As Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces mass around the strategic city of el-Obeid, fears are growing of atrocities similar to those seen in Darfur's el-Fasher. Could sanctions still prevent bloodshed?

RSF's shift toward siege warfare over outright territorial conquest signals a war settling into a grinding, demographic-control phase that outlasts international attention spans. The deeper failure isn't this single encirclement -- it's that two-plus years in, no regional or multilateral body has built an enforcement mechanism that doesn't depend on the same stalled great-power consensus.












