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For monthsSAFRSFSAFRSFRSFUAERSFUNUSUAERSFUAERSFSAFRSFUAEUNYour browser does not support the element. America has been criticised for not doing enough to help end the catastrophic civil war in Sudan that began nearly two years ago. It took ten months for President Joe Biden to appoint a special envoy to Sudan, and then another nine for his top emissary to pay the country a visit. An American-led push for ceasefire talks fizzled in August after the Sudanese Armed Forces (), the regular national army, did not show up.Just days before leaving office Mr Biden appears to be trying to save face. On January 7th Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, said that the Rapid Support Forces (), a brutal paramilitary force fighting the for control of Sudan, had committed genocide in the western region of Darfur. Mr Blinken slapped sanctions on the ’s leader, Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo (better known as Hemedti), and on seven companies owned by the in the United Arab Emirates (). America’s Treasury says the firms have supplied the group with arms and money.It is the second time America has concluded that a genocide has been carried out in Sudan. The first was two decades ago, when Mr Blinken’s predecessor, Colin Powell, told Congress that the rape and slaughter of black Africans in Darfur by government-backed Arab militias known as the Janjaweed (“devils on horseback”) amounted to genocide. Mr Powell’s speech helped turn Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s dictator at the time, into a global pariah.This time, Mr Blinken’s statement adds weight to what many observers, including this newspaper, concluded within months of the war’s eruption. The , a descendant of the Janjaweed (which were also led by Mr Dagalo), launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing in West Darfur in the first months of the war in 2023. As many as 15,000 members of the Masalit, a black African ethnic group, were killed in the city of el-Geneina alone. Hundreds of thousands fled to neighbouring countries.Back in the 2000s the authors of a report to the Security Council questioned whether Mr Bashir’s military campaign in Darfur included “the crucial element of genocidal intent”. Today there are fewer voices of dissent. “The government has had all the information it needs for a genocide determination for months now,” says Kholood Khair of Confluence Advisory, a Sudanese think-tank.What took so long? Apart from bureaucratic hold-ups, some inside the Biden administration worried that the move might weaken America’s ability to act as a mediator. Others were concerned about angering the , an American ally that stands accused of supplying the with weapons (a charge the denies in the face of plentiful evidence). Yet in the end, “I think they realised this is a real stain on their legacy,” says Cameron Hudson, a former American diplomat now at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The last-minute announcement serves as a salve on their conscience.Will it do more than that? By sanctioning the leadership of the but not that of the —whose continued blocking of aid has contributed to a famine that could kill millions—the Biden administration appears to have abandoned its policy of cautious evenhandedness. Yet the timing of the decision makes its strategic value questionable, argues Jonas Horner of the European Council on Foreign Relations. The incoming Trump administration is likely to be motivated less by protecting human rights in Sudan than by advancing American interests in the Horn of Africa. It will probably have little interest in alienating the or, more crucially, the .Twenty years ago, the American genocide designation galvanised an international campaign to “Save Darfur”, helped to bring war-crimes charges against Mr Bashir and spurred the deployment of a joint and African peacekeeping force three years later. There seems little prospect of a similar effort today.
