Investigative Report on RSF Systemic Atrocities throughout Sudan
Agencies
The American newspaper, The New York Times, published evidence supported by video clips, collected by its visual investigations team, documenting atrocities it said the Rapid Support Forces committed in Sudan during a year and a half since the outbreak of war between them and the Sudanese army on Aprilia 15, 2023.
The visual evidence collected and analyzed by the American newspaper over months reveals the identities of the leaders of the Rapid Support Forces whose soldiers were committing “atrocities” before their eyes throughout Sudan.
It said that this investigative report, documented with video footage, allowed her to identify 10 Rapid Support Forces commanders while they were overseeing potential war crimes and to pinpoint the locations of many of their other theaters of operations, noting that their supreme commander, Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, may bear full responsibility.
It added that Sudan is suffering under the weight of a brutal civil war in which the two sides are competing for control of the country, in which 11 million people have been expelled from their homes and tens of thousands have been killed.
Although the United Nations has accused both sides of committing violations, the investigative report conducted by the New York Times
over a period of six months, showed that the Rapid Support Forces are committing “systematic atrocities throughout Sudan, including ethnic cleansing that they often carry out under the watch of their commanders.”
By analyzing dozens of carefully crafted propaganda videos that portray the paramilitary militia leaders as philanthropists, the newspaper’s visual investigations team identified a command structure that includes at least 20 key figures and the areas in which they operate.
According to the investigation, the RSF fighters who answer to these leaders often film the atrocities they commit themselves, evidence that could one day hold the perpetrators accountable.
For this reason, the newspaper says it worked with researchers from the Sudan Witness Project, run by the Information Resilience Centre, a UK-based nonprofit, to collect these videos as the RSF moved across Sudan.
It also analyzed gunshots and satellite imagery, and the visual investigations team interviewed a RSF commander on the front lines.
3 Patterns of Violations
The New York Times also spoke to eyewitnesses to the war through a partnership with the “Ayin Network,” a group of reporters who work in Sudan without revealing their identities.
By collecting all this evidence, the American newspaper team was able to track the plans adopted by the Rapid Support Forces in carrying out their “terrorist” operations in several states, and to determine the locations of their leaders at or near the sites of their crimes.
The newspaper indicated that it documented three general patterns of violations, such as the execution of unarmed prisoners, the deliberate burning of local communities, and direct attacks on civilians, including sexual violence.
It noted that the Rapid Support Forces fighters can be identified by their uniforms, which are characterized by light camouflage, and their turbans known as the Kadamul, noting that its team of investigative journalists often heard them using the language of “ethnic cleansing.”
Although the Sudanese army has also been accused of war crimes, the New York Times says its team’s investigation documented widespread abuses by the Rapid Support Forces that may amount to “crimes against humanity.”
It reported that one of the paramilitary militia leaders, who has been at the scene of many of the atrocities, is Hussein Barsham, who regularly directs battles in Greater Kordofan state. It said he was seen in October when the Rapid Support Forces took over the Balila airport and a major oil field nearby, 55 kilometers southwest of the city of Al-Fula, the capitalist of West Kordofan state.
There, Barsham was celebrating victory in front of the airport building, but the video filmed on the other side shows his soldiers executing a group of prisoners, with one of their gunmen even shooting at piles of bodies on the ground. The rest of the fighters circle around, applauding the killing of 14 people, many of whom were wearing Sudanese army uniforms.
The newspaper reported that the execution of these unarmed prisoners who were defending the airport is a war crime, adding that a satellite image taken on October 30 shows the execution site with Barsham standing just 100 yards away, who would bear responsibility – “under the laws of war” – if he ordered this “crime”.
Eight months after that operation, the investigation team saw Barsham carrying out another execution while standing next to three other Rapid Support leaders, namely Saleh al-Futi, al-Taj al-Tijani, and a field commander known by the nom de guerre John Garang.
In al-Fula, the capital of West Kordofan state, the New York Times team saw columns of Rapid Support fighters enter the city on June 20, spreading out in its streets, chanting and boasting about killing men, and threatening others who had been captured.
Hundreds of Sudanese soldiers defending al-Fula had fled south earlier that day, and the Rapid Support hordes easily swept into the city. There, Barsham stood among them, along with Taj al-Tijani. Nearby, fighters gathered around Saleh al-Futi. During the attack, the RSF rounded up 20 men and took them out of the city.
Destroying entire communities
One of the most famous incidents of the war, according to the newspaper, was the execution of the then-governor of West Darfur, Khamis Abakar, by the Rapid Support Forces, who had arrested him in June 2023. A video clip filmed hours later showed his body covered in blood, after a commander named Abdul Rahman Juma Barakallah forced him to enter a building.
The city of Kutum in North Darfur was not spared from the brutality of the Rapid Support Forces, which have destroyed entire communities there since last October.
