War crimes and atrocities against civilians are being committed in Darfur, western Sudan, the UK’s Africa minister Andrew Mitchell said on Tuesday, becoming one of the first western officials to identify that the fighting in Sudan has developed into more than a power struggle between two rival factions.
Mitchell said there was growing evidence of serious atrocities being committed, describing the civilian death toll as horrific in a statement released by the Foreign Office. “Reports of deliberate targeting and mass displacement of the Masalit community in Darfur are particularly shocking and abhorrent. Intentional directing of attacks at the civilian population is a war crime.”
He added the UK would do all it could to assemble credible evidence to present to the UN security council, the UN Human Rights Council and the international criminal court.
There had been an expectation that the US would have explicitly joined the UK in making a formal atrocity determination, but so far the State Department has held off, partly because the US does not want to jeopardise talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, designed to end the civil war between Sudanese Armed Forces and the independent Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Observers claim the larger power struggle that broke out in April, with fighting in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, has provided cover for RSF allied forces to undertake ethnic cleansing in west Darfur, reviving memories of the genocide committed in Darfur 20 years ago.
The attacks on the Masalit and other ethnic communities are led by the Janjaweed militias allied with the RSF. The RSF is commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.
More than 300,000 Sudanese nationals have crossed the border into neighbouring Chad since the conflict broke out, according to the UN’s migratory agency.
Kate Ferguson, co-executive director of the human rights NGO Protection Approaches, welcomed Mitchell’s statement saying: “He is absolutely right to condemn not only the armed conflict between the SAF and RSF which is devastating Sudan but also to highlight the deliberate targeting and mass displacement of non-Arab communities in Darfur.
“These two related but distinct trajectories of violence require related but distinct solutions; this reality must be a cornerstone for the UK government and the entire international system in the pursuit of peace in Sudan.
The Saudi peace talks rely on progress being made between different bad faith actors over which Riyadh seems to have little leverage. Others say the true external players in Sudan are Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, which are closely linked to the SAF and RSF respectively.
The ICC launched a new investigation into alleged war crimes in Sudan in July with ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan saying “we are in the midst of a human catastrophe”.
The UK has imposed sanctions on businesses linked to the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces in an effort to register its disapproval.
