Top Senate Republican urges Trump to sanction Sudan’s Hemedti over war conduct
The United States and the United Nations found that the Rapid Support Forces under Hemedti have committed war crimes including sexual violence and mass killings.
A top Republican wants Donald Trump to sanction the rebel leader at the center of the Sudanese civil war for human rights violations — including ethnic cleansing and rape — when the president-elect takes office.
Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) said during a Senate Foreign Relations hearing Thursday that the Biden administration’s failure to sanction the head of the Rapid Support Forces, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as "Hemedti,” was a “clear missed opportunity.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last year that the RSF had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity since fighting broke out between the rebel group and the Sudanese Armed Forces in April 2023.
Senators called on President Joe Biden to sanction Hemedti in April this year and outlined how under his leadership the RSF had engaged in ethnic cleansing and sexual violence, including rape.
“While they blew us off, we also did not receive the report on determinations that is required by law,” Risch said on Thursday.
The president can impose economic sanctions and visa bans on foreign persons found to have engaged in human rights violations or corruption under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. But the president is also required under the law to consider requests from Senate Foreign Relations leaders to determine whether a foreign person has engaged in sanctionable activity and to inform the committee within 120 days of its request on whether the president plans to impose sanctions.
Risch said the Biden administration's inaction on Hemedti is a clear example of the White House ignoring Congress and its attempts to use sanctions to hold human rights violators accountable.
“I want to assure you, Mr. Chairman, that we’re going to pursue this into the next administration, and I’ve already opened negotiations to see if we can’t do better in that regard,” Risch told Foreign Relations Chairman Ben Cardin (D-Md.) on Thursday. Risch is expected to take over as chair of the committee when Republicans take control of the Senate in January.
The Biden administration has criticized the conduct of the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces and accused both of war crimes in December 2023.
Cameron Hudson, a former CIA and State Department official in Africa, told Al-Monitor that the incoming Trump administration sanctioning Hemedti would send a clear signal to the Sudanese military.
“Washington has alienated itself from the army, making a negotiated settlement much, much harder. And they hope, and they hold out hope, that a Trump administration will see the army as constitutionally and qualitatively, very different from the RSF. And if a Trump administration were to sanction Hemedti, then that would be the ultimate signal that we see these two forces in very different terms,” said Hudson, now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The conflict between the rebel group and the Sudanese military has created what the United Nations warns is catastrophic levels of suffering. The UN reports that over 11 million people have been displaced, fleeing hunger, mass killings and systematic sexual violence. Initial reports placed the number of people killed at around 20,000, but a new study estimates the death count is far higher at more than 61,000 people.
Hudson said that based on his own experience sanctioning Sudanese officials under the Bush administration, he believes the Biden administration is misguided to think that sanctioning Hemedti would make the rebel leader less willing to negotiate an end to the war.
“The threat of the sanction is not the thing that is going to dissuade them from talking. In fact, it's the sanction itself that motivates them to come to the table,” he said.
Washington has sanctioned other RSF leaders under Hemedti in recent months. But Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said the Biden administration has failed to hold the group’s primary external backer accountable: the United Arab Emirates.
The UAE claims it has not supplied the RSF with weapons. But Van Hollen said Thursday on the Senate floor that findings from the UN and credible human rights organizations “indicate just the opposite.”
The Democratic senator has introduced a bill to block a proposed $1.2 billion arms sale to the UAE that the State Department approved last month until the president assures Congress that the UAE has not provided material support to the RSF.
“What we should not be doing is shipping advanced American weapons to any country that is fueling the misery and suffering and killing in Sudan. And yet, that is what the Biden administration is proposing to do,” Van Hollen said.
With only weeks left until the end of the legislative session and Trump’s return to the White House, Van Hollen’s bill could be dead on arrival. Hudson said the incoming president is likely to defer to key US regional allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who Trump is unwilling to alienate.
But on sanctioning Hemedti, Hudson said that decision has been over complicated by the outgoing administration. “It didn't need to be this complicated. This guy is a warlord who commits genocide and mass rape,” he said.
