Sudan videos reveal ethnic hatred behind massacres
The Washington Post
September 9, 2024
Sudan’s Darfur region was the scene of a genocide two decades ago. Exclusive videos shared with The Post show the inflamed bigotry behind a new wave of killings.
Militiamen affiliated with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces celebrate near the Sudanese town of Kutum in June 2023 in the immediate aftermath of a mass killing. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
Moments after the militiamen burst into the small adobe house in Sudan’s Kassab displacement camp, a woman inside began pleading for the lives of her sons. As she begged to trade her life for theirs, the paramilitary fighters clubbed her with a rifle butt, according to a passerby, who overheard the encounter and later talked with the family. Then the fighters led the five brothers away.
Shortly afterward, a video showed, several men’s barefoot bodies were seen sprawled face-down in the dust, hands bound behind them, blood seeping across their clothes. Two witnesses identified the brothers’ bodies in the footage.
Aftermath of an execution
Video filmed by militiamen shows people looking on as bodies of bound men lie near a displacement camp. Out of frame, gunshots ring out. (Video: Obtained by The Washington Post)
The immediate aftermath of the execution-style killings last year in Kassab, and others in neighboring Kutum town in Sudan’s western Darfur region, was captured in videos that have remained unpublished until now — rare visual evidence of the slaughter routinely occurring in Sudan as its armed forces battle a paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, in a conflict the United States estimates has cost about 150,000 lives.
The killings of the young men who are seen in the videos were part of a massacre of at least 73 people, according to residents of Kutum and the U.N. refugee agency.
The videos underscore the vitriol of Arab militiamen affiliated with the RSF toward their ethnic Black African victims and the toll of that bigotry, which victims say is fueling much of the violence committed by that group against civilians, especially in Darfur.
In one of the videos, a gunman in a white turban gloats over the sprawled, bloodstained bodies of two unidentified men: “Take pictures! This is a victory for the Arabs! This is a victory for the Arabs!”
Celebrations of violence
In the aftermath of a mass killing, militiamen yell, "Victory is for the Arabs by God’s will." The RSF is accused of committing abuses along ethnic lines. (Video: Obtained by The Washington Post)
In a third video, unseen fighters taunt another dying man, whose head lolls as crimson collects in a pool beneath him. (The video is too graphic to be included with this article.)
About 70 percent of Sudanese identify as Arab, while the rest are primarily from Black African groups such as the Fur, Zaghawa and Nubians. The killings in Kassab and Kutum, which occurred in June 2023, foreshadowed other mass killings of mainly Black African civilians allegedly by the RSF in Darfurian cities such as Nyala and Geneina. The RSF has denied carrying out these atrocities, which have also been documented by Human Rights Watch.
The videos from Kassab and Kutum were shared with The Washington Post as part of a joint investigation with Lighthouse Reports, Sky News and Le Monde and offer a rare glimpse at the horror unfolding in Sudan. Much of the killing has occurred out of the world’s sight. Few foreign journalists are allowed to travel to Sudan, and internet and phone connections are rare.
While the military is also accused of committing abuses, including along ethnic lines, human rights groups say the RSF is responsible for the majority of the atrocities. Witness accounts and RSF propaganda videos revealed that senior RSF commanders were in the Kutum area during the killings.
Ezzadin Elsafi, a senior RSF official, said the ethnic dimensions of the conflict have been blown out of proportion and that people in Kutum were now living together peacefully, overseen by an RSF commander belonging to the Fur tribe. [Genocide Watch comment: Elsafi is obviously lying.]
A racist legacy
Many of the survivors of the slaughter in Kassab and Kutum said their RSF attackers called African civilians “abd,” or slave, a racist insult dating to the days when Arab raiders often enslaved members of Sudan’s Black tribes.
In recent decades, Sudanese Arabs have dominated the top ranks of the government and military, and grievances among minority groups have sparked several uprisings in neglected regions.
Such discontent led to a previous war in Darfur, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives from 2003 to 2020. During that conflict, the RSF’s predecessor, an ethnically Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, collaborated with the military to target African rebels and their families.
The attacks against African tribes were so widespread and systematic that the International Criminal Court said they amounted to genocide. Now U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that "ethnic cleansing", crimes against humanity and war crimes are happening again.
[Genocide Watch Comment: It is incredible that Blinken still uses the discredited term "ethnic cleansing", a euphemism invented by Slobodan Milosevic used to deny forced displacement and genocide.]
This time, the trigger for the war was a rivalry between top generals. A power-sharing arrangement between military chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the leader of the RSF, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, universally referred to Hemedti, broke down in April 2023. After fighting erupted, the former African rebels initially remained neutral, but in November, many eventually sided with the military against the RSF.
Assault on the camp
In better times, Kutum was known for its sweet dates, oranges and mangos. Locals water their orchards from a lazy river winding through town. About a mile outside Kutum lies the Kassab camp, home to many African families who were displaced during the previous Darfur war and never went home.
Last year, local tensions spiked after the killing of a popular Arab officer, the looting of an RSF base in town and an attack on some Arab shops, all under unclear circumstances, residents said. Four days later, the RSF and allied Arab fighters poured into the area, and a day after that, they attacked Kutum and Kassab.
