For a full year, the bodies have piled up in Sudan – and still the world looks away | Nesrine Malik

The army – and here is the long history – which established the RSF in the first place from remnants of the infamous Janjaweed troops it partnered with in Darfur to help it savagely suppress rebellion in the region – has so far been unable to prevail against its own creation.

One of the largest countries in Africa, with a sparkling coast along the Red Sea, fertile land across the Nile River, and the sort of cultural and ethnic diversity that could be harnessed into a powerhouse of Arab and African convergence, Sudan was always held back by an entitled few who wouldn’t share.

Everyone I know in the country of my birth is scattered to different degrees, either within Sudan – sheltering, sometimes for the third or fourth time, with friends or relatives as the war reaches them – or outside of it.

And another is that for those reporting within Sudan and the few who manage to get in, doing so is difficult and fraught with danger, limiting the output of images and details that can be broadcast consistently to galvanise attention.

It is the challenge of a new configuration of political and economic entrepreneurs who wish to displace the old military cluster of ruling parties – but with no experience and even less interest in actually running parts of the state captured in the meantime.

They either crudely isolated it through sanctions or, after the revolution, naively and hastily tried to marshal the two armed parties to agreement and a de-facto return to a militarised, centralised status quo.