Minni Minnawi, the former rebel leader who is now governor of Darfur, says the UK and other western countries are complicit in a massacre of 27,000 of his people by Sudan’s rogue militia, the Rapid Support Forces, after it seized the city of el-Fasher at the end of October.
Minnawi says warnings about the mass killings were ignored by international leaders, who he believes are turning a blind eye to the part played by the United Arab Emirates in funding the violent RSF, descendants of the Janjaweed militia that carried out a genocide against Darfur’s Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa peoples between 2003-2005. An estimated 200,000 died.
Speaking to The New World in an interview in his temporary office in Port Sudan, Minnaw provided a death toll for the el-Fasher killing spree that is much higher than what has been previously reported. El-Fasher had been under siege for more than six months before the fall of the city and while Sudanese officials originally estimated that around 2,500 had died in the attack, testimony has emerged since from survivors and humanitarian workers of an unprecedented horror in and around the city.
Minnawi, whose family comes from North Darfur and who belongs to the Zaghawa people, a target for the RSF says he lost relatives in el-Fasher. Many were eliminated”.
Quietly spoken and with an intensity of gaze, Minnawi said the massacre could have been avoided and that desperate Sudanese warnings that the RSF were coming were ignored and even belittled internationally. This, he said, made all leaders internationally and in the west, complicit in what unfolded.
“It was not sudden. It was expected for a long time. We warned the United Nations Security Council and we warned the international community many, many times that Darfur will become a genocide if it is taken,” he told The New World during a meeting with a small group of Arabic and UK journalists, facilitated by Al Arabiya productions.
“They did it in 2003 in Darfur, it was the same guys, the Janjaweed… these are not new experiences for this region,” he said, referring to the Arab militia armed as a counterinsurgency force by the then-president Omar al-Bashir.
“We needed revolution, but it was a revolution by the wrong people. This is a very unfortunate turning point that I can describe – the nature of these forces are based on ethnic discrimination and segregation and intent on genocide.
“We estimate that 85 per cent of the RSF are mercenaries from other countries across the ocean, mainly Latin America, Colombia and yes, from neighbouring African countries. But they are not Sudanese, just 15 per cent we think are Sudanese, not freely fighting but imposed by others.”
Minnawi said the UAE is “manipulating the international community diplomatically” and its denials that it supports the RSF were “lip service”.
“They are hiding their criminality and are now using sophisticated weapons including an estimated 2000 drones, which have been used all over Sudan, including the city of Port Sudan, targeting civilian areas. Everywhere there are more than 20 people together, they target”.
Speaking just hours before US president, Donald Trump’s unexpected announcement that he had known nothing of the Sudan crisis but now promised to “help bring an immediate halt to what is happening in Sudan”, Minnawi warned that peace could only be brought about if negotiations were held directly with the UAE.
“If we are to negotiate, we have to negotiate with the Emirates and not Hemedti,” he said, using the vernacular name for Mohamed Hamdam Daglo, leader of the RSF.
He calls Hemediti a mere “puppet” of the UAE.
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Ever since war broke out in April 2023, when an official plan to integrate the RSF into the Sudanese state military turned into an internal revolution, the RSF have been accused of war crimes and atrocities, including mass killings of civilians and rape.
Last Wednesday, UN Relief co-ordinator, Tom Fletcher spent a week inside Darfur and said that this was now the “epicentre of human suffering in the world”, describing what the UN found as a “horror show” and testimony heard from survivors represented a “crime scene”.
El-Fasher was the last city in the enormous western region of Darfur to remain in the hands of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), established in 1925, and what are known as the Joint Forces, former Darfuri rebels aligned with the Sudanese military.
Minnawi singled out the UK among western powers for particular criticism saying that it had failed as the “penholder” for Sudan at the UN Security Council – which means it has the primary, informal responsibility for leading the negotiation of resolutions and organising meetings concerning Sudan. This role means the UK could have used its diplomatic influence to push for international action in the conflict, including demanding emergency sessions of the council or pressured for greater access for humanitarian organisations and stepping up the protection of civilians.
Minnawi also referred to recent United Nations information suggesting testimony about British military equipment being seen in the hands of RSF militia in Sudan, which has also sparked questions about the sale of UK arms to the UAE.
“I am not a military man, but I think that has happened,” he said. “If via a third party or direct to the RSF… well we hear and we have seen pictures of the arms,” he said. Asked to comment on UAE statements that it has stopped arms importation, Minnawi said, “lip service, they are covering up their own crimes”.
He added: “I personally cannot anticipate their ultimate goal – if they need all Sudan or all of Africa. But the implication is clear: RSF has committed a genocide and governments are complicit in allowing the UAE to provide arms to carry this out,.”
The mentality of RSF personnel, Minnawi said, is that if you are not Arab, you must die. “We have known this for a long time. They believe that Sudan is Arab land without Arabs… this is the mentality of the genocide,” he said.
“We Sudanese are diverse; we don’t think what they think – which is that anyone who is from Sudan, whether they are white or black, are not Arabs. What is the benefit of this kind of thinking about our brothers?”
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