🧨 Using Israel’s Genocidal Playbook, Sudan Bombs a Nursery, Slaughters 46 Children — With the UAE Playing America’s Role as Chief Weapons Provider

An RSF suicide-drone strike on a Sudanese nursery killed 80 people, including 46 children. In any other era, this would shake the world. Right now, almost nobody blinked.

Family,

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A Nursery, a Drone, and 46 Dead Children

In the Sudanese town of Kalogi (also written “Kalouji”) in South Kordofan, something happened that should have frozen the world in its tracks.

Sudan War Updates, citing local officials speaking to Al Jazeera, reported that at least 80 people were killed in an attack on the town — 46 of them children. Drop Site News says this was a suicide-drone strike carried out by the RSF and SPLM-N (al-Hilu), based on local medical networks.

The target area included a nursery.

A drone. A nursery. Dozens of dead children.

If you’ve seen the footage from the aftermath, you know what I mean when I say it’s hard to watch: small bodies on stretchers, children covered in dust and blood, adults screaming and running with limp kids in their arms.

In any other era, this would dominate the news. It would prompt emergency debates at the United Nations. You would see world leaders addressing it live.

Instead? Unless you are Sudanese, or follow a few specialized accounts on social media, you may not have heard about it at all.

Barely a ripple.

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Who Did This? RSF and SPLM-N in Plain Language

The names in that short update — RSF and SPLM-N (al-Hilu) — sound like alphabet soup. Let me break them down in simple, honest terms, because understanding who they are matters.

RSF – Rapid Support Forces

The Rapid Support Forces are not a neighborhood self-defense group. They are a paramilitary army that grew out of the Janjaweed militias — the same forces that carried out mass killings, rapes, and ethnic cleansing in Darfur starting in the early 2000s.

Later, the Sudanese government tried to “formalize” them and gave them a new name: RSF. Same core fighters, new uniforms. Their leader is Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemeti.

For years, the RSF have been used first by the old regime, and now as an independent power center, to crush uprisings, terrorize communities, and grab resources. In the current war that broke out in 2023, they’ve fought the regular Sudanese army for control of cities and regions, and they’ve been accused of:

• Massacres

• Systematic rape

• Looting and burning entire neighborhoods

Think of them as a cross between a mafia, a militia, and a private army — with external sponsors, especially the United Arab Emirates, keeping them supplied with money and weapons.

SPLM-N (al-Hilu)

The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement – North is a rebel movement that has fought the central government for years, mainly in the Nuba Mountains and South Kordofan. Its history goes back to the same movement that fought for what became South Sudan.

The group has different factions. The al-Hilu wing — led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu — controls pockets of territory in South Kordofan and Blue Nile. They say they are fighting for rights and autonomy for marginalized communities in those regions.

But in this attack, according to local reports, fighters from SPLM-N (al-Hilu) cooperated with the RSF to hit Kalogi with a suicide drone. That means a rebel group that claims to fight for oppressed people joined with a paramilitary force notorious for war crimes to carry out a strike that slaughtered children at a nursery.

So when you see “RSF & SPLM-N” in that update, what you’re really seeing is a hard-right paramilitary born from genocidal militias, paired with a long-time rebel faction, fusing their tactics in one of the most vulnerable places you can imagine.

This is what it looks like when the logic of “total war” eats everything.

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UAE: To Sudan What the United States Is to Israel

None of this is happening in a vacuum.

For years now, independent investigations and UN experts have pointed to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as the RSF’s lifeline. Planes from Emirati-controlled airports. Cargo labeled as “aid” that looks a whole lot like weapons. Diplomatic cover. Money.

It’s not complicated:

• Israel cannot do what it is doing in Gaza without U.S. weapons, U.S. money, and U.S. political protection.

• The RSF cannot keep doing what it is doing in Sudan without Emirati weapons, Emirati money, and Emirati protection.

The UAE is to Sudan what the United States is to Israel.

So when a suicide drone hits a nursery in Kalogi, killing 46 children, you’re seeing more than just the RSF or SPLM-N. You’re seeing a regional power, rich from oil and investments and real estate, sponsoring a paramilitary force that uses those resources to terrorize African civilians.

The distance between Abu Dhabi and that nursery is not moral. It is only physical.

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Sudan Is Copying the Gaza Playbook

What makes this moment even more chilling is that Sudan’s armed actors are not improvising. They are studying.

They’ve watched Israel’s genocide in Gaza in real time:

• Starvation and siege as weapons

• Bombing schools, hospitals, and UN shelters

• Calling everyone “terrorists” or “human shields”

• Crushing whole neighborhoods and then blaming the victims

And they’ve watched how the world responded: rhetorical concern, no real accountability, continued arms shipments, and diplomatic protection.

So they take notes.

When the RSF uses a drone on a nursery, they are not just acting on impulse. They are testing the same line Israel has walked for two years: how far can we go and still be treated as a legitimate actor?

If you can bomb a school in Gaza, or a hospital, or a refugee camp, and keep your seat at international conferences, why would armed groups in Sudan believe there is a red line around a nursery?

This is how impunity spreads. It’s contagious.

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A World Numbed on Purpose

I keep coming back to this: in any other era, 80 civilians killed in a nursery drone strike, including 46 children, would dominate the news cycle for days. It would be a defining image.

Today, it’s just one more atrocity in a feed already overflowing with images of Palestinian children under rubble, Caribbean boat crews being blown apart by U.S. drones, and a thousand other violations that no longer shock the people who commit them.

We are being conditioned.

When you see enough horror with no consequence, you start to believe two things:

1. This level of violence is normal.

2. Caring about it won’t change anything.

Those are deadly beliefs. Not just for Sudanese children or Palestinian children, but for all of us, because they turn our hearts into the kind of place where anything can happen and nothing matters.

That is what these governments are betting on — that if they show you enough death, you will eventually stop counting.

We can’t let that happen.

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Family, if you want someone who will keep saying “this is not normal, and here are the names of the people making it normal”, I’m asking you to help me keep doing this work. Please click here to become a member so we can keep The North Star free for the world and truly independent of the same governments and donors whose crimes we’re naming. And if you’re in a position to support this at a higher level, please click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member.

Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun

Don’t Stop Here

Don’t let Kalogi be another nameless place where children died and the world moved on.

If you can, seek out Sudanese journalists and organizers documenting the RSF’s crimes. Learn the history of the Janjaweed and how they were rebranded into the Rapid Support Forces. Pay attention whenever the UAE’s name quietly appears in reports about Sudan’s war — because behind almost every drone and every gun, there is a supply chain and a bank account that could be cut off if enough of us demanded it.

And the next time a Western or Gulf leader talks to you about “stability” or “counterterrorism,” remember the nursery in Kalogi and ask yourself: whose stability, at whose expense, and for which children?