UN experts say destruction by Sudan’s rebels in el-Fasher in October bears ‘hallmarks of genocide’

Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, centre, greets the crowd during a military-backed tribes' rally in the Nile River State of Sudan, July 13, 2019. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Hjaj)

GENEVA — A “campaign of destruction” in October by Sudanese paramilitary forces against non-Arab communities in and near a city in the country’s western region of Darfur shows “hallmarks of genocide,” UN-backed human rights experts reported Thursday, a dramatic finding in the country’s devastating war.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces — which are at war with the Sudanese military — carried out mass killings and other atrocities in the city of el-Fasher after an 18-month siege during which they imposed conditions “calculated to bring about the physical destruction” of non-Arab communities, in particular the Zaghawa and the Fur communities, the independent fact-finding mission on Sudan reported.

UN officials say several thousand civilians were killed in the RSF takeover of el-Fasher, the Sudanese army’s only remaining stronghold in the Darfur. Only 40% of the city’s 260,000 residents managed to flee the onslaught alive, thousands of whom were wounded, the officials said. The fate of the rest remains unknown.

A brutal war

Sudan plunged into conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital of Khartoum and spread to other regions, including Darfur. So far, the war has killed more than 40,000 people, according to UN figures, but aid groups say that’s an undercount and the true number could be many times higher.

The RSF overran el-Fasher on Oct. 26 and rampaged through the city in an offensive marked by widespread atrocities that included mass killings and summary executions, sexual violence, torture, and abductions for ransom, according to the UN Human Rights Office.

They killed more than 6,000 people between Oct. 25 and Oct. 27 in the city, the office said. Ahead of the attack, the paramilitary forces ran riot in the Abu Shouk displacement camp, just outside of the city, and killed at least 300 people in two days, it said.

The RSF did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment. The group’s commander, Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, has previously acknowledged abuses by his fighters, but disputed the scale of atrocities.

At least 3 criteria for genocide were met, team says

An international convention known colloquially as the “Genocide Convention” — adopted in 1948, three years after the end of World War II and the Holocaust — sets out five criteria to assess whether genocide has taken place.

They are: killing members of a group; causing its members serious bodily or mental harm; imposing measures aimed to prevent births in the group; deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about the “physical destruction” of the group; and forcibly transferring its children to another group.

The fact-finding team, which doesn’t have final say on the matter, said it found at least three of those five were met in the actions of the RSF. Under the convention, a genocide determination could be made even if only one of the five were met.

The RSF acts in el-Fasher included killing members of a protected ethnic group; causing serious bodily and mental harm; and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction in whole or in part — all core elements of the crime of genocide under international law, according to the fact-finding team.

The report cited a systematic pattern of ethnically targeted killings, sexual violence and destruction and public statements explicitly calling for the elimination of non-Arab communities.

‘Not random’ excesses of war, chair says

Team chair Mohamed Chande Othman, a former chief justice of Tanzania, said the RSF operation were not “random excesses of war” but pointed to a planned and organized operation that bore the characteristics of genocide.

El-Fasher’s residents were “physically exhausted, malnourished, and in part unable to flee, leaving them defenseless against the extreme violence that followed,” the team’s report said. “Thousands of persons, particularly the Zaghawa, were killed, raped or disappeared during three days of absolute horror.”

The fact-finding mission pointed to mass killings, widespread rape, sexual violence, torture and cruel treatment, arbitrary detention, extortion, and enforced disappearances during RSF’s takeover of el-Fasher in October.

The report documented cases of survivors quoting its fighters as saying things like: “Is there anyone Zaghawa among you? If we find Zaghawa, we will kill them all” and “We want to eliminate anything black from Darfur.”

The report pointed to “selective targeting” of Zaghawa and Fur women and girls, “while women perceived as Arab were often spared.”

British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper called the report’s findings “truly horrific” and said she would take it to the UN Security Council to “ensure that the voices of women of Sudan who have endured so much are heard by the world.”

“Today’s report describes the most unimaginable and chilling horrors,” she said. “The world is still failing the people of Sudan. When the stories started to emerge about the horrors of el-Fasher it should have been a turning point, but the violence is continuing.”

A call for accountability

The fact-finding team was created in 2023 by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, the UN’s leading human rights body, which has 47 member countries drawn from membership in the world body.

The team called for accountability for perpetrators and warned that protection of civilians is needed “more than ever” because the conflict is expanding to other regions in Sudan.

Over the course of the conflict, the warring parties were accused of violating international law. But most of the atrocities were blamed on the RSF: The Biden administration, in one of its last decisions, said the paramilitary force committed genocide in Darfur.

UN experts and rights groups says the RSF has had the backing of the United Arab Emirates over the course of the war, allegations that the UAE denies.

The RSF grew out of the Janjaweed militias, notorious for atrocities they committed in the early 2000s in a ruthless campaign in Darfur that killed some 300,000 people and drove 2.7 million from their homes.

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Jamey Keaten And Samy Magdy, The Associated Press

Magdy reported from Cairo. Fatma Khaled in Cairo contributed to this report.