Three centuries ago, in 1729, author Jonathan Swift used the cold language of arithmetic to suggest that Ireland’s poor sell their children as food for the tables of English gentlemen. The horror he outlined in his book, A Modest Proposal, lay not just in the idea itself but in the tone: a bureaucratic composure that turns massacre into procedure, asks victims to be more reasonable about the manner of their dying, and expects them to remain equidistant from those who kill them.
Massad Boulos, an advisor to US President Donald Trump, struck much the same note before the United Nations Security Council on 24 August when he presented a four-part proposal to end the three-year civil war in Sudan: extend the Darfur arms embargo imposed under Resolution 1591 across the whole of Sudan; apply it to all; include drones; and increase the number of experts on the sanctions committee.
With a familiar bureaucratic composure, he explained that the measures he had outlined would not advantage one side over the other. Yet the proposal has a history, and that history reveals its purpose. Calls for it grow louder whenever the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) advances on the battlefield against the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia and subside whenever the army falters (Boulos did not originate the idea; the Sumoud alliance, headed by former prime minister Abdalla Hamdok, had already advocated it. Hamdok lives in the UAE, where he looks for Emirati investment opportunities in Africa).
Asymmetrical conflict
The problem lies in the structural design of the embargo itself: a formal symmetry imposed upon a conflict in which no such symmetry exists, whether in the conduct of the parties, their access to weapons, or their observance of international law. The proposal was not introduced as a new standalone resolution (even though Washington had that option). Instead, it was inserted into discussions over the renewal of Resolution 1591, the very embargo that the UAE has continued to violate since April 2023 by supplying the RSF with weapons and mercenaries through Chad and Libya, as well as through military aircraft landing at airports in Darfur.
When condemnation of these violations reached Congress, the proposal did not seek to restrain an ally's conduct. Boulos instead took the embargo and its monitoring mechanisms hostage by extending its mandate across the whole of Sudan until the vote scheduled for 12 September.
If Resolution 1591 is not renewed, the Council’s choice will come down to an embargo that constrains the Sudanese state’s ability to defend its citizens, or the collapse of the sanctions regime in its entirety, including, above all, the Panel of Experts that monitors and documents Emirati violations.
Russia, China, Pakistan, and the African Group object, but the US, UK, and France are standing firm, meaning that the sanctions regime is likely to collapse unless a technical extension is introduced during the consultations. The result is a Kafkaesque paradox. A debate about tightening an embargo ends by dismantling it, while a mechanism created to protect civilians becomes one that enables genocide. The value of a law is measured by its enforceability against its violators, rather than by the elegance of its wording.
The Sudanese state has ports, banks, a legal personality, and a seat at the United Nations, so it is subject to international procedures, meaning its ships can be inspected, its transactions traced, and its accounts frozen. The RSF is not a state, so its arsenal does not pass through regular channels, but through unregistered airstrips and smuggling routes using forged end-user certificates and intermediaries operating beyond the formal commercial system.
These are the channels the UAE has exploited to breach the existing embargo for three years. A restriction that appears symmetrical on paper may produce a profoundly asymmetrical effect in practice. Its force falls upon the legal capacity to acquire weapons. It therefore punishes the actor that can be monitored but fails to reach the actor whose power is built upon circumventing the rules.
Function, structure, and outcome
Boulos told the UN Security Council that both the SAF and RSF were equally illegitimate. That is not true. The distinction between them extends beyond the scale of their violations; it is a distinction of function, structure, and outcome.
In terms of function, the army is an institution within a state. Its budget comes from the public treasury; it is subject to law and the courts, and the state bears responsibility for its actions as a party to the Geneva Conventions. Behind it stands, despite everything, a state that pays teachers and doctors, operates ports and banks, and provides protection. The militia, by contrast, practises violence and terror, holding civilians hostage to documented acts of raw brutality.
In terms of structure, the militia is no parallel army. It is a predatory system of violence, financed by smuggled gold. The promise of plunder drives its recruitment, while looting, ransom, and rape sustain its rule. Plunder is the RSF’s modus operandi. To demand that such a militia protect or serve civilians is to demand that it cease to be what it is.
