C1 · Advanced
14 min
humanitarian crisispublic healtharmed conflictdrone warfareafrica
The Sky as a Weapon: Drones, Darfur, and the Health Crisis Nobody Sees
El cielo como arma: drones, Darfur y la salud que nadie ve
The United Nations has confirmed that Sudan's Rapid Support Forces killed 880 civilians with drone strikes between January and April 2026. Behind that number lies a public health catastrophe decades in the making across Darfur and Kordofan.
Las Naciones Unidas acaban de confirmar que las Fuerzas de Apoyo Rápido mataron a 880 civiles en Sudán con ataques de drones entre enero y abril de 2026. Detrás de ese número hay una catástrofe sanitaria que lleva décadas construyéndose en Darfur y Kordofán.
8 essential C1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| fuerzas paramilitares | paramilitary forces | Las fuerzas paramilitares operan al margen del ejército regular pero con frecuente respaldo estatal. |
| daño colateral | collateral damage | El gobierno insistió en que las bajas civiles eran daño colateral, pero los investigadores demostraron que los objetivos habían sido seleccionados deliberadamente. |
| desplazados internos | internally displaced persons (IDPs) | El número de desplazados internos en Sudán ha superado ya los once millones, la cifra más alta del mundo. |
| marcador discursivo | discourse marker | Expresiones como 'dicho esto' o 'sin embargo' funcionan como marcadores discursivos que estructuran el argumento. |
| dicho esto | that said / having said that | La situación humanitaria ha mejorado ligeramente; dicho esto, la crisis sigue siendo de una gravedad extrema. |
| impunidad | impunity | La impunidad con la que actúan ciertos grupos armados es una señal del fracaso del derecho internacional. |
| brote | outbreak (of disease) | Un brote de cólera se extendió rápidamente por los campos de refugiados tras la destrucción de las infraestructuras de agua. |
| trastorno de estrés postraumático | post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) | Los estudios revelan que el trastorno de estrés postraumático afecta a más de la mitad de los supervivientes de conflictos prolongados. |
Eight hundred and eighty.
That's the number the UN put out this week, and I keep turning it over.
Eight hundred and eighty civilians killed by drone strikes in Sudan between January and April alone, mostly in Darfur and Kordofan.
Y lo que hace que ese número sea todavía más perturbador es que no estamos hablando de víctimas de una guerra convencional.
And what makes that number even more disturbing is that we're not talking about casualties from conventional warfare.
Los drones de las Fuerzas de Apoyo Rápido están atacando mercados, campos de refugiados, hospitales.
The RSF's drones are hitting markets, refugee camps, hospitals.
Están destruyendo exactamente la infraestructura que mantiene viva a la gente.
They're destroying precisely the infrastructure that keeps people alive.
Right, and that's where this stops being a war story and becomes a health story, a public health catastrophe.
Which is why I wanted to dig into it today.
Mira, para entender lo que está pasando ahora mismo, hay que remontarse al menos veinte años.
Look, to understand what's happening right now, you have to go back at least twenty years.
Darfur no es simplemente una región en guerra;
Darfur isn't simply a region at war;
es una región que lleva dos décadas siendo deliberadamente destruida.
it's a region that has been deliberately destroyed for two decades.
I was in Nairobi in 2004 when the Darfur genocide was being called a genocide, or more precisely, when the U.S.
was calling it one and the international community was tying itself in knots to avoid the word.
I remember the aid workers coming through with these hollow faces.
Y lo que ocurrió entonces sentó las bases de lo que vemos ahora.
And what happened then laid the groundwork for what we see now.
Las milicias árabes que el gobierno de Jartum armó en aquel momento, las llamadas janjaweed, son los antepasados directos de las Fuerzas de Apoyo Rápido.
The Arab militias that the Khartoum government armed at that time, the so-called Janjaweed, are the direct predecessors of the Rapid Support Forces.
El general Hemedti, el líder de las RSF, se formó precisamente en ese contexto.
General Hemedti, the RSF leader, was formed in precisely that context.
So in a very real sense, the organization killing people with drones in 2026 grew out of the organization that was burning villages on horseback in 2003.
That continuity matters.
Importa muchísimo, porque significa que no estamos ante un grupo que improvisa.
It matters enormously, because it means we're not dealing with a group that improvises.
Las RSF tienen una doctrina clara: atacar la capacidad de subsistencia de las poblaciones civiles.
The RSF has a clear doctrine: attack the civilian population's ability to survive.
