War Crimes in Civil War-Ravaged Sudan

 

"[I am] deeply alarmed [by reports of civilian casualties and forced displacement from El-Fasher]."

"With fighters pushing further into the city and escape routes cut off, hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped and terrified — shelled, starving and without access to food, health care or safety."

"[There is a dire need for an] immediate ceasefire [throughout the region]."

"[The UN has life-saving supplies ready, but due to the intensified attacks in the region, it has made it impossible for workers to get aid in]."

"Safe, rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access must be allowed to reach all civilians in need."

Tom Fletcher, emergency relief co-ordinator, United Nations

 

"Our liberation of [El Fasher] is the liberation of Sudan, all the way to Port Sudan...."

"We are coming and we are coming heavy." 

"The new Sudan goes forward, the old Sudan gets destroyed."

RSF second-in-command Abdelrahim Dagalo 

 

"[The Rapid Support Forces [RSF] committed heinous crimes against innocent civilians in the city of El-Fasher, where more than 2,000 unarmed citizens were executed and killed on October 26 and 27, most of them women, children and the elderly."

Joint Forces, allies of the Sudanese military  

Camp for displaced families who fled from al-Fashir to Tawila, North Darfur, Sudan. Photograph: Mohammed Jamal/Reuters

 

Sudanese army chief General Abdel Fattah al Burham stated his forces had withdrawn from El-Fasher "to a safer location". In so doing, he acknowledged that his defense operations had lost the battle for the strategic city, leaving the Rapid Support Forces now in full control of all of Darfur. Even so, he made a pledge to continue to fight "until this land is purified". Despite which, analysts conclude that Sudan has now been partitioned along an east-west axis. The RSF has set up a parallel government from a territory that will prove extremely difficult for the military to extract them. 

 

This is a bloody civil war, with the RSF, formerly in partnership with the Sudanese army, since April of 2023 challenging the Sudanese government for total control of Darfur. Formerly known as the Janjaweed, horsed Arab militia in conjunction with the previous government of Omar al-Bashir who was found by the ICC to have been guilty of war crimes in Darfur, the power struggle between the two forces led to their violent separation and the challenge that followed. Since then, over 150,000 people have been killed, with over 14 million displaced in the fighting.  

"The shelling was so intense on Saturday that we had no choice but to flee El-Fashir."

"Along the way, the RSF filmed us and we were beaten and insulted - and they stole what we had on the journey."

"A number of people were captured and ransoms were demanded for their release. Some of those who were taken were later executed."

"During the journey, many people were arrested, and we suffered greatly from hunger and thirst."

Displaced Darfurian  

People arriving in Tawila have been describing the extreme violence they faced as they fled el-Fasher. AFP/Getty Images

 

 Ethnically-motivated atrocities in the western Sudanese city of El-Fasher have been reported since it fell to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, concluding the years-long siege that made life an utter misery for those city dwellers who were unable to flee, with the city surrounded by RSF forces. Over 18 months of siege warfare had created fear and threats of starvation for those forced to remain in the city, trapping 260,000 people without external aid being able to reach them. 

 

The Rapid Support Forces now has control over every state capital in the sprawling Darfur region comprised of mostly non-Arab, Black farming communities. NGOs, along with local groups had given warning that mass atrocities would be triggered by El-Fasher's fall to the RSF and those predictions are ringing true. Open-source intelligence and satellite imagery have confirmed the dire state of affairs now reigning for the residents of the city. 

 

According to Volker Turk, UN rights chief, there is a growing risk of "ethnically motivated violations and atrocities", as his office was "receiving multiple, alarming reports that the Rapid Support Forces are carrying out atrocities, including summary executions". According to pro-democracy activists, El-Fasher residents endured "the worst forms of violence and ethnic cleansing" since control of the area was claimed by the RSF.