In “Al-Takma” near the city of Dilling in South Kordofan State, the visual investigations team caught Rapid Support fighters red-handed setting fire to homes and shops, and destroyed half of the village’s buildings.
In the village of Al-Sidra in North Kordofan State, a militia leader was seen supervising its burning, with a field commander named “Quja” bragging as the fire consumed more huts.
The New York Times explained that Qaja is not the only commander involved in scorched earth tactics, noting that its team of investigative journalists discovered the presence of four other commanders directing their forces during a deadly month-long attack.
The Times revealed that those commanders are: Al-Nour Al-Quba and Jaddu Hamdan Abu Shouk, both senior commanders, and Ali Rizq Allah and Al-Zeer Salem, both lower-ranking field commanders, all of whom oversaw for weeks a “brutal” campaign to seize the state capital, Al-Fasher, from the Sudanese army and its allied forces.
The Rapid Support Forces fighters besieged the city and burned dozens of remote villages in attacks targeting the Zaghawa tribe.
In the Tawila area of North Darfur State in western Sudan, the suffocating siege forced a pregnant woman in her final months—the New York Times said her name was Ikhlas Adam Ali Al-Hajj—to flee, reaching a village near the Golo Dam, where the commander of the North Darfur region of the militia, Ali Rizq Allah, was seen telling passersby not to leave, and that they were safe. Although the dam is the main source of water for the area, Rizkallah ordered it to be closed.
The newspaper reported that a field commander of the Rapid Support Forces in El Fasher told it that those senior leaders were responsible for what happened there, and there is no better evidence of that than their presence together during the burning of the entire village.
Scorched Earth
One video shows Al-Zeer Salem calling the faithful to prayer inside a mosque in eastern El Fasher on June 1. The next day, he and two of his commanders, Al-Quba and Abu Shouk, were about 1,000 feet from the mosque as fighters gathered, before setting fire to several buildings in the area.
Although the commander of the Rapid Support Forces denied responsibility for the fires and blamed the Sudanese military, the New York Times said that after analyzing the clips, it found some indications that the operations were consistent with the scorched earth tactics of the Rapid Support Forces.
It quoted researchers from the Humanitarian Research Laboratory at Yale University as saying that this was evidence of a targeted ground offensive. By August, more than 20,000 buildings had been damaged, destroyed, or burned. The destruction is concentrated largely in the eastern part of El Fasher, “the area where the Rapid Support Forces are advancing.”
The American newspaper believes that the presence of senior leaders, such as Al-Quba and Abu Shouk – a relative of Hemeti – indicates the importance of the city to the Rapid Support Forces, and unknowingly links them to these atrocities.
“Countless” videos show Rapid Support Forces fighters “whipping people, torturing them, and sometimes shooting them.”
The evidence collected by the newspaper’s visual investigation team was not limited to the Darfur and Kordofan regions alone, but also included the violence that occurred in Gezira State in the center of the country.
The journalistic investigation stated that the Rapid Support Forces continued to attack civilians in Gezira after the defection of Abu Aqla Kikal, who was a leader within that militia. In a wave of revenge against him, they targeted the tribe to which he belonged.
Among the areas that were targeted by the Rapid Support Forces, whose residents were killed and displaced, were the village of Al-Seriha and towns and villages throughout eastern Gezira.
In all of these areas, the Rapid Support Forces arrest men or force them to flee at gunpoint.
The newspaper reported that the eyewitnesses it spoke to were terrified. One of them, Ammar Al-Awad Alam, said that his flock of sheep had been stolen.
Sexual Violence
The New York Times went on to say that the evidence it had gathered about militia attacks on areas of Gezira State matched multiple accounts of another type of abuse, sexual violence, citing testimonies given by survivors to experts interviewed by the newspaper, including Hala Al-Karb, head of the Sudanese women’s advocacy organization “Sayha.”
Al-Karb’s team also received testimonies of rape cases that occurred in several towns in Gezira, especially in the area to which Kikal belongs, namely Tambool, Rufaa, and Azraq, among the towns that the Rapid Support fighters boast about destroying.
But the newspaper also points out that eyewitnesses rarely speak directly about sexual violence, for fear of the victims.
It pointed out that Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, and other groups have documented cases of sexual violence in at least five states in Sudan since the outbreak of the war.
However, the New York Times confirms that despite decades of genocide in Darfur, only one person – meaning Ali Kushayb – is currently standing before the International Criminal Court.
But there is now a stronger possibility – in its opinion – of accountability, “the videos that the fighters consider as souvenirs of their victories, will be used by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court as evidence against them.
This is what makes the American newspaper stress that it is possible to collect different types of evidence available now – from phones and video and audio recordings – which have proven to be extremely important in preventing impunity.