The siege the world is not watching is tightening in North Kordofan. The Rapid Support Forces now control every route out of El Obeid except the road east, trapping more than half a million people, including at least 100,000 displaced — many of whom fled El Fasher in Darfur, the city the RSF took in October 2025 after an 18-month siege that Amnesty International called ethnic cleansing. [1] El Obeid is the sequel, and the same weapon is writing it: drones. [2]

The receipts are dated and grim. Ten consecutive days of drone strikes have killed at least 50 civilians across El Obeid and the surrounding region, striking markets, schools, fuel stations, and water infrastructure. [2] The UN documented 15 strikes in three weeks that killed 45. Food prices have surged as much as 300 percent, water prices have doubled, and aid access has shrunk to nothing — an aid convoy bound for the city was itself hit by a strike, and some areas have received no relief for months. [1]

This is the drone-attrition warfare normalized in Ukraine and over Hormuz, imposed on civilians with no air defense, no alliance pledge, no interceptors, and no press corps counting the dead. The paper made that case on July 7, when it reported RSF drones had killed 330 Sudanese children in six months. El Obeid carries the frame forward. The summit in Ankara signed a number for Europe's sky. Over Sudan's, nothing is signed and nothing intercepts.

-- LUCIA VEGA, São Paulo