Poison gas used in Sudan, violating international law

“Sudan’s authoritarian government built a secret stockpile of chemical weapons that senior military officials sought to conceal after chlorine bombs were used against rebel forces,” reports The Washington Post.

Chlorine gas cannot be controlled after release. It drifts and harms civilians, including children.When inhaled, chlorine burns the lungs and causes death by suffocation. When it mixes with moisture in the body, it becomes hydrochloric acid.

Internal government documents, text messages, and videos reveal that “Sudan’s chemical weapons effort involved diverting shipments of chlorine meant to provide safe drinking water, hiding warhead production sites on military bases, testing bombs in remote desert locations and drawing up lists of targets where toxic gas could penetrate enemy defenses.”

“Three years of civil war there have created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis….Any stockpiling and use of chemical weapons would violate long-standing international bans aimed at eradicating a notoriously inhumane form of warfare, and put Sudan in the company of Syria and Iraq as states that have been condemned in recent decades for deploying chemical agents against their own people.”

Sudan’s military, while brutal, is actually less brutal than the other main combatant in Sudan’s civil war, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. The RSF is even more vicious. Sudan’s military uses unguided bombs in busy towns and neighborhoods, and its indiscriminate airstrikes frequently hit homes, public markets, and schools. But even so, Sudan’s military has killed far fewer civilians than the RSF.

The United Nations notes that “Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) committed genocide in the western city of el-Fasher, carrying out mass killings, gang rapes and deliberate starvation as part of an intentional policy, a United Nations investigation has found. The UN Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan released its findings” in July, “concluding that the RSF’s systematic campaign of violence against civilians during and after its siege of the capital of North Darfur state amounted to genocide.”

The genocide was mainly aimed at the Zaghawa people, who live in the far west of Sudan and in the eastern part of the neighboring country of Chad.

The RSF also have committed genocide against the Masalit people of Darfur in western Sudan, before and after seizing the major city of El Geneina. The RSF has kidnapped thousands of people and held them for ransom, torturing many of them. The RSF has killed at least 250,000 people from non-Arab ethnic groups in Sudan’s western Darfur region.

Sudan’s civil war has already killed at least 400,000 people. Both the RSF and Sudan’s army have killed thousands of civilians using drones.