The United States has now reportedly enacted sanctions against Sudan’s de facto president, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, in response to the severe military campaign he has orchestrated throughout the country’s catastrophic civil war.
On Thursday, the Biden administration acted just days prior to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, after its decision the previous week to impose sanctions on Burhan’s adversary, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
The United States has accused Dagalo and his rebel faction, the Rapid Support Forces—predominantly made up of ethnic Arabs—of perpetrating genocide against Black Sudanese in the Darfur region of East Africa.
The Treasury Department, which froze Burhan’s assets in the U.S., stated that the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under his command have executed airstrikes on educational institutions, marketplaces, and medical facilities, and employed food blockades as a strategy.
The Treasury Department levied fines on a purported Sudanese arms dealer and his company for contravening restrictions by acquiring weapons for the military.
The restrictions forbid Burhan and others from engaging in financial transactions with U.S. individuals or within the United States.
The sanctions are imposed 21 months into the Sudan conflict, which opposes Burhan and Dagalo, his former deputy in the military junta that assumed control in 2021.
Precise mortality counts remain ambiguous; however, U.S. officials assert that tens of thousands have perished in the fighting, with certain estimates suggesting the toll may reach 150,000.
Last month, an international committee overseeing hunger reported that famine has expanded to at least five additional locations in the Darfur and Kordofan regions, endangering the lives of at least 638,000 individuals facing starvation.
Mohamed Osman, a Sudanese human rights campaigner, expressed his optimism that the forthcoming Trump government would impose additional sanctions.
This marks the second occasion on which Dagalo’s forces have been implicated in genocide; the International Criminal Court previously indicted Omar al-Bashir, the former president of Sudan, for crimes against humanity for deploying Dagalo’s militiamen, known as the Janjaweed, to assault Black Sudanese rebels in Darfur during the early 2000s. The United Nations reported that approximately 200,000 individuals have perished.
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