 

A fighter known for executing civilians in RSF-controlled areas was shown in a video released by local activists shooting a group of unarmed civilians seated on the ground. They were killed at point-blank range. As many as 15,000 civilians from non-Arab groups in the West Darfur capital of El Geneina have been reported to be killed by the paramilitaries, with their track record of atrocities. The Sudanese army itself has also been accused of war crimes.

 

The paramilitary RSF Forces have taken over el-Fasher prompting fears of the lives of thousands of civilians   Image: UNICEF/Xinhua/IMAGO

 

 El-Fasher was considered to represent one of he grimmest places in war-torn Sudan -- thanks to a war labelled by the UN as among the world's worst humanitarian crises. Located outside the city, displacement camps were declared to be in famine. Within El-Fasher, the quarter-million population in desperation turned to eating animal feed to stay alive.  

"[The city] appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution."

"[This includes what appears to be] door-to-door clearance operations."

Yale University Humanitarian Research Lab 

 

 

"[The crisis is] the final stage of the Darfur genocide."

"I have seen videos of ditches and trenches entirely full of friends, neighbours and family members’ bodies."

"There have been reports of entire families hanging from trees."

Emi Mahmoud, Darfur Internally Displaced People Network  

 

 

The Genocide in Sudan

"Here in El Fasher, we are starving."

"The responsibility is not just on those holding the guns. It's on the world. The Arab countries. The African Union. Europe." 

"The so-called international community. All of them."

"We know they can help. We know they have the power to airdrop food. They have planes. They have supplies."

"But they are choosing not to."

Abaaz Sudan Dispatch quoting Sudanese civilian

 

"[The U.S.’ determination of genocide in Sudan is] long overdue [and should have happened sooner]."

"[Nonetheless, it is] a form of justice because it recognizes victims’ grievances."

"It is a step towards peace and accountability by paving the way to hold actors responsible to account, not only perpetrators themselves but actors complicit in genocide."

Sudanese lawyer Mutasim Ali, legal adviser, Canada-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights

 

"We don’t think that the scale of these atrocities happening in Sudan and Darfur would have been this big without the support of the UAE [United Arab Emirates] to the RSF [paramilitary Rapid Support Forces]."

"So, we hope that the US decision to sanction Hemedti will send a strong message to the UAE to rethink its position and engage in a serious political process to end these atrocities and genocidal acts happening across the country."

"The RSF has been completely emboldened by impunity, a lack of accountability, and the fact that they were not seriously subjected to any sort of accountability."

Sudanese activist Hala Al-Karib, head, regional arm, Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa 

 Smoke rises above buildings after aerial bombardment during clashes between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese military in Khartoum, Sudan. Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters

 

 

The RSF's  Hemedti

"[Hemedti’s RSF and its allied Arab militias had perpetrated] direct attacks against civilians [including the systematic murder of] men and boys – even infants – on an ethnic basis."

"[They also] deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence. [The same forces] targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies."

"Based on this information, I have now concluded that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan."

"To the foreign sponsors sending drones, missiles, mercenaries – enough. To those profiting off the illicit oil and gold trade that fund this conflict – enough."

Biden Administration U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken

 

"The UAE has made absolutely clear that it is not providing any support or supplies to any of the two belligerent warring parties in Sudan."

"Our primary focus remains on addressing the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Sudan."

"We continue to call for an immediate ceasefire and a peaceful resolution to this man-made conflict."

United Arab Emirates Foreign Ministry  

According to the United States there is an actual genocide taking place in Sudan, one that the world largely overlooks. Yet Sudan represents the world's worst humanitarian crisis where last year famine was officially declared, with the United Nations reporting that 25 million Sudanese face extreme hunger, with up to 12 million having been forced to flee their homes, in the midst of a brutal civil war. The death toll after years of conflict, according to the U.S. special envoy Tom Perriello, appears to have exceeded 400,000. 

