US declares RSF committed genocide in Sudan, sanctions its leader

The United States on Tuesday accused a Sudanese paramilitary group and its proxies of committing genocide, singling them out in a conflict of uncontrolled brutality and drawing new attention to the scale of atrocities carried out in Iraq's largest war. Africa.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group fighting against the Sudanese army, had committed acts of genocide, including a fearsome wave of ethnically targeted violence in the western region of Darfur.

The Treasury Department supported the genocide determination with a series of sanctions targeting the head of the RSF, General Mohamed Hamdan, as well as seven companies in the United Arab Emirates, the group's main foreign sponsor, that traded arms and gold in his name. .

The RSF and allied militias systematically murdered men and boys, even infants, on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls of certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence, Mr. Blinken said in a statement. These same militias targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people fleeing the conflict and preventing remaining civilians from accessing vital supplies.

The genocide determination comes two decades after the United States took a similar step in 2004, when then-Secretary of State Colin Powell determined that the Janjaweed, ruthless ethnic militias allied with the military Sudanese, had committed genocide during a vicious counter-insurgency campaign in Darfur.

The Janjaweed then transformed into the Rapid Support Forces. But instead of allying with the Sudanese army, the group is now fighting it, in a civil war that has plunged one of Africa's largest countries into a devastating famine, killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than 11 million people to live almost a quarter of their lives. of the Sudanese population to flee their homes, according to the United Nations.

Atrocities and war crimes have been committed on both sides, U.S. officials, United Nations officials and human rights groups say. The army has repeatedly massacred civilians in indiscriminate bombings, sometimes killing dozens of people at once.

But only the RSF have been accused of ethnic cleansing, notably during the systematic violence in Darfur between April 2023, the start of the civil war, and November of the same year. Its fighters, who are mostly of Arab descent, targeted members of the Masalit, a non-Arab ethnic group, in a brutal attack that became a central part of America's genocide resolve, two officials said. senior U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss. sensitive diplomatic issues.

The results of this violence are not clear. The Sudanese Red Crescent said it counted 2,000 bodies in a single day, then stopped counting. UN investigators later estimated that up to 15,000 people were killed in the town of Geneina alone.

Hundreds of thousands of Masalit have since fled to Chad, where they live in squalid and overcrowded camps, part of an exodus of three million Sudanese pushed to neighboring countries by the war, according to the United Nations.

General Hamdan, head of the RSF, is a former camel trader who rose to prominence as a mid-ranking Janjaweed commander in the 2000s. Once a staunch ally of Sudan's autocratic leader Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who was overthrown in 2019, General Hamdan got rich after seizing Sudan's largest gold mine and sending mercenaries to Yemen.

Barely a year ago, General Hamdans's troops stormed into Sudan and he embarked on a tour of six African countries where he presented himself as a leader in waiting.

But more recently, his forces have lost territory, and new U.S. measures could restrict his ability to travel, use the international financial system or present himself as a champion of democratic ambitions, as he often has. In light of mass rapes committed by soldiers in Darfur under General Hamdans's control, the State Department said it was also banning him and his family from traveling to the United States.

The genocide determination followed months of deliberations within the U.S. government as lawyers and intelligence officials assessed the merits of the case, the two senior U.S. officials said. Some officials were hesitant to support the move because they feared it would spark further criticism of the Biden administration for its refusal to declare Israel's campaign in the Gaza Strip a genocide against the Palestinians, the officials said .

But on Monday, while traveling in Asia, Mr. Blinken endorsed the genocide determination.

Under international law, that finding does not require the United States to take action, although officials said the sanctions gave immediate teeth to the measure. Experts said it could propel a new accountability effort in a war that has killed up to 150,000 people, according to U.S. estimates, and caused one of the world's worst famines in decades.

Last month, the global hunger watchdog, known as the IPC, confirmed that famine was gripping five districts of Sudan and said it was likely to spread to five other areas in the months to come. Nationwide, 25 million people suffer from acute hunger, the organization said.

RSF used aid as a weapon of war, withholding aid in some areas and violating an agreement signed during the collapse of U.S.-led peace talks in Switzerland in August, the Treasury Department said in a press release.

The genocide determination could also prompt renewed scrutiny of the UAE's role in the war. The Emirates provided the RSF with smuggled weapons and powerful drones, according to U.S. officials and visual evidence collected by The New York Times.

The Emirates also provides a crucial financial and logistics hub where the RSF can trade gold and procure weapons through a vast network of companies.

Capital Tap Holding, one of seven Emirati companies sanctioned Tuesday, manages 50 other companies in 10 countries that have provided money and military equipment to the RSF, the Treasury Department said. Another company, AZ Gold, traded millions of dollars in gold.

The Treasury Department also sanctioned a Sudanese businessman, Abu Tharr, who was listed as the owner of at least five of the seven companies.

Mr. Blinken said the finding of genocide did not mean the United States supported the Sudanese army in the war. Both warring parties bear responsibility for the violence and suffering in Sudan and lack the legitimacy to govern a future peaceful Sudan, he said.

Tom Perriello, the US special envoy to Sudan, said that to end the war, both sides must agree to a cessation of hostilities so that a civilian political transition can take place.

Critics who have accused the United States of moving too slowly on Sudan have welcomed this conclusion, with reservations.

This attempt to position the administration on the right side of history won't work, Cameron Hudson, a former U.S. diplomat and Sudan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said on the Biden administration's social media channels. It's too late and too many people have died for this to happen.

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