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Sudanese Militias Are Committing Genocide in Darfur—Again
The United States has the power to halt ongoing atrocities in El Fasher.
“If you were Masalit, we decided that we don’t want to leave any alive, not even the children.” This explicit warning, recounted by a survivor to Human Rights Watch, by a militiaman of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and its allies last June is emblematic of the ongoing genocidal atrocities in Darfur. Rarely does the world bear witness to such open confessions of genocidal intent.
The RSF is the successor to the janjaweed militia, which carried out a genocide in Darfur just 20 years ago against non-Arab ethnic groups such as the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa. At the time, a mass movement emerged in the United States—led by the Save Darfur coalition, which comprised nearly 200 organizations—mobilizing worldwide protests and bringing out prominent celebrities, including then-Sen. Barack Obama and George Clooney, and demonstrators in the hundreds of thousands.
A powerful U.N. Security Council arms embargo, sanctions regime, and referral to the International Criminal Court ensued, resulting in the first—and only—arrest warrant for genocide against Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir, while an eventual joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force was dispatched to the region; it was later withdrawn in 2021.
This time, the world is nowhere to be found. The U.N. Security Council has passed only a single resolution after nearly a year into the conflict, merely calling for a temporary cessation of hostilities during the month of Ramadan—a step that should have been taken on day one.
Many RSF commanders today are former janjaweed leaders themselves, including the head of the RSF, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemeti” Dagalo. The RSF largely recruits on an ethnic basis from Arab communities, whose militiamen have continued to perpetrate systematic massacres and sexual violence against non-Arab communities on the basis of their ethnicity.
The current genocide unfolding in Darfur is crowded out by coverage of Gaza, Ukraine, and the broader war in Sudan, portrayed as an internal armed conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF. But the ethnically targeted violence in Darfur must be distinguished from this broader conflict, demanding an immediate response in the form of civilian protection.
This is all happening in the context of a shamefully overlooked humanitarian catastrophe. The estimated death toll currently is as many as 150,000; nearly 9 million Sudanese have been forcibly displaced; and 25 million people—half of Sudan’s population—are in need of humanitarian aid. In the worst scenarios, 2.5 million people are projected to die by famine, while 18 million face acute food insecurity, and nearly 4 million children are acutely malnourished. It is a man-made disaster of inconceivable proportions.
In recent weeks, the RSF has razed dozens of communities to the ground at a shocking pace around El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur. The city’s population of up to 2.8 million, including 750,000 children, is already on the brink of famine with nowhere to go. The long-feared attack on El Fasher is now well underway, and the window to intervene to protect civilians is closing.
THE LEGAL COMMUNITY is already coalescing around a consensus that the RSF campaign in West Darfur constitutes genocide. As human rights lawyers specializing in atrocity prevention, we chaired the first international inquiry into the genocide with dozens of jurists and scholars around the world, concluding that the RSF is responsible for committing genocide in Darfur.
Our panel of experts included founding prosecutors of the international criminal tribunals and presidents of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. The United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect echoed our independent finding, which is further corroborated by a substantial report by Human Rights Watch on the RSF’s ethnically targeted campaign of genocidal violence.
Our inquiry also concluded that the RSF is receiving direct military, financial, and diplomatic support from the United Arab Emirates. This finding is also backed by the U.N. Panel of Experts on Sudan, who found credible evidence of the UAE providing heavy weaponry to the RSF, as corroborated by further investigative reporting. In December 2023, a group of U.S. members of Congress sent a letter to the Emirati foreign minister urging an end to the UAE’s provision of military support to the RSF. This May, legislation was introduced to stop U.S. arms exports to the UAE until it ceases its support to the RSF.
The RSF’s offensive across Darfur mirrors the genocidal attacks of the early 2000s, only with more advanced weaponry. The RSF and its militias have methodically massacred and committed sexual violence against members of the Masalit community after interrogating and screening their victims’ ethnicity, singling out Masalit members to be raped or executed at close range. The RSF’s campaign should be described accurately and confronted as such. History is repeating itself as the world is turning away.