No es un daño colateral;
This isn't collateral damage;
es la estrategia.
it's the strategy.
And drones change the math on that completely, don't they.
In 2003 you needed manpower to burn a village.
Now you need a drone operator and a cheap commercial UAV retrofitted to drop munitions.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y este es un fenómeno que los epidemiólogos de conflictos llevan años advirtiendo: la democratización de la capacidad de ataque aéreo.
And this is a phenomenon that conflict epidemiologists have been warning about for years: the democratization of aerial strike capability.
Ya no hace falta una fuerza aérea.
You no longer need an air force.
Cualquier grupo armado con acceso a ciertos mercados puede adquirir la capacidad de matar desde el cielo.
Any armed group with access to certain markets can acquire the ability to kill from the sky.
That framing, conflict epidemiology, is interesting because it treats war as a pathogen.
Which sounds metaphorical until you actually look at the disease burden that follows armed conflict almost mechanically.
No es metáfora en absoluto.
It's not a metaphor at all.
En Darfur ahora mismo, los hospitales que quedan operativos, que son muy pocos, están desbordados por heridos de guerra, pero también por brotes de cólera, sarampión, hepatitis E.
In Darfur right now, the hospitals that are still operating, and there are very few, are overwhelmed with war wounded, but also with outbreaks of cholera, measles, hepatitis E.
La guerra destruye el agua potable, destruye el saneamiento, destruye los programas de vacunación.
War destroys clean water, destroys sanitation, destroys vaccination programs.
Las enfermedades hacen el resto.
Disease does the rest.
There's a statistic I've seen cited in several conflict medicine papers, that in most modern wars, disease and malnutrition kill more people than weapons do.
Is that still the working assumption among people who track this?
Sigue siendo válida en muchos contextos, aunque cada vez más los investigadores distinguen entre conflictos de alta intensidad con armas convencionales y conflictos de baja intensidad prolongados.
It remains valid in many contexts, although researchers increasingly distinguish between high-intensity conflicts with conventional weapons and prolonged low-intensity conflicts.
En Sudán, con este nivel de destrucción de infraestructuras, la cifra indirecta de muertos lleva años superando con creces a la directa.
In Sudan, with this level of infrastructure destruction, the indirect death toll has far exceeded the direct one for years.
Walk me through what the health system in Darfur actually looks like right now, because I think a lot of people assume, when they hear the word hospital, that they have some picture in their heads that doesn't match reality.
Según los últimos informes de Médicos Sin Fronteras y de la OMS, en estados como Darfur del Norte o Kordofán del Sur, más del ochenta por ciento de las instalaciones sanitarias están completamente fuera de funcionamiento.
According to the latest reports from MSF and WHO, in states like North Darfur or South Kordofan, more than eighty percent of health facilities are completely out of operation.
Las que quedan carecen de medicamentos básicos, de electricidad constante, de personal médico cualificado.
Those that remain lack basic medicines, reliable electricity, qualified medical staff.
Muchos médicos sudaneses huyeron hace meses.
Many Sudanese doctors fled months ago.
The brain drain during a health crisis is its own catastrophe.
You lose the doctors, and then when the conflict eventually ends, you're rebuilding a health system from scratch without the people who knew how to run it.
Hay un término técnico para eso: colapso del capital humano sanitario.
There's a technical term for that: collapse of health human capital.
Y tarda generaciones en recuperarse.
And it takes generations to recover.
Fíjate en lo que le costó a Sierra Leona reconstruir su sistema médico después de la guerra civil.
Look at what it cost Sierra Leone to rebuild its medical system after the civil war.
Décadas.
Decades.
Y Sudán tiene una población mucho mayor y una geografía mucho más complicada.
And Sudan has a much larger population and a much more complicated geography.
I covered Sierra Leone briefly in 2000, just after the war, and the phrase I remember a WHO official using was 'a health system that existed mostly on paper.' Sudan risks ending up in exactly that situation.
Y mientras tanto, el hambre.
And meanwhile, hunger.
El Programa Mundial de Alimentos lleva meses advirtiendo de que varias zonas de Darfur están al borde de la hambruna categoría cinco, que es la categoría máxima.
The World Food Programme has been warning for months that several areas of Darfur are on the edge of a category five famine, the maximum category.
Los drones no solo matan directamente: destruyen los mercados, impiden el movimiento de las caravanas de alimentos, aterrorizan a los agricultores para que abandonen sus campos.
The drones don't just kill directly: they destroy markets, prevent food caravans from moving, terrorize farmers into abandoning their fields.
