster.

But he added that this administration does not feel the weight of history that, for example, George W. Bush felt in 2003, when the last Sudanese genocide was underway.

“Jake Sullivan (national security adviser) and Joe Biden are not concerned about the historical record or their legacy in response to genocide,” he said.

“And I think the reason is that the lesson they’re learning is about U.S. overreach, not only in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, but very specifically in Libya.”

An intervention to end a genocide in 2011 ended in a regime change operation, he added, which triggered the collapse of a country and a crisis across central Africa.

Like the generals who fought in the last war, he said: “We are still trying to correct this record with the current case. »