The world must act on Sudan’s chemical weapons

A dossier appearing in major western media outlets on Saturday provides ample evidence that the Sudanese Armed Forces used chemical weapons in that country’s ongoing civil war. This and other revelations, including that the SAF maintained a stockpile of these weapons and then sought to conceal it, should leave the international community with no further excuses for inaction.

The contents of the dossier – photographs, videos, messages and blueprints – are unquestionably damning. They describe desert bomb tests that sent up yellow vapour and a conveyor-style rack fitted to a transport aircraft so that bombs could be dropped through the cargo door.

Three details stand out, in particular. First, some of the chlorine used to make the bombs was reportedly diverted from a civilian water-treatment plant near the capital, Khartoum, that – in turn – received these supplies from international aid organisations.

Chlorine is, in and of itself, not a scheduled chemical under the Chemical Weapons Convention. But its use as a weapon to cause death or harm is banned under the international arms control treaty – and therefore a war crime.

Second is the reported inclusion of the chemical weapons programme’s own architect in a committee that authorities in Khartoum convened to investigate the US government’s allegations on the use of these weapons. Unsurprisingly, the committee “found no evidence” to this end.

Third, and perhaps most incriminating of all, is that the voice and text messages included in the dossier implicate Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, head of the SAF, himself in knowledge of the programme and in subsequent efforts to erase its traces once US sanctions followed suspected attacks in 2024.

It’s important to point out that both the SAF and its principal antagonist, the Rapid Support Forces, have been accused of several atrocities – and both sides deserve scrutiny. Since its outbreak in April 2023, the conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced about 14 million people and left about 20 million – roughly 40-45 per cent of the country’s population – facing acute hunger.

Yet the dossier’s findings place the army’s leadership under an even sharper spotlight.

Last week, a UN report found that the SAF used foreign-supplied drones in operations that harmed civilians. Put simply, the very entity that often accused the RSF of relying on external support has itself been found to depend on foreign actors to launch deadly attacks on civilian areas. Massad Boulos, a senior adviser to US President Donald Trump, told the BBC last week that 12 countries are involved militarily in Sudan.

The UN report emerged just days after Century Foundation, a US-based non-partisan think tank, published its findings about the SAF’s ties to Yemen’s Houthi rebels that involve arms-smuggling networks across the Red Sea and in the Horn of Africa.

So far, the international response to these reports, and indeed the dossier, has been inadequate. The US is pushing for a UN Security Council resolution to expand an arms embargo imposed on Sudan’s Darfur region in 2004 to cover the entire country. But any credible accountability process has to involve inspectors being given access to suspected sites.

It is also increasingly clear that Gen Al Burhan – the man who approved chemical warfare before ordering all evidence to be erased, and has rejected previous ceasefire efforts – cannot be allowed to claim leadership of the troubled country.

The Security Council, and the General Assembly that he is scheduled to address this month, should make that plain.