Fearing ethnic violence, Kassab’s residents had already begun digging trenches and piling up dirt barricades, a rights activist from Kassab recalled. Like other witnesses interviewed for this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals.
The locals’ fears came true. The activist said he awoke to see hundreds of uniformed RSF and Arab fighters on motorbikes and trucks fording the stream separating the camp from the town. Blocked by the barricades, the activist said, fighters circled to the west and attacked.
“The intensity of the fire cut down even the trees,” he said. “We were taking shelter in the mud houses. … We moved only by crawling. … People were in a state of panic similar to the Day of Judgment.”
Camp residents tried to flee, but the gunfire was too intense, the activist said. Friends died around him — shot while found hiding or while running.
A farmer said he had been close enough to hear an RSF commander called Ali Rizkallah, nicknamed Savanna, address his men. “He said, ‘The slaves entered the holes as if they were rats’ — meaning us, the displaced,” said the farmer, who recognized Rizkallah because he is well known in the area.
Looking for the men
As the RSF and allied Arab fighters poured in from the west, they reached the door of the woman with five sons. The Suleiman family was Zaghawa, an African ethnic group that had previously fought against the Janjaweed, and the young men in the family were students, tailors and or market traders, the farmer said. The youngest was 14. The fighters asked if there were any men inside, said a relative. The woman said there weren’t, but they didn’t believe her.
“I saw a young man, about 16 years old, force the door of their house and enter, with a number of soldiers behind him, calling them ‘slave Nubians.’ When they entered, I found their mother standing in front of [her sons] saying, ‘Don’t kill them, don’t kill them,’” recounted a resident of the camp who was passing by. “Moments later, I heard them saying, ‘Kill her.’”
Those fighters wore RSF uniforms, the resident said. The woman was clubbed to the ground with a rifle butt, and three RSF fighters stood in front of her as the five Suleiman brothers and two others were led away, he said. Moments later, he heard shots. Then crackling. Homes, tents and piles of fodder were set ablaze.
The resident said he crawled into one of the piles of hay after he was wounded, but RSF fighters set it on fire to flush him out. When he crawled out the other side, he said, a soldier shouted, “There is a slave here who wants to escape,” before igniting the tents around him.
“If I stayed inside, the fire would burn me, and if I went out, I would be shot,” he recalled. Only the thought of his 2-year-old daughter gave him the courage to crawl out in another direction, he said.
The United Nations reported that 54 people were killed that day in Kassab.
Slaughter in the town
In Kutum town itself, half a dozen residents said uniformed RSF members and Arab militiamen killed civilians and looted houses and shops belonging to non-Arabs. “They kept looting, killing and assaulting people for at least 15 days. They took everything: money, vehicles, animals and other valuables. They even collected the hens,” said one woman. Predominantly Arab neighborhoods and Arab-owned houses were spared, locals said.
One man was clubbed to death in front of his wife and 2-year-old son, a resident said. Another said his 17-year-old relative was shot dead when he tried to flee after being discovered in a bathroom. A third resident said her 65-year-old relative was shot dead in front of her grandchildren as she tried to stop Arab fighters from entering her son’s room.
Residents recorded 19 civilian deaths in the town.
Residents identified several men as RSF commanders who had directed the attacks. None of the videos shared with The Post show those men.
But an RSF propaganda video shows that Lt. Col. Ali Hamid al-Taher was present in Kutum in June 2023. He appears in one video with military soldiers captured in Kutum and in another distributing aid in the town. Five residents said Taher led the attack on Kutum. He was later killed during fighting elsewhere in Darfur.
In the propaganda video about aid distribution, Taher mentions that Maj. Gen. Al Nour Al Gubba, the RSF’s commander for North Darfur, was responsible for that program in Kutum. While Gubba is not shown in any videos, three residents said they saw him in Kutum during the attack.
Gubba could not be reached for comment.
Appealing for protection
Most of the killings occurred on a single day, but sporadic violence continued for about two weeks. Ultimately, ethnic African tribal leaders requested a meeting with the RSF, asking for protection for civilians. But the tribal leaders were met with even more animosity.
One man who attended the meeting recalled that the head of the Arab delegation — a man named al-Hadi Hamid Abdel-Nabi, who was the director of education in the area and the father of two RSF officers — told the tribal leaders: “This land is not for slaves.” In an interview, Abdel-Nabi denied making that statement.
Another tribal leader, from the Fur tribe, challenged Abdel-Nabi, saying all men are equal, whether they are African or Arab, the attendee said. “‘All of us are from Adam, all of us are from the Earth. All of us from Adam. God created us,’” the attendee recounted. “He would not recant his words when he was ordered to by the Janjaweed,” or RSF.
“The next day they killed him,” he said.
Jon Gerberg, Meg Kelly, Bashar Deeb and Jack Sapoch contributed to this report. Support for Provan’s reporting by Freelance Investigative Reporters and Editors (FIRE).
correction
An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the United States estimates that the Sudan conflict has cost about 500,000 lives. The United States has estimated that 150,000 people have died. The article has been corrected.
About the videos
Videos included in this report were obtained by The Washington Post as part of a joint investigation with Lighthouse Reports, Sky News and Le Monde. The videos, filmed by fighters themselves, were obtained from a closed WhatsApp group. They were later verified by geolocation, fire analysis and satellite imagery.
Copyright 2024 The Washington Post
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