NAIROBI/WASHINGTON — The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on Sudan’s leader, army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, accusing him of choosing war over negotiations to bring an end to the conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people and driven millions from their homes.
The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement that under Burhan’s leadership, the army’s war tactics have included indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure, attacks on schools, markets and hospitals, and extrajudicial executions.
Washington announced the measures, first reported by Reuters, just a week after imposing sanctions on Burhan’s rival in the two-year-old civil war, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
Two sources with knowledge of the action told Reuters one aim of Thursday’s sanctions was to show that Washington was not picking sides.
Speaking earlier on Thursday, Burhan was defiant about the prospect that he might be targeted.
“I hear there’s going to be sanctions on the army leadership. We welcome any sanctions for serving this country,” he said in comments broadcast on Al Jazeera television.
Washington also issued sanctions over the supply of weapons to the army, targeting a Sudanese-Ukrainian national as well as a Hong Kong-based company.
Thursday’s action freezes any of their U.S. assets and generally bars Americans from dealing with them. The Treasury Department said it issued authorizations allowing certain transactions, including activities involving the warring generals, so as not to impede humanitarian assistance.
The Sudanese army and the RSF together led a coup in 2021 removing Sudan’s civilian leadership, but fell out less than two years later over plans to integrate their forces.
The war that broke out in April 2023 has plunged half of the population into hunger.
Dagalo, known as Hemedti, was sanctioned after Washington determined his forces had committed genocide, as well as for attacks on civilians. The RSF has engaged in bloody looting campaigns in the territory it controls.
In a statement, Sudan’s foreign ministry said the latest U.S. move “expresses nothing but confusion and a weak sense of justice” and accused Washington of defending genocide by the RSF.
The United States and Saudi Arabia have tried repeatedly to bring both sides to the negotiating table, with the army refusing most attempts, including talks in Geneva in August which in part aimed to ease humanitarian access.
The army has instead ramped up its military campaign, this week taking the strategic city of Wad Madani and vowing to retake the capital Khartoum.
Rights experts and residents have accused the army of indiscriminate airstrikes as well as attacks on civilians, most recently revenge attacks in Wad Madani this week. The U.S. had previously determined the army and RSF had committed war crimes.
In his final news conference ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday that it was a “real regret” Washington had not managed to end the fighting under his watch.
While there have been some improvements in getting humanitarian assistance into Sudan through U.S. diplomacy, they have not seen an end to the conflict, “not an end to the abuses, not an end to the suffering of people,” Blinken said. “We’ll keep working here for the next three days, and I hope the next administration will take that on as well.”
