US Senator Ben Cardin criticises foreign interference in Sudan conflict

US Senator Ben Cardin, the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has once again sounded the alarm about the atrocities taking place in Sudan as war rages on in the country. He was speaking at a hearing on Conflict and Humanitarian Emergency in Sudan.

In his opening remarks, Senator Cardin called on external actors to stop arming the belligerents in Sudan and called for a diplomatic solution to the conflict there.

The hearing comes after the Chair sent a letter to President Joe Biden requesting a determination on whether Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces and its leader, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, should be subject to sanctions for gross violations of human rights under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.

“Ceasefire after ceasefire has been violated. The risk of further atrocities is high. Diplomatic efforts to end the conflict have failed," said Cardin.

"I think we need to make it clear to both parties—and their foreign backers—the cost of continued conflict is higher than the cost of coming to the negotiating table. A report from last year by a United Nations panel of experts found evidence that the UAE was giving arms to the RSF.”

The senator expressed concern for the plight of civilians caught up in the conflict, especially now as the fighting approaches Al-Fasher. It is the only remaining city in Sudan’s Darfur region that the RSF—the [paramilitary] Rapid Support Forces—have not taken over. Eyewitnesses report attacks on over 16 nearby towns with entire villages burned to the ground.

"Starving civilians," said Cardin, "are trying to escape the violence with their belongings on foot. As the death toll climbs, the United Nations has warned that the lives of 800,000 civilians who are still living in the city are in danger. It has been more than a year since the conflict erupted in Sudan between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces."

Noting that there has been a blatant violation of the UN arms embargo that has been in place for decades, Senator Cardin emphasized that “the Sudanese people deserve security and prosperity as much as any other people in the world.”

US Special Envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello, who appeared before the committee to discuss the crisis in Sudan said “the war and humanitarian crisis in Sudan are already catastrophic.”

“Worse yet,” he added, “the most likely trajectory forward is towards famine, fighting that takes on increasingly ethnic and regional aspects, and the possibility of a failed state of 50 million people on the strategic eastern gateway to the Sahel."

"Our strategy is to end the war...," Perriello explained, " by supercharging our diplomacy around the whole of government, raising the cost of those fighting and fueling the war, and building an alliance of regional partners with enough leverage to compel the two sides to accept a deal that we do not believe they will reach on their own that hands the Sudanese people back their future.

"Second, we are continuing to raise the cost of fighting and continuing the war, and engage directly with both fighting factions, including top generals to deter escalation and atrocities."

The goal, he said," is to build the political will sufficient to force these actors to silence the guns."