Army accuses civilians of spying for the RSF paramilitary based on ethnic grounds, leading to arrests, torture and killings.
In December, Osman Arbab*, 24, and his younger brother were on a bus just outside Atbara, Sudan, when military intelligence stopped it and asked which of the passengers were from Darfur or Kordofan.
The two men are originally from Kordofan, even though they have not lived there for years, and found themselves bundled up with all the other young men on the bus who were from the two places.
The military intelligence officers told them all they were accused of spying for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group and took them to a facility in Atbara in northeastern Sudan.
For six days, Arbab and his brother were beaten with sticks to try to extract confessions from them. They would be taken in together so each man could see and hear what was happening to his brother.
When the sticks did not work, their interrogators on day seven connected them to electric cables and started shocking them.
Arbab remembers watching his brother scream, helpless to do anything for him.
“My brother [has diabetes], and I remember thinking that we’re not going to make it out of here,” Arbab told media.
“I was thinking: ‘My brother will die. … They’re going to kill us.’”
At least dozens have been extrajudicially executed, according to videos verified by media.
Survivors and local monitors said security forces are mainly targeting people who originate from Kordofan in southern Sudan or Darfur in the west, which are seen as RSF strongholds. In some regions, civilians belonging to nomadic “Arab” tribes may be more vulnerable because the RSF recruits heavily from their communities.
Arbab thought he was going to die, too – if not from torture then from the terrible conditions in detention. He said his room was freezing, that he was given little water and he was forced to pay for his food. After surviving for 12 days, an officer solicited 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 media.
Even army soldiers have been killed if anyone suspects that they have loyalties to the RSF. In Kordofan, most army battalions are made up of local “non-Arab” Nubians and local “Arabs”.
‘We’re not going to make it out’
There are broad perceptions that “Arab” army officers secretly support the RSF, raising fears that the military could fracture along ethnic lines.
This month, the army reportedly executed 10 soldiers from nomadic “Arab” tribes in Dilling, South Kordofan, accusing them of collaborating with the RSF.
Mohamad told media that in Sudan’s previous civil wars, it was Nuba soldiers and civilians who were accused of collaborating with mainly “non-Arab” rebel groups. Now, things have changed and “Arabs” are being targeted.
Ethnic tensions are soaring across northern and eastern Sudan, too.
On December 16, the army withdrew from Sudan’s second-largest city, Wad Madani after the RSF captured it.
As a final act, the military executed dozens of civilians who belonged to “Arab” and “non-Arab” tribes from Darfur, according to a video shared by pro-army accounts that media verified.
media sent messages to army spokesperson Nabil Abdullah asking him about the summary executions and allegations of arbitrary arrests and torture based on ethnic grounds but received no response by the time of publication.
Mohamad Osman, Sudan researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW), told media that the army’s decision to arm civilians could lead to more ethnic-based killings.
He said the army is fuelling ethnic divisions to drive recruitment, giving the RSF a pretext to retaliate along ethnic lines as it has done in Darfur. On Friday, videos surfacing across social media showed RSF fighters detaining and killing unarmed men in Gezira state, which they captured entirely after seizing Wad Madani, its capital, last month.
Many of the victims were reportedly accused of cooperating with the army.
“Who is a civilian and who is a combatant is going to become blurry,” Osman told media. “And involving civilians as combatants … will help the discourse of the RSF when they claim that they don’t attack civilians but fighters.”
In the early 2000s, thousands of people fled Darfur to northern and eastern states. At the time, “Arab” tribal militias – which were supported by the army and later repackaged as the RSF – targeted civilians based on ethnicity.
According to HRW, they committed summary executions against “non-Arabs” and burned their villages to the ground, often assuming they supported rebel groups. Two decades later, the army is accusing survivors of these attacks of supporting the RSF.
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