But the Saudis were not the only ones at fault. In October 2021, the R.S.F. and S.A.F. — which had once operated in the same national military force — led a joint coup that dissolved Sudan’s transitional government. A month later, the prime minister and the military signed a power-sharing agreement that codified the coup, further legitimized the military as a governing force, and delayed the transition to a civilian government. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Britain welcomed this agreement as a step in the right direction. They ignored the thousands of protesters who saw any type of military rule as unacceptable.

Since the start of the war on April 15, the R.S.F. and S.A.F. have agreed to — and broken — at least 17 cease-fires. The war has only grown more deadly. The city of El Geneina, home to over half a million people, has been described by doctors as “one of the worst places on earth.” Parts of Khartoum do not have running water or electricity right now. Evacuation remains difficult, if not nearly impossible.

As this disaster has unfolded, international leaders have once again ignored the Sudanese people. This includes the more than 8,000 neighborhood resistance committees, trade unions, and women’s groups that participated in the Revolutionary Charter for Establishing People’s Power, a blueprint for a bottom-up approach to democracy. The participants refuse to cooperate with the Sudanese military, which has orchestrated genocides and violence since Sudan’s independence in 1956, or with its dark offshoot, the R.S.F.

The R.S.F. has a particularly sinister history. It was born of a militia that was originally commissioned by the government to quell a rebellion in Darfur, and was later accused of committing crimes against humanity in the process. While the R.S.F. reportedly fell under S.A.F. authority in 2017, it kept some autonomy. Since then, the R.S.F. has steadily gained more power, arms and capital through likely affiliations with the Wagner group, the U.A.E., and Libya. It was inevitable that they would eventually come head-to-head with the institution that created them. When they did, millions of ordinary Sudanese people became collateral damage.

I was one of them, forced to flee the country against my will.

The international community tends to benefit from Sudan’s instability. The R.S.F. and the S.A.F. ’s respective control over what appear to be complex illicit trading and commercial networks doubtlessly enable Sudan’s dependence on imports. Since the 2014 signing of the African Union Commission and European Union’s Khartoum Process, the R.S.F. has played a major role in preventing migration to Europe through Sudan. The head of the R.S.F. has claimed, in that regard, to be operating under “the directives from the president of the republic to combat illegal migration.” While the international community has not formally partnered with the R.S.F., they may have inadvertently enabled the violence they have historically used against Sudan’s most marginalized groups.