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The US sanctioned the head of Sudan’s armed forces, it said Thursday, a week after imposing similar penalties on the leader of the country’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
“Neither man is fit to govern a future, peaceful Sudan,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement, with both RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa and Sudan’s military chief Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan accused of using starvation as a weapon and denying humanitarian access.
The announcement comes shortly after a report in The New York Times that the Sudanese military used chemical weapons in its war against the RSF.
US officials told the NYT that the weapons were deployed in remote parts of Sudan, but many fear the weapons could eventually be used in the country’s densely populated capital, Khartoum.
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Sudan’s civil war began in April 2023 and has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 150,000 people dead and 11 million displaced, leaving the country facing one of its worst famines in decades.
Though the US has already sanctioned RSF members and determined that the rebel group committed genocide, sanctions against al-Burhan are a “significant move,” the NYT wrote, since many consider him Sudan’s de facto leader.
Aid groups worry that sanctioning the Sudanese government will lead to retaliation, further restricting supplies to areas currently at risk of famine.