Oct. 8 (UPI) — The United States on Tuesday sanctioned a senior leader of Sudan’s breakaway Rapid Support Forces on accusations of procuring weapons for the militia, which are fueling the ongoing bloody civil conflict.
Algoney Hamdan Dagalo Musa, the 34-year-old younger brother of RSF commander Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, is the militia’s director of procurement. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned him Tuesday for arming the RSF and directly contributing to the ongoing siege of El Fasher in North Darfur that is putting the lives of hundreds of thousands at risk.
“At a time when the United States, the United Nations, the African Union, and others are advocating for peace, key individuals on both sides — including Algoney Hamdan Dagalo Musa — continue to procure weapons to facilitate attacks and other atrocities against their own citizens,” Bradley Smith, acting under secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said in a statement.
The Biden administration has imposed seven tranches of sanctions against those involved in the Sudanese conflict, which erupted April 15, 2023, between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces. This followed years of the country teetering on the brink of war and stability after the fall of African nation’s former three-decade dictator government of President Omar al-Bashir in a civilian-backed coup in 2019.
Since the fighting began, country has devolved into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with more than 20,000 killed, according to World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who said that was an under estimation.
More than 8 million have also been internally displaced and another 1.7 million have been forced to seek refuge in neighboring countries, according to U.N. statistics.
The United States formally declared in December that both the SAF and the RSF have committed war crimes — an assessment the International Criminal Court similarly agreed with in January.
In September, a U.N. fact-finding mission found that both sides conducted indiscriminate and direct attacks against civilians, schools and hospitals, as well as water and electricity supplies. Civilians were targeted for rape and other forms of sexual violence, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and ill-treatment.
There have also been U.N. allegations of summary executions.
The United States has repeatedly attempted to secure a cease-fire in the fighting, though these efforts have so far failed.
The Biden administration said Tuesday that its sanctions are part of its efforts to promote accountability for those fueling the fighting.
“The United States will continue to use the tools at its disposal to support a peace process and impose cost on those perpetuating the conflict,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
The sanctions — which freeze all U.S. assets held by those designated and bars U.S. persons from doing business with them — come as the European Union on Tuesday prolonged its punitive measures imposed on six people and six entities related to the conflict.
