Terrorism Listings: Where Principle Meets Political Calculus

Mustafa Abdelaziz Al-Batal
Before me is a short post written by Ibrahim Osman, in which he compiled a collection of statements made by several leaders of the Sumoud coalition in televised interviews or published remarks.
The conclusion a reader might draw from these statements is that designating the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as a terrorist organisation would be an almost pointless exercise: it would neither stop a war, redress an injustice, nor make any meaningful difference. On that basis, calls for such a designation appear, in their view, to be a distraction of little practical value.
These are some of the statements documented by our friend Ibrahim:
Bakri Al-Jak (official spokesperson for Sumoud): Would internal defections within the RSF stop the war?
Bakri Al-Jak: Does committing terrorist crimes necessarily mean that the perpetrating entity should be designated a terrorist organisation?
Bakri Al-Jak: Suppose the European Parliament designated the RSF a terrorist organisation. Would that end the war or address its historical root causes?
Bakri Al-Jak: Many organisations have been designated as terrorist organisations, yet they continued fighting and even re-emerged under new names.
Bakri Al-Jak: Suppose the European Parliament imposed sanctions on the countries supporting the war, including the UAE. Would that end the war?
Jaafar Hassan: If the world designated the RSF a terrorist organisation, would that stop the war? That is the fundamental question.
Khalid Omar: Did the designation of Hamas or the African National Congress stop the war?
That concludes the record.
Having thanked these gentlemen for this intensive lesson in cost-benefit analysis, I would like to pose a question.
If designating the Rapid Support Forces—a militia that has killed, raped, looted, terrorised, displaced and driven millions from their homes, and committed crimes and atrocities horrifying beyond description—is of no value or significance because such a designation would not change realities on the ground, why has designating the Islamic Movement suddenly become an immensely important political and legal undertaking, a legitimate demand, a useful measure and a priority?
What has changed?
The meaning of designation?
Or the identity of the entity being designated?
Indeed, let us generalise this principle and save ourselves some time and effort.
If designations achieve nothing, provide no benefit and do not prevent wars, why do States and international organisations designate terrorist groups in the first place?
Why impose sanctions?
Why establish terrorist lists at all?
According to this logic, are all these measures not merely bureaucratic exercises that change nothing whatsoever?
What is remarkable is that the criterion “Will it stop the war?” appears only when the subject is the RSF.
When the discussion turns to the Islamic Movement, however, this criterion suddenly disappears, as though it had never existed.
Designation then becomes a major political achievement worth pursuing, even though the justification in this case goes no further than the possibility—merely the possibility—that the Islamic Movement might engage in terrorism or violence in the future.
Meanwhile, the RSF’s crimes and atrocities—so extensive that words fail to describe them, committed before the eyes of the world and documented through victims, witnesses and evidence—are somehow insufficient to persuade those who advance this argument that designation could serve any useful purpose.
No one has ever claimed that designating an organisation as terrorist is a magic wand capable of ending wars.
Designation is not a substitute for political or military solutions.
It is an instrument for isolating an organisation or entity, cutting off its sources of financing and weapons, restricting its movements, increasing the cost of dealing with it, and depriving it of political and legal legitimacy.
If these consequences are considered significant when the entity concerned is anyone other than the RSF, why do they suddenly become meaningless when the RSF is involved?
Why does designation change from a legitimate legal and political instrument into a pointless exercise simply because the organisation being considered for designation is the RSF?
The real question is not whether designation is useful.
It is about double standards.
If terrorist designation is determined by the nature of an organisation’s actions and crimes, then the RSF deserves such designation more than many organisations that have already been placed on terrorist lists.
But if designation is granted or withheld according to the identity of the perpetrator rather than the reality of its actions, then we are no longer discussing a legal or moral principle.
We are discussing political selectivity, in which principles change whenever the names of the actors change.
At that point, the problem is no longer the designation of terrorism.
The problem is the very concept of terrorism as some people choose to understand it:
not a description of actions, nor a judgement on crimes, but a label granted or withheld according to the identity of the adversary.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=15825