Will Al-Burhan Persuade the World to Designate the Rapid Support Forces a Terrorist Organization?

By Abdullah Ali Ibrahim

In the aftermath of the United States’ designation of the “Kizan”—a term commonly used to refer to Sudan’s Islamists—as a terrorist organization, Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement that resembled a tit-for-tat response, calling for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to be similarly classified as a terrorist group. It seemed to me that the government arrived at the issue of declaring the RSF a terrorist organization far too late. Such delay is less a virtue than a form of inertia, contrary to the common saying that “better late than never.”

General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s de facto leader and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, had already called—on several international platforms since 2024—for the RSF to be branded a terrorist organization. Yet his appeal was not taken up by the state, either through its media or diplomatic channels, nor by the pro-army activists whom their rivals derisively label “the balabisa.” The state appeared preoccupied with other matters. The media, meanwhile, did little to mobilize public opinion or pursue the demand beyond reporting it as a piece of news that quickly faded. As for the balabisa, they are engaged in the war behind the war—locked in their own battles of rhetoric and historical vendettas against RSF supporters.

Now, however, the axe has fallen on the head, and the government has begun scrambling to catch up.

I reproduce here remarks I wrote earlier, inspired by Al-Burhan’s original call.

The chairman of Sudan’s Sovereign Council and commander of the armed forces, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, urged the international community to classify the Rapid Support Forces—against whom the army has been fighting for more than a year and a half—as a terrorist organization. Speaking recently in China, he said the RSF was attempting to seize power by force and was serving the ambitions of “reckless regional powers.” He called for its designation as a “terrorist group,” urging international assistance in eliminating it and condemning any cooperation with it.

Al-Burhan had previously made the same appeal during his address to the United Nations General Assembly on 21 June 2023. He said that the Sudanese people had been facing a devastating war since mid-April 2023 launched by the “rebel Rapid Support Forces” in alliance with “tribal militias, regional and international actors, and mercenaries from around the world.” He added that the RSF had committed “crimes against humanity and war crimes across much of Sudan, including ethnic cleansing and sexual violence.” The atrocities committed in areas such as El-Geneina in West Darfur, he said, shocked the conscience of the world. He concluded by again urging that the RSF be designated a terrorist organization and that international support be mobilized to defeat it.

The United Nations heard the same appeal again from Sudan’s ambassador, who urged the Security Council—during a session discussing the Sudan war—to recognize the RSF as a terrorist group committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the state. Departing slightly from his prepared remarks, he even linked his call to the United States’ commemoration of the September 11 attacks, the event that gave rise to Washington’s modern doctrine in the “war on terror.”

But what are Al-Burhan’s chances of persuading the world to brand the RSF as a terrorist organization?

It is not difficult to predict that Western circles will be reluctant to heed his call. The RSF does not bear the Islamic label that has historically made Western governments more inclined to apply the terrorism designation. Neither its name nor its declared project has any meaningful connection to Islam. In fact, its open hostility toward Sudan’s Islamists may even provide it, as some might say, with a “certificate of good health.”

The United States has been the country most invested in defining terrorism, both because of its global standing and because it was struck by the most consequential terrorist attack in modern history on September 11, 2001, which launched its “war on terror.” Prior to that moment, neither the United States nor most Western countries had settled on a clear definition of terrorism, relying instead on the United Nations’ framework, which included crimes such as hijacking, hostage-taking, and assassination.

Canada moved quickly in 2001 to legislate its own definition of terrorism, distinguishing it from ordinary criminal acts.

The fact that the September 11 attacks were carried out by a group of radicalized Muslim youths profoundly shaped the American concept of terrorism. Since then, terrorism has been largely associated—both domestically and internationally—with acts committed by Islamist extremists. One observer noted that Washington’s intense focus on such actors has often overshadowed acts of violence by extremists within the United States itself, now commonly referred to as “domestic terrorism.” In reality, such attacks have been more frequent than those carried out by Islamist extremists. Between 2008 and 2016, for instance, there were 70 attacks by right-wing extremist groups against the U.S. state, compared with 18 attacks linked to Islamist extremist movements.