 

Back in January before the change of administration, there was an official declaration naming the killing in Sudan as a genocide, and in April the Trump administration as well characterized the ongoing slaughter as a genocide. A determination echoed by the U.S. State Department. Bipartisan agreement has been reached in the United States affirming that Sudan is suffering through both genocide and famine. Despite which there is no consensus opinion over what official reaction or intervention might take shape. 

 

Somewhat reminiscent of the years of civil conflict in Syria when President Bashar al Assad, faced by a  rebellion from Sunni Syrians fed up with being treated like second-class citizens by the ruling Alawites, brooked no dissent of his rule, and set out to destroy his detractors by turning a protest into a civil war, attacking his own Sunni population with all the conceivable weaponry at his disposal, including chemical warfare and barrel bombs along with support from Iran's Republican Guards and Russian air offence. There too, a figure of 400,000 killed and millions internally displaced, millions more refugees, took place.  

 

A woman and baby are seen at the Zamzam displacement camp, close to El Fasher in North Darfur, Sudan.  Mohamed Zakaria/MSF/Reuters

 

While the world community has its condemnatory gaze fixed on Gaza, where charges of genocide and starvation are rife yet faces plausible deniability by Israel, in a conflict where it is a common ploy for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas to shelter behind the civilian population, deliberately placing civilians in the direct line of conflict with a defining purpose to use figures of large numbers of civilians becoming casualties to flay the conscience of the West with the charge of Palestinian victimhood at the armed hands of the Israeli 'occupation', that same world community is utterly disinterested in a real genocide and famine taking place in Africa.

 

In Sudan, survivors speak of ethnic cleansing of immense savagery. In a village on the Sudan-Chad border, an Arab militia ordered men and boys over age 10 to line up and a massacre took place, after which the women and girls were raped. Light-skinned Arabs targeting Black African ethnic groups; as one militia leader stated: "We don't want to see any Black people". These massacres reflect what happened in Darfur, Sudan, when the Sudanese government empowered Arab horsed tribesmen called the Janjaweed to hunt down and kill Darfurian farmers. That same Janjaweed has been transformed into the Rapid Support Forces.

 

For the past two years the Sudanese Armed Forces has been at war with the Rapid Support Forces militia, where both are responsible for starving civilians and impeding humanitarian attempts to give aid and comfort to the starving Sudanese. And although both sides are believed to have committed war crimes, it is the Rapid Support Forces who are responsible for the worst horrors visited  upon their ethnic targets, burning entire villages and slaughtering and raping civilians.

 

Despite their denials, the United Arab Emirates appear as the major supporter of the Rapid Support Forces by underwriting its atrocities. The Biden/Trump administration have held back on holding the Emirates responsibly accountable, yet there are some in the U.S. Congress who support a ban on arms transfers to the Emirates as long as it continues to enable rape and murder of civilians.   

"The RSF and RSF-aligned militias have continued to direct attacks against civilians. The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys – even infants – on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence."

"Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies. Based on this information, I have now concluded that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan."

"The United States is committed to holding accountable those responsible for these atrocities. We are today sanctioning RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa, known as Hemedti, for his role in systematic atrocities committed against the Sudanese people."

"We are also sanctioning seven RSF-owned companies located in the United Arab Emirates and one individual for their roles in procuring weapons for the RSF."

Then-U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken  

Sudanese soldiers from the Rapid Support Forces unit stand on their vehicle during a military-backed rally south of Khartoum, Sudan. Photograph: Hussein Malla/AP

 

 

Famine in Sudan: Where Is The Organization of Islamic Cooperation?!

"I think we're in dire straits here in Sudan."

"Severe acute malnutrition happens over time. It's where kids don't get enough nutrients…They're unable to fight infections like normal."

"They're unable to utilize nutrition like normal…And the majority of children who have severe acute malnutrition end up getting an infection and dying from it." 

"There was no food [his grandmother, Neamat Abubaker, told us]. At times nothing at all, not even water."

Dr. Mohammed Fadlalla, Al-Buluk Children's Hospital, Omdurman

 

"It was ground-breaking [ a channel for direct funding]."

