EU-reviled militia in Sudan backs truce, after two-year civil war

The Sudanese army is under growing pressure to agree to US plans for a humanitarian ceasefire after the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a militia group with whom it has fought a devastating, two-year civil war, announced that they would back an immediate truce. 

The RSF, which is led by general Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo 'Hemeti', announced on Friday (7 November) that they looked forward to "immediately commencing discussions on the arrangements for a cessation of hostilities and the fundamental principles guiding the political process in Sudan".

The day before, the EU Commission gave its firmest yet denunciation of war crimes committed by the RSF during its capture of El Fasher, the main city in north Darfur. 

"The EU strongly condemns these atrocities and any attack targeted at civilians and civilian infrastructure," a European Commission spokesman told reporters on Thursday. 

A joint statement released last week by the EU's foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and EU commissioner Hadja Lahbib had also called for the de-escalation of fighting and condemned the brutality of the RSF for targeting civilians.

But it was dismissed as being "way, way below our expectations," said Sudan's EU ambassador Abdelbagi Kabeir.

"My country has been ravaged by a brutal war and this has led to a huge loss of human life and destruction of the infrastructure. There is now a dire humanitarian and economic situation in Sudan," Kabeir told an event as the Press Club in Brussels on Thursday.

The US, along with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt, has called for a three-month humanitarian truce, to be followed by a permanent ceasefire. 

The government in Khartoum, which is backed by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by Abdel Fatteh al-Burhan, has stepped up its diplomatic efforts in recent weeks after the RSF captured El Fasher following a nearly two-year siege in late October. 

Earlier this week, Sudan's ambassador to Kenya, Mohamed Osman Akasha, held a press briefing for reporters in Nairobi at which officials showed videos of RSF militia killing unarmed civilians and detailed the scale of the atrocities, particularly mass killings, committed by the RSF in and around El Fasher. 

Though both sides have committed multiple war crimes, international agency officials in Sudan say that the RSF has been responsible for mass killings and has targeted civilians based on their ethnicity. 

Akasha criticised the international community, particularly the US and Europe, for not preventing the RSF from committing atrocities.

He wants the EU and US to designate the RSF as a terrorist group and has consistently refused to negotiate with or attend meetings where RSF leaders are present.

The SAF has urged the EU to take its side in the conflict, but, like the US, Brussels has tried to stay neutral. 

In January 2022, Burhan and Hemeti had worked together to topple a civilian-led transition government in Khartoum.

The civil war, which started in April 2023, is the result of a power struggle between Burhan and Hemeti over control of the government and military. 

The EU has imposed sanctions on RSF and SAF officials, as well as entities linked to them.

The EU has also been criticised by Sudanese government officials for failing to condemn the United Arab Emirates for its role as the RSF's main supplier of finance and weapons.

The EU Commission is currently negotiating a trade deal with the UAE as part of its plans to diversify the EU's trade partnerships. 

The 2007 Sakharov Prize laureate and Sudanese human rights lawyer Salih Mahmoud Osman will be among a panel discussing the state of the war with the European Parliament's development and human rights committees next week.

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