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18-09-2023
KHARTOUM: Abdelrahim Hamdan Dagalo, brother of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commander Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo and his deputy has had his assets frozen in the United States, while Abdul Rahman Juma, an RSF commander in West Darfur, was hit with a visa ban.
With that, the paramilitary force has lost hope of acquiring political legitimacy after the duo were sanctioned on September 6, according to analysts and activists.
Both were sanctioned over human rights abuses, specifically atrocities in Sudan’s West Darfur province. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Juma was sanctioned for ordering the June 15 assassination of West Darfur’s Governor Khamis Abdallah Abakar.
“The sanctions really are a blow to the personal brand of the Dagalo family,” said Kholood Kair, a Sudanese expert and founding director of Confluence Advisory.
In 2019, the RSF started an extensive, and expensive, effort to rehabilitate its image from a violent militia responsible for numerous atrocities in the Darfur region to a benevolent force defending calls for democracy.
A popular uprising had removed Sudan’s former President Omar al-Bashir, and the RSF tried to ride the wave of popular discourse, co-opting human rights activists by paying them top dollar and hiring PR firms to transform its image.
The RSF stepped up its reputation laundering after a civil war erupted between the paramilitary and the army on April 15 but with the sanctions, its effort and money may have gone to waste.
“Abdelrahim and Hemedti have been very conscious about being sanctioned because they know that is the kind of thing that follows you around for the rest of your life,” Jonas Horner, an independent expert on Sudan, told media.
“They’ve always known that legitimacy is very important if they want to be relevant politically.”
In West Darfur, the RSF and allied Arab militias have been accused of committing summary executions, sexual violence and burying corpses in mass graves, according to rights groups, witnesses and the United Nations.
Yet Abdelrahim Dagalo denied the reports during an interview with Sky News Arabia on September 7. He claimed the violence in West Darfur was the result of a “tribal war” fuelled by the army.
“The military is behind these crimes [in West Darfur] because it gives weapons to the tribes. The army works with the tribes in the evening and allows them to kill each other during the day,” Abdelrahim claimed but Mohamad Sharif, a human rights lawyer who fled el-Geneina to Chad in May, said the Arab militias are being armed by the RSF, not the army. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
