Last month, Ali Rizkallah, a commander in the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, was welcomed to Sudan’s capital Khartoum and given a uniform and a rank in the armed forces he had spent about three years fighting.
The army affiliated government hailed his defection, the latest in a series of high-level switches that have been reshaping Sudan’s alliances and boosting the military in one of the deadliest conflicts of the century.
But many others have balked at the sight of Rizkallah and other former RSF figures moving freely and holding press conferences, fearing that the defectors will evade justice for alleged crimes committed under their command.
“These RSF soldiers, even if they seek God’s forgiveness, I can’t forgive them because of what I saw face to face,” Halima Ismail, a woman in western Darfur, told Reuters.
She described Rizkallah’s forces firing in the air during an attack on a village where she was sheltering in 2024.
Sudan’s civil war is believed to have killed hundreds of thousands, displaced millions and spread famine and disease since the RSF and army fell out and began fighting in April 2023.
–Reuters–
