THE Starmer government’s announcement last week of an additional £120 million in aid to Sudan was grossly inadequate, and grossly hypocritical, to cover Britain’s ongoing guilt in Gaza going back more than 125 years and extending to the present genocide by paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) rebels and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in Sudan.

Since April 2023 alone, over 12 million people have been uprooted, half the country is acutely hungry, and famine stalks the land. In Darfur, in Khartoum, in every shattered village, people are eating animal feed to survive. Some drink hot water to silence the pain in their stomachs. Hundreds die every day, unseen and unheard.

Announcing the new aid package, Foreign Secretary David Lammy attacked global governments for “looking away” from the “brutal war” in Sudan — “two years is far too long — the brutal war in Sudan has devastated the lives of millions — and yet much of the world continues to look away” — yet the Starmer government continues to seek closer ties with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which are the main funders and armers of the RSF, and with Saudi Arabia, which backs the Sudanese Armed Forces.

British imperialism and exploitation in Sudan dates back to the mid-1800s and intensified into 56 years of colonial rule under the so-called Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (AEC) from 1899 to 1955 which, as has happened so often, led to civil war and the deaths of hundreds of thousands after the dissolution of the AEC, as tensions created by British imposition of arbitrary borders drove a legacy of exploitation and conflict that left Sudan impoverished and war-torn.

But imperialism and exploitation by Britain and other outside powers did not end with the cessation of formal colonial rule. As New Internationalist writer Tom Lebert has pointed out, British foreign policy has driven the exploitative extractionism that has fuelled war, slavery and impoverishment across Africa, including Sudan, by protecting and promoting the companies that perpetrate it: “Instead of reining in [companies that exploit African resources], the British government has actively championed them through trade, investment and tax policies.”

The interference of outside interests in Sudan has led to more than 40 years of repeated genocides. As Genocide Watch put it: “Genocide became Sudanese state policy when the Arab supremacist Arab Gathering seized power in Khartoum in 1983. The Arab Gathering aimed to drive black African ethnic groups out of all fertile agricultural land and oil and gold producing regions of Sudan ... Determined to dominate all of Sudan, the Sudanese army and Arab militias have massacred hundreds of thousands of non-Arab people in the Nuba Mountains, Darfur, the Blue Nile, South Kordofan, Abyei, and South Sudan.”

The war between Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF has seen many more tens of thousands slaughtered, many in acts of cold-blooded mass execution accompanied by rapes, torture and mutilation, and around 11 million forcibly displaced.

The British government’s political complicity extends to this latest genocide. Keir Starmer has made — and defended — high-profile visits to both the UAE and Saudi Arabia in search of trade deals, despite their well-known issues with human rights, Saudi Arabia’s involvement — with the aid of, among others, Sudanese forces — in the killing of more than 300,000 civilians in Yemen and the support of both countries for the warring factions in Sudan.

In 2022, Starmer attacked Boris Johnson for “going cap in hand from dictator to dictator” after he visited Saudi Arabia. Defending his own visit as PM, Starmer made clear that he was prioritising the economy above such trivialities as stopping genocide or promoting human rights: “economic growth in Britain is my number one mission.” Starmer made similar arguments to justify his visit to the UAE, adding a claim that he had “raised human rights.”

The UAE’s alleged role in the RSF’s actions is common knowledge and has been called part of “a pattern of the UAE working with paramilitaries” in countries across Africa to control access to their resources. Just last week, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) heard Sudan’s case against the UAE for complicity in the RSF’s genocide in Sudan. Sudan’s justice minister told the ICJ that the “ongoing genocide would not be possible without the complicity of the UAE, including the shipment of arms to the RSF.”

Genocide Watch again: “Women and girls, as young as one year old, have repeatedly been targeted for rape and sexual slavery by the RSF, often ethnically motivated. The RSF has destroyed 145 health facilities, depriving 65 per cent of the Darfuri population of basic healthcare, and continues to use famine as a weapon of war by blocking humanitarian assistance from reaching camps for Internally Displaced People (or IDP camps), such as the starvation-stricken Zamzam camp.

None of this has made any difference to Britain’s pursuit of closer ties with either the UAE or Saudi Arabia, leading human rights groups to accuse Starmer of genocide denial for his refusal — just as he has done with Israel’s campaign of starvation, forced displacement and extermination in Gaza — to call the RSF’s and SAF’s mass killings a genocide.

These refusals are, unsurprisingly, deeply hypocritical. In 2014, as a barrister, Starmer argued that Serbia had committed genocide in Croatia because of its “sustained campaign of shelling, systematic expulsion, denial of food, water, electricity, sanitation and medical treatment.”

Now, as millions are bombed, starved, forcibly displaced, denied water, sanitation, electricity and medical treatment in Sudan and Gaza he is on the one hand not just covering for Israel but providing direct military assistance and suppressing anti-genocide speech, and on the other courting the favour of regimes that are financing and arming genocidal militaries in Sudan.

The British government’s donation of £120m, in response to the “brutal war” in Sudan, which it is complicit, is completely inadequate even to salve the guilty consciences of British politicians and not even a drop in the ocean of Britain’s colonial and exploitative abuses in Sudan for well over a century.

The British government boasts of doubling its aid to Sudan. Yet, this is a drop in the ocean of need. Over 30 million Sudanese are in desperate need, and famine is spreading. Britain’s record is not just one of duplicity, but of complicity.

Last year there was criticism of Britain’s Defence Engagement Sudan programme which saw, £2.2m spent on training Sudanese forces, strengthening the very military machine accused of mass rape and ethnic cleansing in Darfur. British support, dressed up as diplomacy, has perpetuated the cycle of violence and abuse.

Britain, with its history of intervention, its military training, its half-hearted aid, and its diplomatic double-speak, stands not as a saviour, but as an enabler. Britain’s record in Sudan is not one of leadership, but of failure; failure to protect, failure to act, and failure to stand on the right side of history.

Starmer’s refusal even to acknowledge that genocide is occurring in Sudan is a shameful abdication of Britain’s obligations under international law. In the face of genocide, complicity is a crime. In the wider context of the history of British colonialism and imperialism, and of Britain’s collusion in Israel’s genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, it is yet more evidence that his government is utterly unfit for purpose.

Claudia Webbe was previously the Member of Parliament for Leicester East (2019–2024). You can follow her at https://www.facebook.com/claudiaforLE/ and https://x.com/claudiawebbe.