"The only time that USAID had ever done this was with the White Helmets [humanitarian group] in Syria." 

"[Most of the kitchens had closed. Some are trying to get food on credit from local fishermen and farmers, but very soon] we expect to see a lot of people starving."

"I think we can shore up [the emergency kitchens]. But the reality is that [private donations] are going to have to do even more now, because even if humanitarian assistance resumes, it's never going to be what it was."

"These volunteers were challenging us to work differently, and we were responding. [They are] exhausted, traumatized and underfunded [and] we were scaling up to help them".

Andrea Tracy, a former USAID official, now with Mutual Aid Sudan Coalition fund

Dr. Mohammad Fadlala (left) a Cincinnati native volunteering in war-torn Sudan with the Doctors Without Borders charity, is seen treating a severely malnourished child at the Al-Buluk Children's Hospital in Omdurman, in late January 2025.   CBS News

 President Trump's decision to slash the funding available through USAID, has stark consequences in many areas of the world. None more than in countries of majority Muslim rule, where constant outbreaks of conflict impact the populations. In Sudan, the conflict is Muslim versus Muslim; the Sudanese military fighting a revolt by its former partner, once known as the horse-mounted Janjaweed Arab militias that aided the former government of Sudan in its conflict with the pastoral people of Darfur. That was a war spurred by herders using the land for pasturage, and farmers farming the land.

 

The former Janjaweed has now become the Rapid Support Forces, comprised of Islamist fundamentalists often described and for good reason, as terrorist brigades. The civil war that ensued with the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces challenging one another for supremacy is a brutal, no-holds-barred conflict, and once again the people of Darfur are faced with potential genocide. Now, in Sudan, 25 million people have been internally displaced. Over half of the population now faces acute hunger.

 

In its third year, the war is considered by the United Nations to be the world's worst humanitarian crisis and aid groups agree as famine spreads throughout the land. In Darfur alone, 400,000 people were made homeless, hundreds killed as the paramilitary terrorists raid camps for displaced people. The U.S. provided $830 million last year in emergency aid to help 4.4 million Sudanese; more aid than any other nation has provided. Since the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Khartoum's devastation was completed.

 

The community kitchens, like this one photographed in December, have provided a vital lifeline for many  Getty Images

 

Over 300 soup kitchens operated by Emergency Response Rooms, a network of volunteer aid workers closed. Leaving 600,000 Sudanese living in famine conditions, another eight million "on the cliff edge". According to the Trump administration, lifesaving aid is exempt from cuts. A State Department spokesperson relayed the information that four million people in Sudan, and 3.8 million refugees in neighbouring countries are given aid by the U.S. 

The question begs to be asked. Yes, the situation is horrible, dreadful, mind-numbing conditions for any population. Yet these conditions are increasingly common in many Muslim-majority countries where incapable and uncaring administrations exploit their vulnerable citizens, and focus on conflict, not civilized governance. Why is it in very particular the obligation of the West and most particularly, the United States to ensure that humanitarian aid flows to these desperate people whose governments ignore their needs and in fact, place them in these life-threatening situations?

 

Where in heaven's name is the Organization of Islamic Cooperation? A compendium of Muslim countries formed to support one another through their common Islamic roots. Surely they could organize missions, including military forces to intervene when their member-nations impose such conditions on their populations? The national collective wealth of the group alone is staggering, and why is some of that wealth not used to give humanitarian assistance to those of their member states badly in need of it? Why is it the West, democratic nations of the world, that these miserable countries at war depend on, and not their religious cohorts? 

Tigrayan refugees collect food rations from USAID at Hamdeyat Transition Center near the Sudan-Ethiopia border in Eastern Sudan on Mar. 24, 2021. After Sudan was plunged into its own intramural war, the U.S. Agency for International Development supplied food to the grassroots self-help effort known as Emergency Response Rooms. In January, President Donald Trump ordered the aid stopped. Nariman El-Mofty—AP