There's also this news today about an RSF field commander defecting, Ali Rizq, the second high-profile departure in less than two months.
What does that tell us, if anything, about the internal state of the RSF?
Puede ser una señal de que hay fracturas internas, quizás por el reparto del botín, o por desacuerdos sobre la estrategia, o simplemente porque algunos mandos empiezan a calcular que apostar por las RSF es una posición perdedora a largo plazo.
It could be a sign that there are internal fractures, perhaps over the division of spoils, or disagreements about strategy, or simply because some commanders are beginning to calculate that backing the RSF is a losing position long-term.
Pero hay que ser cautos: también puede ser una maniobra, una forma de infiltrarse en el otro bando.
But we must be cautious: it could also be a maneuver, a way of infiltrating the other side.
That ambiguity is built into this conflict.
The RSF itself started as a government proxy before turning on the government it served.
Así es.
Exactly.
Y esa historia de lealtades cambiantes hace muy difícil cualquier negociación de paz.
And that history of shifting loyalties makes any peace negotiation extremely difficult.
¿Con quién firmas un acuerdo cuando no sabes quién controla qué fracción del grupo armado ni qué compromisos pueden cumplirse realmente?
Who do you sign an agreement with when you don't know who controls which faction of the armed group, or what commitments can actually be honored?
Which brings me to the international response, or the absence of one.
The world has been watching Darfur burn in some form since 2003, and the response has consistently been, to put it generously, inadequate.
Inadecuada es una palabra muy amable.
Inadequate is a very kind word.
Hay que llamarlo por su nombre: fracaso colectivo.
We have to call it what it is: collective failure.
La Corte Penal Internacional emitió una orden de arresto contra Omar al-Bashir en 2009 por el genocidio de Darfur.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Omar al-Bashir in 2009 for the Darfur genocide.
Estuvo en el poder hasta 2019 y viajó por el mundo casi sin consecuencias.
He stayed in power until 2019 and traveled the world virtually without consequences.
And now the war has spread far beyond Darfur, Khartoum was fighting in the streets last year, and the international attention that does exist is consumed by the Iran war, Ukraine, Gaza.
Sudan is competing for airspace in a very crowded room.
Los humanitarios tienen un concepto para eso: crisis olvidadas.
Humanitarians have a concept for that: forgotten crises.
Y Sudán es quizás la crisis olvidada más grave del planeta ahora mismo.
And Sudan is perhaps the most serious forgotten crisis on the planet right now.
Más de once millones de desplazados internos, el mayor número del mundo.
More than eleven million internally displaced people, the largest number in the world.
Una cifra que supera incluso a Siria en el peor momento de su guerra.
A figure that exceeds even Syria at the worst point of its war.
Eleven million.
And we should sit with that number for a second, because displacement is also a health crisis.
Displaced populations have dramatically higher rates of malnutrition, infectious disease, maternal mortality, mental illness.
Y la salud mental es la gran invisibilizada en estos contextos.
And mental health is the great invisible factor in these contexts.
Los estudios que se han hecho en poblaciones desplazadas por conflictos en el Sahel muestran tasas de trastorno de estrés postraumático que en algunos grupos superan el cincuenta por ciento.
Studies conducted in conflict-displaced populations in the Sahel show PTSD rates that in some groups exceed fifty percent.
El trauma se hereda, se transmite de padres a hijos, afecta al desarrollo cognitivo de los niños.
Trauma is inherited, passed from parents to children, affects children's cognitive development.
Es una herida que dura generaciones.
It's a wound that lasts generations.
The intergenerational transmission of trauma is one of those things that sounds like a theory until you've spent time with communities that have been through it.
You see it.
It's not abstract.
Y ahora imagina que a ese trauma acumulado de veinte años le añades la novedad del drone.
And now imagine adding to that twenty-year accumulated trauma the novelty of the drone.
El sonido de un drone zumbando sobre tu cabeza ha adquirido en estas comunidades el mismo significado que el sonido de un avión de combate: inminencia de la muerte.
The sound of a drone buzzing overhead has acquired in these communities the same meaning as the sound of a fighter jet: imminence of death.
Pero un drone puede estar ahí durante horas.
But a drone can hover there for hours.
Es un terror de baja intensidad y larga duración.
It's low-intensity, long-duration terror.
I've read accounts from journalists who've been embedded near front lines where drones are active, and the psychological effect of that persistent presence is something they struggle to convey.
It's not the explosion that breaks people;
it's the waiting.
