International Community’s Reluctance to Classify Militia as Terrorist Organization…… Politicians and Experts Respond

Sudan Events2May 12, 2024

65 5 minutes read

Nabil Adeeb: The intersection of the special interests of states and the declared principles of the international community affects decisions.
Director of the Khartoum International Center for Human Rights: The international community holds “the stick from the middle” and uses the militia to achieve political balances
Kamal Karar: The international community’s failure to stop the war explains the silence regarding the crimes committed
Military expert: Classifying the militia as a terrorist organization will close the door to negotiation.
Human rights defender: The international community does not make Sudan one of its priorities
Despite the multiple accusations against the Rapid Support Militia (RSF) since its rebellion against the army in April of last year and the violations and atrocities it committed against the Sudanese people, the international community remains silent and fails to classify the militia as a terrorist organization, which leads to raising a number of questions, (Events I raised the question about the reasons for the delay in the step to a number of experts and politicians.

Sudan Events – Aya Ibrahim

Recent report
In its latest report late last week, Human Rights Watch accused the (RSF) of committing “ethnic cleansing” and killings against the African Masalit ethnic group in the city of El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state.
The report documents, according to Human Rights Watch, “the RSF and Arab militias’ targeting of El Geneina neighborhoods, inhabited by a majority of Masalit, in continuous waves of attacks in the period from April to June, and violations escalated again in early November.”
Intersections of interests
Legal expert Nabil Adeeb says that there are intersections between the private interests of states and the declared principles of the international community, and these intersections often affect decisions to varying degrees, starting from delay in issuing them, through deliberate obstruction in their issuance, and sometimes reaching the point of preventing the issuance of the decision altogether.
Adeeb points out to (Sudan Events) that the contradictions that mar international resolutions are not hidden from an astute observer, but we, for our part, must also improve our external work in a way that makes it difficult for the major powers to ignore the grave crimes occurring against the Sudanese people, by providing the international media with information and working closely with specialized lobbies. In human rights campaigns in general and human rights campaigns in particular.
Ethnic cleansing
According to a Human Rights Watch report, “the attacks launched by the RSF and their allied militias in El Geneina led to the killing of at least thousands of people and left hundreds of thousands refugees,” noting that more than half a million refugees fled from West Darfur to Chad between April and late April. October 2023, “75% of them are from El Geneina.”
The non-governmental organization stressed that “targeting the Masalit and other non-Arab communities with the clear aim of forcing them to leave the region permanently constitutes ethnic cleansing.”
Realizing interests
In turn, the Director of the Khartoum International Center for Human Rights, Dr. Ahmed Al-Mufti: The international community does not classify RSF as a terrorist organization because the interest of the international community is “to hold the stick from the middle” and use RSF to achieve political balances that achieve the interests of the international community. The Mufti told Sudan Events: “They know the facts more than Human Rights Watch.”
Previous report
The Human Rights Watch report on violations by the RSF militia in the country, especially Darfur, was not the first, at the beginning of this year.
A United Nations report stated that between ten thousand and 15 thousand people were killed in one city in the West Darfur region of Sudan during the past year in ethnic violence carried out by the RSF.
Communist Party leader Kamal Karar points out that the international community that classifies terrorism or not is the United States…and after that the European Union follows suit. He said whether or not terrorism is not usually linked to massacres committed against peoples, but rather to the criterion of political interest and not threatening American interests. .
Karar added to (Sudan Events): “Since the war taking place in our country is a proxy war and the settling of international scores on Sudanese soil, the failure of the international community to stop it indicates international interests in its continuation, and this explains the silence over the crimes committed.”
Government movements
Late last year, a government committee revealed that it was seeking to issue a resolution from the UN Security Council to classify the RSF Militia as a terrorist organization.
The National Committee for War Crimes and Violations of the RSF stated that a legal memorandum is being prepared, signed by the Attorney General of the Republic of Sudan, Chairman of the Committee, which includes the violations committed by the RSF since the outbreak of fighting.
The Committee said that the memorandum was submitted to the head of the technical committee responsible for implementing Security Council resolutions for the purpose of issuing a decision to classify RSF as a terrorist organization at the UN Security Council.
Closing a door
Military expert Omar Arbab said that the RSF committed a number of heinous crimes against civilians that amount to crimes against humanity.
Arbab points out to (Sudan Events) that describing the RSF as a terrorist organization will close the door to any negotiation process with it, and Muawiyah’s hair would be cut off, and its violations would increase as it has become a terrorist organization and cannot be threatened with anything. After that, the international community will enter into a confrontation with the RSF.
Presidential invitation
In September last year, the President of the Transitional Sovereign Council and the Army Commander, Lieutenant General Abdul Fattah Al-Burhan, called on the international community to classify the rebel RSF groups and the militias allied with them as terrorist groups, noting that it committed all the crimes that put it in this category.
When addressing the United Nations General Assembly meetings in New York, Al-Burhan called for the need to deal decisively with those who support these groups, indicating that murder, arson, rape, forced displacement, looting, theft, torture, transfer of weapons and drugs, recruiting mercenaries, and recruiting children are crimes that require accountability and punishment.
Non-priority
In turn, lawyer and human rights defender Moez Hadra believes that what is going on in Sudan is not a priority for the international community at the present time or even earlier, given that it is preoccupied with the Russian-Ukrainian war and the Gaza-Israel war, even though the death and destruction that occurred in Sudan exceeds what happened in Gaza.
Hazra told (Sudan Events) that the Sudanese citizen, on the other hand, does not care about classifying this or that as a terrorist organization as much as he cares about the need to stop the war and deliver humanitarian aid, and he demanded the necessity of forming an urgent campaign to provide humanitarian aid to those who are dying from hunger and the lack of medicine, and pointed out that it is a priority at the present time. Stopping the war and delivering humanitarian aid, then paying attention to other steps regarding who is responsible for the war and holding whom accountable?
Submitting a project
A group of Democratic and Republican senators previously proposed a bill that classifies “the actions of the RSF and their allied militias in Darfur against non-Arab ethnic communities as genocide.”
The draft text says that the Senate “condemns the atrocities, including those amounting to genocide, committed by the RSF and their allied militias against the Masalit tribe and other non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur,” as the Foreign Relations Committees of US House of Representatives and Senate President Joe Biden to urgently consider imposing sanctions on the RSF and its commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), for serious human rights violations.