SUMMARY
Since independence, civil war has been an integral part of the political life in Sudan. The two main areas of conflict have been southern Sudan and the western region of Darfur. No matter which area the conflict has taken place in the government response to rebellion against it has been following the same manner. The Government of Sudan has as part of its warfare against different rebel groups used a combination of traditional army warfare, arming of militias, scorched earth tactics, extrajudicial killings, attempts to split the rebels, and efforts to increase tribal fighting.
The Government of Sudan has carried out various types of one-sided killings. Almost all of these one-sided killings have taken place in relation to war but occasionally the one-sided killings have also taken place under other circumstances as for instance police shooting at peaceful demonstrations. One-sided killings by the army in relation to warfare have for instance included: extrajudicial executions, burning of villages, and deliberate attack of civilians with helicopters. In addition to this mass executions of civilians have been used to clear certain areas as for example the oil-rich areas in western Upper Nile. This type of warfare conducted by the regular army has been outspread but the bulk of government one-sided killings have been conducted by pro-government militias. One of the reasons for the government policy to use militias is that these militias often have better local knowledge than the regular army. The regime in Khartoum has used many different types of militias in its wars and examples of such militias are the Popular Defence Force - that is a militia with official status within the army, Murahaleen – that is a group of “holy warriors” that system has been used by the Government of Sudan, sometimes as part of Jihad (holy war) and Janjaweed - that is the militia that has conducted most of the atrocities in Darfur. There exist numerous other militias as well but one thing in common for all the militias included in the UCDP coding of one-sided killings attributed to the Government of Sudan is that they have clear links to the government. Examples of such links are for instance: official documents giving the order to the militias, the militias themselves saying that they are carrying out government policy, tandem attacks by the regular army, and these militias and that the militias receive their weapons from the government.
Moreover, the militias are drawn from one (or a few) ethnic groups and their target has been people from other ethnic belongings. Most often the militias have been recruited from more “Arab” groups targeting “Africans” but there are several exceptions to this generalization. This ethnic dimension is also an important reason behind the gross level of one-sided killings committed by the Government of Sudan. The regime in Khartoum saw whole ethnic groups as its enemy. Hence, counter-insurgency does not just target rebels but the entire ethnic groups that are the recruiting base for the rebels. Also, the rebels both in the south and in Darfur have at times been much split and this has enabled the government to divide and rule and to recruit rebels into militias.
In 2014 it became evident that the paramilitary force called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) was used by the government to attack civilians. The RSF consists to a large extent of fighters from the notorious Janjaweed following the same patterns where civilians are mostly attacked in relation to the ongoing intrastate conflict. However, the main differences are that the RSF is better organized, being under the command of the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS). And that the RSF has the official support of the Government of Sudan, having for instance official identification cards with the formal government insignia. High-level politicians have also been imprisoned when criticizing the attacks on civilians by the RSF.
The one-sided attacks conducted by the Government of Sudan have spread much geographically and the region of highest strategically importance at the time has been most targeted. At the beginning of the 90s the Nuba Mountains was the most affected area due to area was much contested in the fighting between SPLM/A and the Government. A few years later many massacres took place in the much-contested Abyei area on the border between Northern and Southern Sudan. The Nuba Mountains and the Abyei area remained the most affected areas for government one-sided attacks throughout the 90s but attacks also took place in the states of White Nile, Eastern Equatoria, Jonglei, Bahr El Ghazal, state of Lakes (also known as Buhayrat) and West Darfur. From 2000 until 2002 the one-sided killing by the Sudanese government and its affiliated militias concentrated on the oil-fields in the western part of the Upper Nile state and from 2003 until 2007 the majority of atrocities were carried out in Darfur. Since then the Government of Sudan's use of one-sided violence has continued to be concentrated in the Darfur area but has also spread into South Kordofan.
The Government of Sudan first became active as a one-sided actor in UCDP data in 1989, when the one-sided violence resulted in at least 25 civilian deaths. The threshold was reached in December that year following an attack carried out by a pro-government militia. In this massacre the militia, with government support, killed at least 1000 civilians.
