Sudan’s RSF tried to polish its image but its crimes are being recognised

In June 2023, Ibrahim Shumo and some friends fled war-torn Sudan’s West Darfur, the members of the “non-Arab” Masalit tribe knew they would be killed if they stayed any longer.

They feared the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and their allies’ militias from “Arab tribes,” which are predominantly nomadic and pastoralist communities in Darfur. Native American tribes that practice secular farming are referred to as “non-Arab.”

The RSF and its allies were killing Masalit civilians in El-Geneina, West Darfur’s capital, in an ethnic killing that began just before the RSF and the Sudanese army started to fight.

Up to 15, 000 people were killed in El-Geneina by the RSF and allied militias, according to a UN panel of experts in January 2024.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a member of the US’s coalition, declared on Tuesday that the RSF and its allies had genocided civilians and had systematically murdered men and boys because of their ethnicity in a letter signed by the US.

Blow to legitimacy

The determination led to US sanctions on several of the RSF’s shell companies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and against the group’s leader, Mohamad Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo.

The designation and the sanctions, according to Masalit survivors and analysts, could permanently tarnish the RSF and isolate it.

According to Jonas Horner, an expert on Sudan and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), “the most lasting – permanent – effect of this designation is that it significantly hurts the possibility of Hemedti taking a role in a future government and, undoubtedly, being in charge of a future government.”

Two weeks prior to President Joe Biden’s administration’s end, the US designation prompted accusations from experts that the move was intended to assuage the country’s guilty conscience.

A prior genocide designation might have increased public pressure on Biden to make a similar assessment about Israel’s war in Gaza, according to them, but more pressure should have been applied sooner, as needed to form a more coherent US policy on Sudan.

The Biden administration has a significant issue because, according to Suleiman Baldo, the founder of the Sudan Transparency and Policy tracker, there are similar calls for a designation of Israel as the perpetrator of the Holocaust in Gaza.

“But there is no way on Earth]Washington would impose] the same consequences on Israel which it has struck the RSF with”, he told Al Jazeera.

Despite the apparent double standard, Shumo said the US’s designation provides a brief sense of joy for the RSF’s victims.

“Since]the designation was announced], I can tell you that the Masalit are very happy”, he told Al Jazeera.

Reputation laundering

In 2003, Sudan’s army relied on Arab tribal militias to crush a rebellion in Darfur by mainly non-Arab groups, who were angered by their people’s political and economic marginalisation.

Due to the numerous atrocities they committed, which were likely equivalent to ethnic cleansing and genocide, the Arab tribal militias renamed themselves the Popular Defence Forces but later renamed themselves the Janjaweed (“devils on horseback” in the eyes of rights groups.

The Popular Defence Forces militias were given the RSF in 2013 by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who had been given the task of putting them under control to fight uprisings and protect his regime.

Under Hemedti’s command, the RSF began coveting global legitimacy by advertising its&nbsp, cooperation with the European Union (EU) deal to crack down on undocumented migration, known as the “Khartoum Process”.

The RSF then hired human rights consultants and PR firms to help it rebrand as a benevolent force after a popular uprising in April 2019 toppled al-Bashir.

According to Ibrahim al-Dourab, an adviser to the defunct governor of West Darfur Abakar, “the RSF made an attempt to provide services to civilians such as transportation and securing gasoline for people so that they could power basic services.”

All of these efforts, in my opinion, were “nonsense,” as they were “trying to buy the people and the street.”

In a bid for supremacy, the army and RSF staged a coup in October 2021 before turning to each other 18 months later.

Both sides are accused of using starvation as a weapon of war, as are rights groups and UN experts.

The RSF has committed additional atrocities, including systematic gang-raped women and girls and a massacre of the Masalit in the US.

Washington’s designation damages the RSF’s chances of coveting global legitimacy from Western powers, said Horner from ECFR.

“Hemedti]and RSF] are now tarred with this designation and it will be hard to wash off”, he said.

A step towards justice?

The US Department of State’s decision to impose sanctions on Hemedti and RSF shell companies was decried by the RSF.

RSF adviser, Ali Musabel, told Al Jazeera that the US move was “unfair”.

“There was no legal committee – or any decision taken by an international court or commission – that made this determination”, he told Al Jazeera. “This decision was based on inaccurate data and reports about us.”

But the designation of genocide follows countless reports of atrocities committed in West Darfur by the UN, aid groups, local monitors, rights groups and Al Jazeera’s own extensive reporting.

Shumo hopes that the US’s sanctions and designation will prompt the EU to follow suit and prompt the ICC to file new indictments, including those against Hemedti.

In July 2023, ICC chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, told the UN Security Council that his office was launching a new investigation into atrocities in Darfur.

“What happened to the Masalit really is a tragedy”, Shumo said. The decision to impose sanctions makes me feel good, but I hope Hemedti will eventually be prosecuted at the ICC.

” I lost 23 relatives to the RSF, “he told Al Jazeera.

One of them was his younger cousin, Abdelazeem, who was shot and killed as he attempted to flee West Darfur with tens of thousands of other civilians who were searching for safety in Chad.

The Governor of West Darfur, Khamis Abakar, who had accused the RSF of genocide in a television interview in June 2023, terrorized them.

The RSF opened fire on the fugitives.

Source: Aljazeera