Torture as a Language of Defeat: A Psychological and Political Reading of Rapid Support Forces’ Abuses
By Abdelaziz Yaqoub
When we examine torture and instruments of humiliation in wartime, the discussion quickly departs from the theoretical and descends into bloody realities that expose the true nature of those who bear arms against defenseless populations. In Sudan today, this reality is more visible than ever. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have engaged, and continue to engage, in systematic violence against peaceful villages and impoverished households, targeting unarmed civilians—and women in particular—as though the social body itself were a battlefield to be torn apart and stripped of its symbolic integrity. What we are witnessing are not isolated incidents, but a recurring pattern corroborated by credible testimonies and local as well as international field reports.
Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have documented cases of gang rape, physical and psychological torture, arbitrary detention, and the use of women and children as instruments of social degradation through forced labor and sale, alongside the systematic burning of homes and looting of humanitarian aid. United Nations reports go further, suggesting that some of these crimes amount to crimes against humanity. In western Sudan—particularly Darfur and El Geneina—events have been described as approaching the scale of large-scale ethnic cleansing campaigns.
To illustrate the gravity, Amnesty International’s April 2025 report, “They Raped All of Us”, recorded 36 cases of rape and gang rape across four states between April 2023 and October 2024. Victims included minors, with reports of sexual captivity lasting days and torture with burning instruments. On displacement, the UN refugee agency confirmed that Sudan now has more than 11.3 million internally displaced persons, in addition to nearly 3.9 million refugees who fled across borders—half of them children. The UN Human Rights Office documented 3,384 civilian deaths in just the first half of 2025, mostly in Darfur, Kordofan, and Khartoum, caused by direct strikes on densely populated areas. In North Darfur, after the RSF seized Zamzam camp, roughly 400,000 people were displaced within days, while around 260,000 civilians remain trapped in El Fasher, half of them children, many suffering acute malnutrition. These are not just statistics—they are damning evidence that torture, starvation, and deliberate civilian targeting have become entrenched policy.
1. Torture as symbolic compensation for battlefield losses. For a militia that once styled itself as the champion of the marginalized, battlefield setbacks have shattered its narrative. Unable to confront military or political adversaries—derided as “remnants of the old regime, the state of ’56, or riverain tribes” in RSF rhetoric—it turned to terrorizing unarmed civilians as a way of compensating for its wounded pride. Humiliating the poor and targeting women are attempts to restore a false sense of power at the expense of the most vulnerable.
2. Sexual violence as an assault on the social fabric. In Sudanese communities, women are more than individuals; they represent continuity, motherhood, and values. To publicly violate them is to break the community as a whole, planting long-term trauma that drives mass displacement and enforced submission. Sexual violence here functions as a weapon to dismantle social cohesion, not merely as a personal crime.
3. The shift from warfare to plunder. Looting food supplies and private property is not incidental—it is a deliberate strategy to sustain fighters without an economic base, by transforming civilians’ basic needs into stolen capital for war. Entire villages become “war depots,” stripped bare through coercion and theft.
4. Impunity as fuel. With local justice absent, international justice hesitant or selective, and monitoring mechanisms failing to enforce accountability, perpetrators grow ever bolder in their violations.
Yet the central question remains: why are distant, politically marginal villages, the poor, and women in particular singled out?
Because they are the easiest to reach, the least able to defend themselves, and serve as a public demonstration that the language of force reigns supreme.
Because violence against women reverberates far beyond the individual, achieving the collective humiliation desired.
Because these groups provide a psychological outlet for defeated fighters—who, unable to prevail over their imagined adversaries, redirect their rage and feelings of impotence against those who cannot resist. In psychological terms, this behavior falls under mechanisms of projection, displacement, and collective revenge.
The consequences of this violence are catastrophic. It empties entire regions of their inhabitants, fuels massive displacement that unravels social structures, and paves the way for famine and disease. It implants in future generations memories of humiliation and grievance, perpetuating cycles of violence. Internationally, it deepens Sudan’s isolation, accelerates sanctions and interventions, and exposes the bankruptcy of the armed project.
Movements or parties with genuine national or political projects do not practice such vile acts of ethnic hatred. Local communities must not be collectively stigmatized for the crimes of individuals who joined the RSF from tribal or regional backgrounds. History shows that RSF ranks have included members of multiple tribes—such as the Fellata, Beni Halba, Salamat, and Zaghawa—many of whom were themselves victims of killings, persecution, or racism. Responsibility lies with individual perpetrators and leadership, not with entire communities or tribes.
The RSF’s conduct in quiet, remote villages is not proof of strength but an open admission of defeat. What we witness today is the collapse of a narrative that claimed to fight for justice and the marginalized, and its exposure as a force of looting and humiliation. Blind violence creates no legitimacy; torture builds no authority. It only hastens an inevitable downfall. Political and social renewal in Sudan can only begin with the recognition that the abuses inflicted on simple villages represent the final stage of militia bankruptcy. The country’s future rests on a complete break with this model, on building a system that restores dignity, repairs harm, and rebuilds trust between state and citizen.
Confronting torture and humiliation is not merely a humanitarian imperative—it is a struggle over Sudan’s very identity: will it be a homeland for all its people, or an open field for crimes without punishment?
Last year I wrote about the RSF’s rapid unraveling following atrocities in the villages of Gezira. Today, the picture is complete with the starvation, sieges, killings, and mass displacement in Kordofan and Darfur. These are successive episodes in the collapse of a family-based, ethnically charged, foreign-backed project born dead, whose inevitable end is deeper isolation and abandonment—even by its own supporters, now fleeing from it as one flees the plague.
