RSF Terror Follows Sudanese Civilians Into Chad

Think about what it takes to flee a massacre. You walk for days with a child on your hip and a plastic bag of whatever you could carry. You cross a border into a country you have never seen, expecting safety. Then the people who share your language and your misery look at you and see your ethnicity as a target.

That is the reality for thousands of Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad, where distrust and hostility are spreading between communities who fled the same war. Fighters linked to the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, are accused of repeatedly targeting civilians from other ethnic groups. The war did not stay in Sudan. It came across the border with the refugees, and it is still hunting them.

We need to be precise about who is responsible, because precision is what separates accountability from prejudice. The overwhelming majority of Sudanese Arabs are not RSF fighters, and they are fleeing the same bombs and the same militias as everyone else. Blaming an ethnic group for the crimes of a militia is exactly the kind of tribal poison that has already destroyed Sudan. But refusing to name the RSF command structure for what it does is a different kind of cowardice. The RSF is a force with a leader, a chain of command, and a documented record. When its units target civilians on the basis of their ethnicity, that is a crime, and the men who order it must answer for it.

The record is not obscure. The war that began on 15 April 2023, when the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces turned on each other in Khartoum, has been one of the most brutal conflicts of this century. In West Darfur, the RSF and allied Arab militias attacked the city of El Geneina in mid-2023, killing large numbers of Masalit civilians in a campaign that UN investigators and human rights organisations documented in detail. The Masalit were not combatants. They were farmers, traders, and families whose only crime was their identity. The same pattern repeated in El Fasher in 2025, where the fall of the city to the RSF was followed by credible reports of mass killings, sexual violence, and ethnically targeted executions. The UN Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan has repeatedly described violations of this scale as potential war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Here is what makes this worse. The RSF's roots lie in the Janjaweed militias that the Sudanese state unleashed on Darfur in the early 2000s. Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, known as Ali Kushayb, a Janjaweed commander, was convicted by the International Criminal Court in 2025 for crimes committed in Darfur two decades earlier. Two decades. Sudan's rulers have spent that entire period recycling the same men, the same methods, and the same impunity. The RSF did not invent this model. It inherited it, and it has been rewarded for it with new weapons and new territory.

And the weapons did not fall from the sky. UN panel reports and independent investigators have raised concerns about the external supply lines that have kept the RSF fighting, including allegations that the United Arab Emirates has channelled arms and support to the group. The UAE has denied these claims. Yet the pattern is familiar. Foreign powers chase gold, ports, and influence across the Sahel and the Horn while Sudanese children learn to fear their neighbours. Russia's Wagner network has been tied to gold extraction in Sudan, and Gulf states, Turkey, and others compete for influence in the same space. The new scramble for Africa has different actors from the old one. The result for ordinary people is the same: their land, their resources, and their lives are treated as bargaining chips.

Chad, meanwhile, is carrying a weight it did not choose. Eastern Chad has absorbed hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees, and the strain on water, food, land, and security has been severe. The government of Mahamat Idriss Déby came to power in 2021 after his father's death, through a military-led transition that bypassed the democratic process the Chadian people had been promised. A government that owes its own legitimacy to the barrel of a gun cannot credibly lecture anyone about protecting civilians. Chad must now prove that it can protect the people on its soil, and that begins with refusing to let any armed faction, whether RSF, army-linked, or foreign-backed, operate in its refugee camps or its border towns.

So what must happen? Start with protection. Chad's government, working with UNHCR and the African Union, should ensure that refugee camps are professionally managed, that registration is fair and transparent, and that ethnic targeting is investigated and punished, not ignored. Camps must be separated from armed actors, and any fighter found harassing or killing civilians should be arrested and prosecuted under Chadian and international law. Humanitarian access must be unrestricted, and aid must reach people based on need, not on the political loyalties of their community.

Then hold the perpetrators accountable. The UN Security Council should expand targeted sanctions on RSF and SAF commanders responsible for atrocities, freeze their foreign assets, and enforce arms embargoes with real monitoring, not diplomatic theatre. The ICC must be given the resources and the political backing to pursue Darfur-related cases beyond Kushayb. The AU must stop treating Sudan as someone else's problem and apply the Peace and Security Council's full authority, including sanctions against any member or partner that arms militias.

Africa has shown us what better governance looks like. Botswana built one of the continent's most stable economies on strong property rights, transparent institutions, and disciplined public finance. Mauritius proved that rule of law and open markets can turn a small island into an economic success story. Senegal, after years of democratic strain, showed that peaceful transitions and independent courts can hold power accountable. None of these countries is perfect. All of them understood that a state which protects its citizens equally, enforces its laws without favour, and answers to its people is the only durable foundation for peace.

And we, the people, have our part to play. We should demand that our governments stop treating Sudan's atrocities as distant news. We should demand that the foreign companies and states that trade with the RSF or its backers face scrutiny at home. We should support the journalists, lawyers, and civil society groups documenting these crimes on the ground, because their work is what makes accountability possible.

Let us be clear about what is happening. Civilians are being hunted for their ethnicity, first in Sudan and now in the refugee camps of a neighbouring country. Children who survived one massacre are being told by their own community that they do not belong. This is not an unfortunate side effect of war. It is the strategy of a militia that has learned it can kill with impunity.

Ask yourself what kind of continent we want to live on. Do we want one where a warlord can drive a family from their home, follow them across a border, and still be treated as a respected partner by outside powers? Or do we want one where the law applies to the powerful as much as the powerless? The answer is not complicated. It is our responsibility. Demand that your government act. Demand sanctions on the commanders. Demand that Chad protect the refugees it has taken in. Demand that the AU and the UN finally do their jobs. Sudan's people have already paid the price for our silence. We cannot afford to pay it again.

Based on reporting by FRANCE24