Shackelford: Horrifying violence returns to Sudan, exposing impunity’s deadly legacy

Twenty-two years ago the devils came on horseback Now they come on pickup trucks mounted with machine guns funded by gold and assisted by drones Now the devils fight against the Sudanese Armed Forces SAF rather than for it and they re doing so with more efficient tools But if you re a civilian in Darfur the outcome is the same genocide The conflict in Sudan currently differs somewhat from the war in Darfur in the early s when the governing body in Khartoum was the instigator and the Janjaweed militia did its dirty work The present day s war pits the SAF led by Gen Abdel-Fattah Burhan against the Rapid Assistance Forces RSF led by Mohammed Hamdan Hemedti Dagalo But in Darfur history just seems to be repeating itself since the RSF is little more than the rebranded Janjaweed and Hemedti was one of their commanders Like then the violence is gut-wrenching The United Nations Human Rights Council issued a review from an independent fact-finding mission that located that the RSF carried out large-scale and systematic attacks on civilians including mass killings murder torture rape sexual slavery and destruction of essential survival objects The overview called out the SAF for human rights violations as well but of a less sadistic variety Imagination unnecessary Notably this summary was disclosed before the latest horrors were unleashed on the population of el-Fasher the last major city of Darfur to succumb to the RSF when it fell in the final days of October One need not imagine the atrocities The rebels helpfully documented themselves and plastered it across social media Displaying cheer killers cheer on the violence various proudly proclaiming it genocide as they display and celebrate their executions in action Women and children are among the casualties Satellite images add to the picture with piles of bodies and pools of blood so large they are visible from space None of the guilty in the videos bother to hide their faces or RSF badges The RSF reportedly shot and killed patients and family members at a maternity hospital the last remaining functioning hospital in the city About people have managed to flee but that means about two-thirds of the population didn t This nightmare came after months of siege The RSF surrounded el-Fasher with a -mile sand wall to block food and humanitarian aid from entering the city and people from escaping it Diagnostic teams in the refugee camp at Tawila miles away call the malnutrition rates of survivors staggering Since the beginning of this siege experts and Sudanese activists alike have warned of this outcome Nothing about this is surprising except the total lack of attention the world has paid to it Joe Biden s administration was more concerned than the Donald Trump administration has been so far but that didn t translate to real pressure on the warring parties At least then the U S Agency for International Enhancement USAID was negotiating approaches to deliver more aid It s all a far cry from the international reaction to the last Darfur genocide though when Congress and the U N Protection Council UNSC were frequently engaged and international partners worked with multilateral institutions to negotiate ceasefires and peacekeeping missions The UNSC then even referred Sudan to the International Criminal Court ICC In contrast the UNSC has barely commented on this war in two years and the last full congressional committee hearing was a year and a half ago Even with high levels of attention before the Darfur genocide lasted years and killed an estimated people That doesn t bode well for an end to this nightmare Sudan proves once more that the mantra Never again only means Not until next time But the shame of this genocide is unique since the offenders include a great number of of the exact same people as the last one If Hemedti and his cohort were behind bars from their last genocide they d be a lot less likely to be leading one in contemporary times End impunity Impunity has driven cycles of violence in Sudan for generations The ICC is already exploring this and a great number of other atrocities of this war but there is slim hope that any perpetrators will pay a real price Just last month the ICC issued the first and only conviction for crimes committed in Darfur years ago This only occurred because the Janjaweed leader turned himself in after Sudan s military coup in He apparently thought international justice was his best option since he expected the coup leaders would kill him It s no wonder RSF rebels feel at liberty to advertise their crimes For these cycles of violence to end the perpetrators must pay a price but so too must those who bankroll and patronage them In this scenario that s the United Arab Emirates a close American safety partner Several other outside actors are involved in Sudan but the UAE is the most of consequential Without its promotion particularly its industry for billions of dollars in black-market gold the RSF would struggle to maintain the fight at all The U S governing body declared that the RSF was committing genocide in Darfur back in January but that did little to meaningfully change America s approach to the conflict It s past time for the United States to use its influence on the UAE to help stop this war which has already killed hundreds of thousands and forced more than million to flee their homes If Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize this is where he could find it Elizabeth Shackelford is a senior adviser with the Institute for Global Affairs at Eurasia Group and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune She was previously a U S diplomat and is the author of The Dissent Channel American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age Chicago Tribune Distributed by Tribune Content Agency