Major powers have not only failed to take decisive action on Sudan but continue to fail to even issue decisive statements, instead parroting old, empty platitudes for all parties to cease hostilities without even directly naming the genocidaires and their sponsors. This diplomatic posturing has not changed since the first weeks of the war in April 2023, despite mounting evidence of escalating genocide in Darfur—perpetrated by the RSF.
The international community is repeating the exact same fatal mistakes of the early 2000s by prioritizing a sham political process in Saudi Arabia, entirely removed from an ongoing genocide. Vague calls on all parties to negotiate is not only a pretense but a form of complicity when it serves as cover for the RSF, allowing its fighters to perpetrate the impending massacres against vulnerable civilians in El Fasher with impunity.
As the RSF besieges and attacks El Fasher, cutting off water and critical supplies, the world must prepare for the worst-case scenario. The SAF cannot be trusted to protect civilians, for it once created, trained, and equipped the RSF to commit atrocities against the non-Arab populations in Darfur. But even if the SAF were willing to protect them today, it is unable to protect its military bases, let alone civilians.
When the SAF abandoned its posts in West Darfur, the RSF went on a killing spree, systematically murdering men and boys and committing rape and other forms of sexual violence against women and girls based on their identity. On this empirical basis, we know how the same pattern will repeat itself in El Fasher.
The only way to halt the RSF’s impending genocide in El Fasher is by imposing immediate costs on the perpetrators. The continuing impunity sends a clear message that the international community will simply stand by.
LAST MONTH, THE U.S. GOVERNMENT rightfully urged the RSF to retreat from El Fasher or “face further consequences” and called out the “external backers of the belligerents [who] continue the flow of weapons into the country.”
If the U.S. government is to be true to its word, these consequences and external backers must now be specifically articulated. The United States has the most influence to exercise the leverage and pressure needed to immediately stem the violence. Washington has the power to stop this genocide but is failing to do so.
First, given the risk of imminent massacres in El Fasher, U.S. President Joe Biden should openly call on Hemeti to call off this attack—or simply phone Washington’s close ally Emirati President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to urge him to exert pressure on Hemeti to withdraw his forces from El Fasher. The United States should threaten Hemeti with immediate consequences for imminent crimes against humanity and genocide in El Fasher, including sanctions and arrest warrants to stamp the RSF leaders with pariah status internationally. This time, it should not be an empty threat; actions must follow.
Second, the United States should work with regional partners to build support for an AU-led civilian protection mechanism in El Fasher to facilitate humanitarian aid routes and safe passage. Whereas Chad was reachable by foot from El Geneina in West Darfur, civilians in El Fasher are trapped with nowhere to go.
Third, Biden should publicly call out the UAE for its support of the RSF. Unless the UAE ceases its support, the RSF will continue to commit atrocities targeting defenseless communities.
Fourth, the U.S. government should call an emergency open debate on El Fasher at the U.N. Security Council and pass a resolution for a cease-fire, civilian protection, and immediate consequences on all actors openly defying the arms embargo and fueling this genocide, including the UAE.
Fifth, the United States and all 152 other parties to the Genocide Convention should fulfill their obligations to prevent genocide by, at a minimum, imposing costs and sanctions on all of the RSF’s enablers, including all companies owned by or linked to the RSF, and all sponsors of this conflict more broadly.
Finally, the humanitarian aid pledges made by countries at the Paris conference for Sudan in April must be immediately implemented to prevent wide-scale famine, as the lean season sets in. Only 16 percent of the overall funding required for the bare minimum U.N. humanitarian response plan has been received so far. All humanitarian aid should be carefully distributed as much as possible to local organizations, including volunteer emergency response rooms doing the front-line work.
At present, there is scarcely any media coverage of Darfur. The same atrocities that sparked a mass movement just 20 years ago are being completely overlooked today. There is no reason why the same coalition should not come together once again today, in a landscape with greater potential to mobilize broader support through social media.
While we fear that the window to intervene for the people of Darfur is closing, we are writing this as an urgent appeal. Let no one say they did not know.
(c) 2024, Foreign Policy
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