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🇸🇩 REPORT | Yale Researcher Nathaniel Raymond Warns Sudan Facing “Bloodiest Year Yet” as Famine Spreads and Drone War Intensifies Nathaniel Raymond (@nattyray11) of Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab offered an assessment of Sudan’s civil and proxy war in a Twitter Space today (hosted by @Hiwaratt), saying that 2026 is proving, as he estimated, to be the deadliest year of the conflict, with drone war, famine, and international inaction converging into a catastrophe the world is actively choosing to ignore. 📌 Listen to the full interview below. The following are some of the key points: 🔹 Rainy season catastrophe ➤ Rains are arriving early and will be heavy. Roads will flood, bridges will wash out, and key airports remain off-limits due to active drone activity and ground-to-air missile systems. Crucially, unlike previous rainy seasons, both sides now have drones capable of flying below cloud cover, at night, and in poor weather — eliminating what had previously been a natural brake on aerial attacks during the wet season. “This year is going to be different,” Raymond said. Famine classifications at levels four and five — the two highest emergency levels — are already spreading. 🔹 Drone warfare
➤ Raymond said RSF forces are launching Chinese-manufactured UAE-supplied delta-wing drones from mobile pneumatic slingshots at two sites in Nyala, capable of flying more than 1,700 kilometers and striking targets across Sudan. SAF is also carrying out drone attacks, with civilians bearing the brunt daily. Raymond also described forensic analysis of a mosque strike in El Fasher that killed at least 78 people during Friday prayers: Debris patterns showed the drone came from the direction of Nyala and that RSF likely had line-of-sight targeting. “They probably called in the strike on that mosque knowing full well what it was.” 🔹 Al Fasher and supply lines ➤ Raymond said disrupting RSF supply lines by even 30% would push them into “ammo drought” — they are heavily reliant on continuous resupply in a way SAF is not. CIA and State Department intelligence have both concluded UAE is supplying RSF, and that shipments increased during the Al Fasher siege. Ethiopia’s role in potentially hosting RSF drone launch points is under active investigation but remains inconclusive. Raymond said SAF’s recent momentum slowdown correlates with fuel shortages linked in part to the Iran war. 🔹 Berlin Conference ➤ Raymond dismissed the outcome flatly. Even if all donor pledges are honored, humanitarian funding will remain below 50% of Sudan’s appeal requirements — heading into the most logistically difficult season of the year. He said peace conferences have repeatedly been used by RSF as “cover for action” to initiate or complete atrocities. 🔹 UAE and political will ➤ “Until there is direct economic pressure on the UAE to stop arming genocide perpetrators, everything else doesn’t matter,” Raymond said. He noted the UAE’s greatest vulnerability is threats to air transit and tourism revenue — hotel occupancy in Dubai has already dropped from 80% to 10% due to the Iran war. He praised a bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Committee letter sent hours earlier to the NBA, Disney, and other American companies with UAE partnerships, calling it the most promising diplomatic lever in years — while also calling it a damning indictment of how low the bar has fallen. 🔹 Media coverage and racism ➤ Raymond: “The way U.S. mainstream media covers conflict in Africa versus the way it covers Ukraine or the Middle East can only be described as racist.” He described Sudan as simultaneously the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, displacement crisis, and food emergency — receiving a fraction of the attention given to conflicts involving white victims. Calling Sudan a “mirror,” he said, “We see the world clearly from Sudan, and what’s reflected back should shame us all.”