
The United States has imposed sanctions against Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, citing his responsibility for war crimes in the ongoing conflict owing to Burhan’s decision to choose “war over good-faith negotiation and de-escalation,” the US Treasury Department said in a statement.
The US sanctions against Sudan army’s chief, announced this week, come a week after Washington took a similar action against a Sudanese rebel leader. Burhan “has refused to participate in international peace talks to end the fighting, choosing war over good-faith negotiation and de-escalation,” according to the statement. He is blamed for blocking humanitarian aid and attacking schools, markets, and hospitals in a conflict that has bled the oil-rich nation dry over the past year and created the largest displacement crisis in the world.
In response, Sudan’s army-aligned government expressed its objection to the sanctions, calling them “flawed,” “unethical” and “dubious.” Its statement also asserted that “this decision lacks the basic principles of justice and objectivity, relying on implausible pretexts.”
The outgoing US secretary of state Antony Blinken accused the SAF of war crimes, though he did not address recent US media reports that the Sudanese military had used chemical weapons at least twice. “The SAF has also committed war crimes, and it continues to target civilians,” Blinken said. Last week, Washington slapped sanctions against the opposing Rapid Support Forces’ (RSF) leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo, whom the White House accused of being behind a wave of renewed ethnic cleansing, rape and systematic atrocities. “Taken together, these sanctions underscore the US view that neither man is fit to govern a future, peaceful Sudan,” Blinken said in a statement.