Fresh Evidence that a Member of the UN Security Council is Arming a Genocidal Militia in Sudan
Will this Complicate The COP28 Climate Meeting in Dubai?
It’s long been something of an open secret that the United Arab Emirates backs the Rapid Support Forces, a Sudanese paramilitary group. In April, when civil war broke out in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, there was little doubt that the Abu Dhabi would throw its weight behind the RSF.
But what is shocking is the extent to which the UAE is arming the RSF even as they carry out a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Western Darfur that borders on genocide. Deeper still, the UAE is currently a member of the Security Council, and it is fueling a potential genocide in direct violation of a longstanding arms embargo on Sudan imposed by the Security Council.
The UAE denies all this — but there has been ample reporting to the contrary.
The RSF is the successor to the Janjaweed militia that terrorized Darfur in the early 2000s. This militia teamed up with the former government of Sudan to carry out the First Darfur Genocide. In the years since, the Janjaweed rebranded as the Rapid Support Forces, under the leadership of a former Janjaweed commander known as Hemedti. Hemedti’s forces captured gold mines in Darfur and became a militia-for-hire in the region, with the UAE emerging as a key patron. When Omar al Bashir’s decades-long dictatorship was toppled in 2018, the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces vied for control of Sudan, eventually leading to the outbreak of an all-out civil war in April.
In Darfur, the far west of Sudan, the mostly Arab RSF is mounting a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the non-Arab Masalit people. Villages have been burned to the ground. Sexual violence rampant. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes, most of whom have fled across the border to Chad. In June, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s genocide prevention center warned that “Darfuris again are at risk of genocide, and that today’s perpetrators have ties to the same actors who perpetrated the first genocide.” Last week, The United Kingdom’s Minister for Africa, Andrew Mitchell, told the BBC this bore "all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing," the first time the UK government has invoked ‘ethnic cleansing’ to describe the ongoing atrocities in Darfur.
Yet even as news of gruesome massacres and forced displacement began to trickle out from Darfur, the UAE apparently stepped up its support for the RSF.
In August, the Wall Street Journal reported evidence that the UAE was funneling arms to Chad under the guise of humanitarian aid. Though they were caught red-handed, the UAE denied the accusation. The New York Times followed up with another damning investigation in early October. Through interviews, satellite imagery, flight data, and a leaked UN report the New York Times pieced together a pattern in which the UAE was funneling arms to the RSF via a remote airfield in Chad. Again, this was being done under the guise of providing humanitarian aid. Following the New York Times report, Refugees International called for an immediate investigation. “The UN Security Council imposed a Chapter-VII arms embargo on Darfur in 2004 in response to the genocide in that era, and extended it again last March. Shipment of arms to the RSF in Darfur constitutes a clear violation of that binding embargo,” the statement read.
The “Genocide COP?”
In just a few weeks, the big international climate conference, known as COP28, kicks off in Dubai. This is a legitimately important moment for climate diplomacy, but if UAE continues its support for the genocidal Rapid Support Forces, climate diplomacy may be overshadowed by the RSFs ongoing ethnic cleansing in Darfur.
A similar dynamic unfolded 15 years ago, when following the first Darfur genocide activists sought to brand the 2008 Beijing Olympics as the “Genocide Olympics” for China’s support of the Sudanese government and their Janjaweed allies. At the time, a robust social movement, known as “Save Darfur,” captured the attention of policymakers around the world. The movement was partially successful in leveraging the Olympics to secure key Chinese concessions on Sudan, including Beijing’s abstention from a Security Council resolution authorizing a peacekeeping mission to Darfur in 2007.
This time around, there is no such movement — and the world is now largely consumed by the conflict in Israel and Gaza. But as evidence continues to mount of a potential genocide, questions about UAE’s support for the RSF are bound to dog event organizers, damage the UAE’s international reputation and complicate its relationship with the United States, which recently imposed sanctions on some RSF leaders.
The conflict in Israel and Gaza may push this news to the back-burner, but this is a vitally important humanitarian and human rights story that deserves all the attention it can get.
I cut my teeth as a journalist in the mid-aughts covering the international response to the 2003-4 Darfur Genocide. Today, the same forces responsible for the Genocide are back in action, wreaking destruction in Darfur in ways reminiscent of 20 years ago.
A systematic and organized campaign of ethnic cleansing is again underway in Darfur. We will bear witness by offering original reporting and expert analysis. To support our work purchase or upgrade your subscription.