The U.S. government on Jan. 7 accused the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group and its proxies in Sudan of committing genocide in the civil war that has raged since 2023 and sanctioned the group’s leadership.
Clashes between the Sudanese military and the RSF have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people, leaving the African nation in a state of crisis.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the conflict, which erupted just under two years ago and is currently regarded as the world’s biggest humanitarian catastrophe, had escalated from war crimes and ethnic cleansing, as he described it in December 2023, to genocide.
“The RSF and RSF-aligned militias have continued to direct attacks against civilians,” Blinken said in a statement.
“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.”
Blinken’s announcement that Washington now considers the situation a genocide itself carries no legal costs or implications; however, what does is the coinciding Treasury Department announcement that RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Dagalo Mousa, also known as Hemedti, had been targeted for sanctions along with seven RSF-owned companies in the United Arab Emirates, including one handling gold believed to have been smuggled out of Sudan.
Washington stated that the companies represent a section of an extensive financial network, including gold and banking, cultivated by Dagalo and his family. This network stretches from the UAE to Sudan and neighboring countries in Africa.
The UAE, which is considered a U.S. ally, has frequently been accused of arming the RSF, something that it has strenuously denied despite that the United Nations has found evidence to the contrary.
The RSF rejected the allegations, with a spokesman for the paramilitary group saying: “America previously punished the great African freedom fighter Nelson Mandela, which was wrong. Today, it is rewarding those who started the war by punishing [RSF leader] General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, which is also wrong.”
The RSF and Sudan’s military began fighting each other in April 2023 after tensions between them boiled over into an all-out war ahead of a planned transition to civilian rule.
More than 28,000 people have so far been killed in the conflict according to official figures, though other estimates suggest a far higher death toll.
The civil war has also forced millions to flee their homes and seen famine sweep across sections of the country, causing some families to resort to eating grass to survive.
Blinken said that his determination was not intended to support either side in the conflict but rather to promote accountability for war crimes and other atrocities.
However, some experts said they believe that the RSF is directly to blame for the situation.
“The RSF is responsible for some of the most heinous atrocities being committed anywhere in the world today,” said John Prendergast, who co-founded The Sentry, a Los Angeles-based watchdog group, with actor George Clooney in 2016.
“Today’s actions by the Biden administration are an important start to creating that accountability, which hopefully can provide leverage both for deterring future human rights crimes as well as for helping to drag the RSF into treating ceasefire negotiations more seriously,” Prendergast said.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum also released a statement saying that the decision is “a somber acknowledgment of the horrific crimes endured by people who have been neglected for so long.”