Yet even so, the United States has rarely labeled far-right attacks at home as “terrorism.” Efforts to study the sources and dynamics of domestic extremism have often faltered. Former President Barack Obama once allocated funding for academic institutions to study neo-Nazism and white supremacist movements alongside Islamist extremism. When Donald Trump assumed office, however, much of that funding was redirected exclusively toward research on Islamist terrorism.

This selective focus has shaped the U.S. State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations between 1997 and 2021. Of the 68 groups listed, 61 were Muslim organizations, while only seven were non-Muslim groups, such as the Irish Republican Army, Shining Path in Peru, and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Over the same period, 20 organizations were later removed from the list, half of them Muslim groups and the other half non-Muslim.

Given this context, it is difficult to imagine that Washington—perhaps the only actor capable of effectively stamping the “terrorist” label on armed groups—would readily align with Al-Burhan’s call. If one considers the stance of the U.S. special envoy to Sudan, Tom Perriello, toward the current war, his position may in fact lean closer to criticizing the army itself.

Perriello recently criticized the Sudanese military after the government failed to attend a conference he convened in Geneva in August to discuss the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Sudan and the warring parties’ obligations to facilitate aid. Speaking to Al-Hadath television, he said officials from the former Islamist regime needed the war to open a “back door” to power. In a subsequent interview with BBC journalist Luqman Ahmed, he expanded on this view, saying that mediators had seen little political will from either side—especially the army and its allies among supporters of former president Omar al-Bashir—to alleviate the suffering of Sudanese civilians.

Perriello repeatedly emphasized their Islamist identity, arguing that some actors in this camp wanted the war to continue in order to return to power—power that, he said, they knew the Sudanese people did not want them to regain. He further suggested that influential figures from the old regime—once designated by the United States as a sponsor of terrorism in 1993—were operating behind the scenes.

While Perriello stopped short of labeling the army’s side of the conflict as terrorist, the RSF has had no hesitation in doing so. Ibrahim Mokhair, an RSF adviser, told the Emirati outlet Erem News that Sudanese intelligence services were coordinating with terrorist groups such as Boko Haram to recruit fighters and bring them from Libya through Chad—an accusation clearly intended to expand the narrative.

It is difficult to imagine a mediator siding so openly with one party in a conflict he is supposed to help resolve. Perriello’s remarks were quickly seized upon by the RSF as evidence to support their own claims that the Sudanese army harbors terrorist links.

One might have hoped that Perriello would avoid repeating earlier mistakes in the way Washington dealt with Sudan’s Islamist regime during the era of the “National Salvation” government. That regime now lies abandoned on the margins of history—“kicking against death,” as the saying goes. Its downfall was not the achievement of foreign powers but of the Sudanese themselves. Yet even after they overthrew it in April 2019, Sudan found itself burdened with international sanctions inherited from that very regime.

Sudanese citizens spent precious time and resources trying to free their country from the legacy of the National Salvation era, while the democratic transition—still invoked in diplomatic rhetoric—stumbled along the way.

The errors of that period were later acknowledged by figures such as former U.S. ambassador to Khartoum Timothy Carney and intelligence intermediary Mansoor Ijaz, who had negotiated with Sudanese intelligence on counter-terrorism cooperation in the 1990s. Both concluded that Washington had misunderstood the political environment that followed the end of colonial rule in Muslim societies—where efforts to reconnect modern life with religious identity did not necessarily translate into support for terrorism.

While suspicion of the Sudanese regime may have been understandable in its early years, they argued, the government’s later shift toward pragmatic cooperation—particularly in intelligence sharing—should have prompted a more nuanced understanding. Instead, political considerations prevailed over facts.

The result was decisions such as the 1998 U.S. missile strike on the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, carried out in retaliation for the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi—an allegation later widely questioned. When investigations failed to substantiate the claim that the factory was linked to chemical weapons production, Washington offered little explanation beyond saying the strike had been a presidential decision.

U.S. courts later ordered Sudan to pay $355 million in compensation to victims of the USS Cole bombing in 2000 and the 1998 Nairobi embassy attack, after the country was accused of involvement in both incidents.

From official American discourse, it often seemed as though the National Salvation regime and its Islamist allies were not merely a passing government but a curse upon Sudan itself. One writer even compared the lingering shadow of the Islamists—hovering over Sudan long after their political defeat—to the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus, condemned to push a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down again, repeating the task for eternity.