The Sudanese RSF tried to burnish its image, but its crimes were recognized | Sudan war news

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

They feared the paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF) and their allied militias from the “Arab tribes” – mainly nomadic and herding communities in Darfur. Sedentary agricultural tribes are called “non-Arabs”.

The RSF and its allies targeted Masalite civilians in El-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, an ethnic killing that began days after war broke out between the RSF and the Sudanese army on April 15, 2023.

A panel of United Nations experts determined in January 2024 that the RSF and allied militias killed up to 15,000 people in El-Geneina.

Almost a year later, the United States agreed with UN experts, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declaring on Tuesday that the RSF and its allies committed genocide by attacking civilians and systematically killing men and boys because of their ethnicity.

A blow to legitimacy

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

Masalito survivors and analysts believe the designation and sanctions could isolate the RSF and permanently tarnish its image.

“The most long-term – lasting – effect of this appointment … is that it dramatically damages Hemedti’s prospects of taking a role in a future government and certainly being in charge of a future government,” said Jonas Horner, a Sudan expert and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Affairs. Relations (ECFR), a think tank in Europe.

The US appointment came two weeks before the end of President Joe Biden’s administration, prompting experts to accuse his administration of assuaging its conscience with the move.

They told Al Jazeera that more pressure should have been applied earlier, as the basis for a more coherent US policy towards Sudan, but the earlier declaration of genocide could have exacerbated public pressure on Biden to make a similar judgment on Israel’s war in Gaza.

“The Biden administration has a serious problem because we know there are similar calls for Israel to declare genocide in Gaza,” said Suleiman Baldo, founder of the Sudan Transparency and Policy tracker, a think tank after the war.

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

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

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

Washing reputation

In 2003, the Sudanese military relied on Arab tribal militias to quell an insurgency in Darfur by mostly non-Arab groups, angered by the political and economic marginalization of their people.

The Arab tribal militias called themselves the People’s Defense Forces, but became known as the Janjaweed (“devils on horses”) because of the countless atrocities they committed – possibly leading to ethnic cleansing and genocide, according to rights groups.

In 2013, then-Sudan President Omar al-Bashir repackaged the National Defense Forces militias as the RSF and tasked them with fighting insurgencies and protecting his regime from a coup.

Under Hemedti’s command, the RSF began to crave global legitimacy by advertising its own cooperation with the European Union (EU) agreement on combating undocumented migration, known as the “Khartoum Process”.

Then, after a popular uprising ousted al-Bashir in April 2019, RSF hired human rights consultants and PR firms to help it rebrand itself as a benevolent force.

“There have been attempts by the RSF to provide services to civilians such as transportation and providing gasoline to people so they can provide basic services,” said Ibrahim al-Dourab, an adviser to the late West Darfur governor Abakar.

“In my opinion, all these efforts were nonsense … they were trying to buy the people and the street.”

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

Human rights groups and UN experts accuse both sides of committing grave crimes such as summary killings and starvation as a weapon of war.

The RSF committed additional crimes such as the systematic gang-rape of women and girls and carrying out what the US now considers the Masalita genocide.

Washington’s designation hurts the RSF’s prospects of seeking global legitimacy from Western powers, ECFR’s Horner said.

“Hemedti [and RSF] now they are coated with this mark and it will be difficult to wash them off,” he said.

A step towards justice?

RSF condemned the US State Department’s determination of genocide and its decision to impose sanctions on Hemedti and RSF shell companies.

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

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

But the declaration of genocide followed countless reports of atrocities committed in West Darfur by the UN, humanitarian groups, local observers, human rights groups and Extensive report by Al Jazeera.

Shumo hopes the US sanctions and designation will force the EU to follow suit and prompt the International Criminal Court (ICC) to bring new indictments, including against Hemedti.

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

“What happened to Masalita is truly a tragedy,” Shumo said. “I feel good about the decision to impose sanctions … but I hope it will eventually lead to the prosecution of Hemedti 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 while trying to flee West Darfur along with tens of thousands of other civilians seeking safety in Chad.

They were terrified because the assassination of the governor of West Darfur, Khamis Abakarwho, in a television interview in June 2023, accused the RSF of genocide.

The RSF opened fire on the fleeing people.

“We were looking for him [in Chad] but I couldn’t find it,” said Shumo.