Washington's Blob' is helping whitewash war crimes in Sudan

"Ben Rhodes, a former United States deputy national security adviser under President Barack Obama, famously called Washington's foreign policy establishment the Blob to describe its entrenched ecosystem of think tanks, former officials, journalists and funders that perpetuate a narrow vision of power, global order and legitimate actors. This apparatus not only sustains conservative inertia but also defines the limits of what is considered possible in policy."

"A particularly insidious practice within the Blob is the invocation of moral and rhetorical equivalence, portraying the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) as comparable adversaries. This ostensibly balanced US stance, evident in establishment analyses and diplomatic statements, represents not an impartial default but a deliberate political construct. By equating a criminalised, externally backed militia with a national army tasked with state duties, it sanitises RSF atrocities, recasting them as mere wartime exigencies rather than orchestrated campaigns of ethnic cleansing,"

"Reports from Human Rights Watch on ethnic cleansing in West Darfur, civilian killings, rape and unlawful detentions in Gezira and Khartoum and United Nations fact-finding missions confirm the RSF's deliberate targeting of civilians. Furthermore, a report by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) monitor from late 2024 attributed roughly 77 percent of violent incidents against civilians to the RSF, underscoring this asymmetry, yet the Blob's discourse frequently obscures it."

The US foreign policy establishment, often called the Blob, sustains an entrenched ecosystem of think tanks, former officials, journalists and funders that perpetuates a narrow vision of power, global order and legitimate actors. That apparatus sustains conservative inertia and defines policy boundaries, narrowing perceived options. In Sudan’s two-and-a-half-year war, the Blob’s framing equates the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) with the Sudanese armed forces (SAF), producing moral and rhetorical equivalence. Equating a criminalised, externally backed militia with a national army sanitises RSF atrocities and obscures asymmetry. Human Rights Watch, UN fact-finding missions and ACLED attribute the majority of civilian violence to the RSF.

Read at www.aljazeera.com