Global Courant
In December, Osman Arbab*, 24, and his younger brother were on a bus just outside Atbara, Sudan, when military intelligence stopped him and asked which of the passengers were from Darfur or Kordofan.
The two men are originally from Kordofan, although they have not lived there for years, and were on the bus with all the other young men who came from the two places.
The military intelligence officers told them everything they accused of spying for the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and took them to a facility in Atbara in northeastern Sudan.
For six days, Arbab and his brother were beaten with sticks in an attempt to force confessions from them. They would be recorded together so that each man could see and hear what happened to his brother.
When the sticks didn’t work, their interrogators connected them to electrical cables on day seven and started giving them shocks.
Arbab remembers how his brother screamed, helpless to do anything for him.
‘We’re not going to make it’
“My brother (has diabetes) and I remember thinking we were not going to get out of this,” Arbab told Al Jazeera.
“I thought, ‘My brother is going to die. … They’re going to kill us. ”
Families escaping violence in Ardamata, West Darfur, cross Adre, Chad on November 7, 2023. Survivors told of executions and looting, which they said was carried out by RSF and allied militias (El Tayeb Siddig/Reuters)
The military appears to be cracking down on people from regions where its rivals, the RSF, have some support, accusing them of being “sleeper cells” of the RSF.
The people caught in these dragnets across the country are subjected to enforced disappearances and often torture, with little or no evidence presented against them.
At least dozens have been extrajudicially executed, according to videos verified by Al Jazeera.
Survivors and local observers said security forces are mainly targeting people from Kordofan in South Sudan or Darfur in the west, which are seen as strongholds of the RSF. In some regions, civilians belonging to nomadic ‘Arab’ tribes may be more vulnerable because the RSF recruits heavily from their communities.
Arbab thought he too would die – if not from torture, then from the terrible conditions in detention. He said his room was freezing, he was given little water and he had to pay for his food. After surviving for twelve days, an officer asked for a bribe for his release.
“I gave $50 for myself and $50 for my brother, and they finally let us go the next morning,” Arbab told Al Jazeera.
Even army soldiers have been killed if anyone suspects their loyalty to the RSF. In Kordofan, most army battalions consist of local “non-Arab” Nubians and local “Arabs”.
There is a widespread perception that ‘Arab’ army officers secretly support the RSF, raising fears that the army could split along ethnic lines.
This month, the army reportedly executed ten soldiers from nomadic ‘Arab’ tribes in Dilling, South Kordofan, accusing them of collaborating with the RSF.
One of the soldiers was tied to a ladder and hanged by his feet as the crowd cheered his execution, according to a video on social media that Al Jazeera verified. A photo of the aftermath shows that the victim appeared to have been tortured to death. Local observers and activists described the killing as a “crucifixion.”
Ethnic tension
“In South Kordofan there have always been tensions along ethnic and tribal lines, even in the military,” said Hafiz Mohamad, a Sudanese researcher from South Kordofan.
Mohamad told Al Jazeera that during Sudan’s previous civil wars, it was Nuba soldiers and civilians who were accused of working with mainly ‘non-Arab’ rebel groups. Now things have changed and “Arabs” are being targeted.
Ethnic tensions are also running high in northern and eastern Sudan.
On December 16, the army withdrew from Sudan’s second-largest city, Wad Madani, after the RSF captured it.
The final act is the army executed dozens of civilians belonging to “Arab” and “non-Arab” tribes from Darfur, according to a video shared by pro-army accounts that Al Jazeera verified.
Sudanese army soldiers rest near a tank at a checkpoint in Khartoum on April 30, 2023, as clashes continue in war-torn Sudan (AFP)
Al Jazeera sent messages to army spokesman Nabil Abdullah asking about the summary executions and allegations of arbitrary arrests and torture on ethnic grounds, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
Mohamad Osman, Sudan researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW), told Al Jazeera that the military’s decision to arm civilians could lead to more ethnic killings.
He said the military is fueling ethnic divisions to boost recruitment, giving the RSF a pretext to retaliate along ethnic lines, as it has done in Darfur. Videos emerged on social media on Friday showing RSF fighters arresting and killing unarmed men in Gezira state, completely capturing them after capturing Wad Madani, the capital, last month.
Many of the victims were reportedly accused of collaborating with the military.
“Who is a civilian and who is a fighter will become blurred,” Osman told Al Jazeera. “And involving civilians as combatants … will benefit the RSF’s discourse when they claim that they are not attacking civilians, but combatants.”
Counterproductive
In the early 2000s, thousands of people fled Darfur to the northern and eastern states. At the time, “Arab” tribal militias – which were backed by the military and later transformed into the RSF – targeted civilians based on ethnicity.
According to HRW, they committed summary offenses executions against ‘non-Arabs’ and burned down their villages, often under the impression that they were supporting rebel groups. Twenty years later, the military accuses survivors of these attacks of supporting the RSF.
Muzan Mabrooka*, a young woman from a ‘non-Arab’ tribe in Darfur, said she and her male colleague were arrested in June and accused of being RSF spies.
They were arrested in Gadarif, a state in eastern Sudan, and taken to a detention center and interrogated. Her male colleague was severely assaulted, Mabrooka said.
Women and their children who fled Sudan after the outbreak of fighting between the Sudanese army and the RSF sit at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) transit center in Renk, South Sudan on May 1, 2023 (Jok Solomun /Reuters)
“When they finished investigating me, they told me to leave. But I claimed that my colleague was my husband, and that I was not leaving him. I was afraid they would really hurt him if I left,” Mabrooka told Al Jazeera.
Mabrooka’s colleague was eventually released that day, but two of her friends were later kidnapped and tortured in Kassala, a state in eastern Sudan. She said they have also been released, but are too scared to talk about what happened to them. According to local observers, many others are still missing.
Jehanne Henry, a human rights expert on Sudan and a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute, said the military is doing itself a disservice by targeting people based on ethnicity.
“Military intelligence could lead people to look for other allies – if not RSF, then perhaps groups that can deal with RSF – which is politically very dangerous for the Sudanese armed forces,” Henry said. “The military has just made one blunder after another.”
Mabrooka added that civilians from Kordofan and Darfur are always believed to be plotting against the military, regardless of the context. She criticized the military for claiming to protect civilians and subjecting many to serious violations.
“It does not matter who supported or did not support the RSF in the past,” Mabrooka told Al Jazeera. “All tribes (from Darfur and Kordofan) are now being targeted.”
*Names have been changed to protect individuals.
Note to readers: The terms “Arab” and “non-Arab” are a slippery label in many regions of Sudan. Both communities are black and Muslim and have been intermarried for centuries. The labels usually indicate common ways of living. ‘Arabs’ are traditionally pastoralists and camel herders, while ‘non-Arabs’ are sedentary farmers.
