In the Sudan War, don’t forget the indicted war criminals

Two men are at the heart of the fighting that is currently devastating Sudan: Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Burhan, who leads the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, or “Hemedti,” who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

These two generals worked together for years, from when they met in Sudan’s Darfur region in 2003, when Burhan was allegedly overseeing the SAF’s genocidal counterinsurgency there, to when they carried out the coup d’état against a partly civilian government in 2021.

Today, they are waging war against each other for more power and control while the Sudanese bear the cost of their greed.

Peace will not come without international pressure on these two antagonists, and the U.S. government’s recent move to impose asset freezes on Sudanese companies that support these two factions was belated but welcome.

No peace will be lasting, however, or satisfy the demands of the Sudanese people, without accountability for grave human rights abuses. To that end, Sudan’s international partners need to keep their eyes on another set of brutal men as well — the three former senior Sudanese officials whom the International Criminal Court (ICC) has charged with atrocities in Darfur, and who were jailed on unrelated grounds after the popular uprising that ousted the long-time tyrant Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.

The current fighting in Khartoum and other cities has killed more than 700 and forced over one million to leave their homes. Amidst the chaos and power vacuum, Bashir and five senior members of his former regime, including Abdul Rahim Mohamed Hussein, have reportedly been transferred by the SAF from Kober prison in Khartoum to a military hospital in Omdurman. Bashir and Hussein have both been indicted by the ICC for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and (in Bashir’s case) genocide.

Meanwhile, Ahmed Haroun, the third ICC defendant, stated in a recorded audio circulated on social media that he had escaped Kober prison together with others. His whereabouts are unknown and the circumstances of his escape unclear. The SAF and RSF blame each other for the release of Haroun and other key figures of the Bashir regime. 

These three men are where they are — and Sudan is at the mercy of human rights abusers more generally — because for two decades the international community has done far too little to heed victims’ calls for accountability. Instead, Sudan’s international partners have placed significant efforts into political talks that consolidated perpetrators’ grip on power by failing to include the views of Sudanese civil society. As a result, despite the Juba peace agreement signed in 2020, the scorched and impoverished Darfur region remains overflowing with automatic weapons and attacks against civilians.

The new clashes throughout Sudan exacerbate the long-standing anguish of Darfur. The Darfur conflict has claimed at least 300,000 lives and 2.7 million displaced persons since 2003. Yet, apart from one ongoing trial of a senior Darfuri militia leader at the ICC, the victims in Darfur are yet to see justice. The ICC’s chief prosecutor has expressed frustration over the victims’ long wait for accountability, stating last year, “I share the frustrations, the impatience, and the hopes of those survivors that that singular moment — the first referral by the [UN Security] Council to the International Criminal Court — will reap dividends.”

Before the military takeover in October 2021, Sudan’s transitional government had been in talks with the ICC about the options to extradite Bashir and his aides over their involvement in the Darfur conflict. The civilian-led cabinet decided to proceed with Bashir’s extradition, but the transitional sovereign council, chaired and controlled by today’s warring generals Burhan and Hemedti, did not assent. The U.S., for its part, used its leverage over the generals at this and other pivotal moments to pursue other goals, such as securing the normalization of Sudan’s ties with Israel.

Now, while the international community must exert pressure to stop the devastating war in Sudan, it must also find ways to show that it sees progress toward accountability as a non-negotiable priority. Among other things, that means not losing sight of the whereabouts of the three ICC suspects. 

Unlike others who also have blood on their hands, these three have an impartial court standing ready and waiting to try them. If they are able to escape and disappear in the current chaos, it will constitute a moral failure and send a demoralizing message to victims and perpetrators that justice is a catchy slogan that can be avoided even by those who are not currently in power.

Governments have tools they can use to reinforce their commitment to justice and accountability in Sudan, and this is the time for them to do so. For Haroun and other ICC defendants whose whereabouts become unknown, the U.S. should offer rewards under its War Crimes Rewards Program for information that leads to their arrest.

The U.S. and other governments should also repeat their past calls for Sudan to extradite Bashir as they continue to press the combatants through targeted sanctions to stop fighting. 

Sudan’s current crisis is bigger than any one individual’s fate. But taking more steps toward breaking the cycle of impunity, including holding the current military leaders to account, is an opportunity to do right by the people of Sudan and begin to reverse the long-standing mistakes that got us here.

Mutasim Ali is a Legal Advisor at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (RWCHR), specializing in targeted human rights sanctions. Adam Keith is Director for Accountability at Human Rights First.