Beyond Short-Term Truces: Sudan Demands Accountability for the Genocidal Militia ( 3-3)
Amb: Mubarak Mahgoub musa
It is encouraging that the position of most international and regional powers on the war in Sudan is grounded in the principle of the independence of the Sudanese state, the preservation of its unity, and its territorial sovereignty. However, these positions fall short and do not go the full length of what this principle requires on the ground—namely, that the state, represented by its legitimate armed forces, must be the sole authority entitled, as is the norm in the civilized world, to possess and use weapons.
This, by necessity, is incompatible with any explicit or implicit calls to equate a sovereign, internationally recognized state—with full regional and global diplomatic representation—with a faction legally subordinate to it, which took up arms and rebelled against its legitimate authority.
Why the double standards?
Is this not the very same principle of legitimacy that the international community never ceases to demand from the Lebanese government—insisting that all militias be disarmed in favor of the Lebanese army?
The same applies to Iraq. With the announcement in Washington of the start of the mission of the U.S. Presidential Envoy to Iraq, Mark Savoy, the U.S. administration has intensified its pressure on the Iraqi government regarding the “armed factions.” Earlier this November, Trump’s envoy stressed the need to unify all armed forces under the banner of the central government and prevent any armed groups from operating outside state authority.
This was also affirmed in the U.S. State Department’s statement:
“We urge the Iraqi government to disarm the militias, strip them of their influence, and dismantle them. They have no role in safeguarding Iraq’s security and serve only to undermine Iraqi sovereignty.”
It is therefore vital to understand that the Government of Sudan has a clear and unambiguous vision regarding the necessity of dismantling the militia—in full accordance with the Armed Forces Act, which explicitly states that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have no legal status outside the framework of the Sudanese Armed Forces, and that the Commander-in-Chief (who, under the Constitutional Document, is the Head of State) has the authority to reintegrate them into the army.
It is worth recalling here that the RSF leadership itself, before initiating its pre-planned coup against legitimacy on April 15, 2023, never contested this constitutional authority. The dispute was limited solely to the timeframe required for the gradual integration process.
The position of the Government of Sudan is therefore grounded not only in adherence to the Jeddah Declaration, sponsored by Saudi Arabia and the United States in May 2023, particularly its security and military provisions concerning the RSF, but also in adherence to the Constitutional Document that framed the civilian transition after the fall of the Bashir regime. This document explicitly affirms that both the Armed Forces and the RSF fall under the authority of the Commander-in-Chief, who is, in turn, the Head of State.
Another essential point is that the RSF, by virtue of its mandate and founding law, was never conceived as a political project, unlike – for the sake of argument- the Darfuri armed movements which took up arms with a defined political agenda—whether one agrees with it or not. The RSF had no political program en essence ; it merely adopted scattered political slogans later in an attempt to manufacture a semblance of legitimacy.
The political dimension concerning Sudan’s future, as outlined in the Jeddah Agreement, calls for negotiations among all Sudanese political and societal actors—excluding no one. This aligns squarely with the Sudanese Roadmap presented by the Government of Sudan to the international community this past February—a roadmap toward a civilian and democratic Sudan.