Esto tiene implicaciones para cómo debería pensarse la asistencia humanitaria.
This has implications for how humanitarian assistance should be conceived.
No puedes enviar un equipo médico a una zona donde hay drones activos.
You can't send a medical team into an area where drones are active.
No puedes montar una clínica de campo si va a convertirse en un blanco.
You can't set up a field clinic if it's going to become a target.
El drone ha creado lo que algunos expertos llaman 'zonas de denegación médica', lugares donde la asistencia sanitaria es de facto imposible.
The drone has created what some experts call 'medical denial zones', places where healthcare is de facto impossible.
And that's deliberate, presumably.
If you can make a zone medically inaccessible, you accelerate the mortality from everything else: the infections, the complications from injuries, the childbirth emergencies.
Hay resoluciones del Consejo de Seguridad que prohíben atacar instalaciones médicas en zonas de conflicto.
There are Security Council resolutions prohibiting attacks on medical facilities in conflict zones.
Las RSF las violan sistemáticamente y sin consecuencias.
The RSF violates them systematically and without consequences.
Esa impunidad no es solo un problema moral;
That impunity isn't just a moral problem;
es un incentivo para que otros grupos armados en otros conflictos aprendan que atacar hospitales funciona.
it's an incentive for other armed groups in other conflicts to learn that attacking hospitals works.
That's the proliferation logic, and it's genuinely chilling.
The lesson being learned isn't just about drones;
it's about which rules actually have enforcement behind them and which are aspirational.
Que es, en el fondo, la crisis más profunda del orden internacional actual.
Which is, at its core, the deepest crisis of the current international order.
Pero no quiero terminar sin mencionar algo que a veces se pierde en todo esto: la resistencia de las propias comunidades sudanesas.
But I don't want to end without mentioning something that sometimes gets lost in all this: the resilience of Sudanese communities themselves.
Hay redes de voluntarios, mayoritariamente jóvenes, que organizan evacuaciones médicas, que distribuyen medicamentos, que mantienen registros de víctimas en condiciones absolutamente extremas.
There are volunteer networks, mostly young people, organizing medical evacuations, distributing medicines, maintaining records of victims under absolutely extreme conditions.
The emergency response committees.
I've read about those, these grassroots neighborhood networks that effectively became the local government when the formal state collapsed.
That's a story that rarely gets told.
Y no se cuentan porque no encajan en el relato simplificado de víctimas pasivas.
And they don't get told because they don't fit the simplified narrative of passive victims.
Pero ahí están.
But there they are.
Aunque, dicho esto, hay un límite a lo que puede hacer la solidaridad comunitaria cuando no tienes antibióticos, cuando no tienes quirófanos, cuando no tienes la posibilidad de evacuar a los heridos graves porque un drone puede estar esperándote en el camino.
Although, having said that, there's a limit to what community solidarity can do when you have no antibiotics, no operating rooms, no possibility of evacuating the seriously wounded because a drone might be waiting for you on the road.
Octavio, I noticed you used the phrase 'dicho esto' a couple of times today, and I've heard it a lot in Spanish but I still get confused about when to use it versus something like 'sin embargo.' They feel similar but they're not quite the same, are they.
Buena observación.
Good observation.
'Dicho esto' es lo que llamamos un marcador de contraste concesivo: reconoces algo que acabas de decir y luego introduces una matización o una objeción.
'Dicho esto' is what we call a concessive contrast marker: you acknowledge what you've just said and then introduce a qualification or an objection.
Es como decir 'teniendo en cuenta todo lo anterior, sin embargo.' Mientras que 'sin embargo' es simplemente adversativo, una contradicción más directa.
It's like saying 'bearing all of the above in mind, nevertheless.' Whereas 'sin embargo' is simply adversative, a more direct contradiction.
So 'dicho esto' carries the weight of everything before it into the sentence that follows, like you're not abandoning the previous point, you're building on it before you complicate it.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y en inglés existe algo parecido: 'that said,' o 'having said that.' De hecho, 'dicho esto' es casi una traducción literal de 'that said.' Lo cual no es coincidencia;
And in English there's something similar: 'that said,' or 'having said that.' In fact, 'dicho esto' is almost a literal translation of 'that said.' Which isn't a coincidence;
los idiomas europeos se han prestado estas estructuras durante siglos.
European languages have been lending each other these structures for centuries.
And now I'll never be able to say 'that said' without thinking about Sudan and drone strikes, which feels like exactly the kind of thing this podcast is supposed to do to you.