Sudanese paramilitary group engaging in genocide, U.S. says

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday said he believed Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, a paramilitary group fighting the Sudanese military, has committed genocide. Since the conflict between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces began in April 2023, tens of thousands of people have lost their lives. Hundreds of thousands more have endured famine and more than 30 million have required humanitarian assistance.

Several months after the conflict initially began, Blinken said there was evidence the RSF and its affiliates had committed war crimes and engaged in ethnic cleansing. But since then, evidence had accumulated that the RSF and its affiliates had also murdered men and boys, and raped and abused women, because of their ethnicity. The militias have also murdered fleeing civilians seeking to escape war zones and prevented other civilians from accessing lifesaving care, Blinken said.

What is the United States doing about this? The United States is imposing sanctions on RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa and seven RSF-owned companies based in the United Arab Emirates, Blinken said. Mousa and his immediate family members were no longer eligible to enter the United States, Blinken added. The State Department clarified that its actions against RSF did not indicate support for the Sudanese military. The United States supported neither side and did not see either group as capable of leading a future Sudanese state, the department said.

What does the group have to say in response? In a social media statement Tuesday, the RSF accused the Sudanese military of using aircraft in attacks that killed civilians. The airstrikes hit residential areas in the city of Nyala in Sudan, the group said. The RSF accused the Sudanese military of engaging in genocidal acts, the statement said.

Dig deeper: Read Onize Oduah’s in-depth look at Sudan’s war.