The emerging evidence of organized killing in the Sudanese town of El-Fasher has raised human rights and aid activists to describe the civil war between the rapid support forces (RSF) and the military as Darfur Gemocide “.
The fall of El-Fasher, in the Darfur region, after an 18-month siege by the RSF brings together the different layers of the country’s conflict – with ECHOCES OF YOUR EARLY MEETING AND BUYING OF TODAY’S WAR.
The RSF emerged from the Janjaweed, Arab Militias played by hundreds of thousands of non-Arab Darfuris, in the early 2000s.
Bullet power is accused of genocide because its anti-army force exploded in violence in April 2023
The current charges are based on physical evidence of attrocipities provided by the RSF actors themselves.
They have been sharing gruesome videos that show snapshots of male civilians and dead attackers, burying dead bodies, and torturing people.
The accounts come from exhausted survivors and paint a picture of terror and violence.
“The situation in El-Fasher is very sad and there are violations taking place in the streets, including robberies and shootings, without distinction made between young or old,” one man told the BBC Arabic Service. He escaped to the town of Tawila, the hub of those who were lost by El-Fasher.
Another woman, Ikram Abdelhameed, told the Reuters News Agency at RSF that the soldiers separated the fleeing civilians from the concrete barrier around the city and opened fire.
And the satellite images collected by this University Research Lab show evidence of what appear to be places of killing people – clusters of bodies and red spots on the ground that your residents believe can be blood stains.
El-Fasher “appears to be in a systematic and intentional program of ethnic cleansing of … Non-Arab communities through forced displacement and depletion”, Yale researchers said in the report.
El-Fasher was repeatedly sent during the siege of RSF – This photo from 7 October shows a damaged classroom where people were still fighting [Reuters]
There is a clear military element in the battle of El-Fasher, because local armed groups from the prominent Zaghawa tribe, known as the joint force, have been fighting alongside the army.
RSF operatives see Zaghawa residents as legitimate targets.
That is what many survivors of the siege of Zamzam residents near El-Fasher reported at the beginning of the year, according to an investigation carried out by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The army has also been accused of targeting tribes it sees as support bases for the RSF in areas that have been rebuilt, including the areas of Nornar, Gezira and parts of North Kordofan.
“Whether you are a community, wherever you are, it is not safe now, even in EMI Mahmoum,” said Emi Mahmoum, strategic director of the IDP Unitaritantian Tybout who helps organize the delivery of aid in Darfur.
“Because in the hat group, people in power with guns, they can continue to make false arrests, disappear, kill, torture, all people.”
Both sides are accused of war crimes – motivated revenge attacks are part of that.
It was the military government of Sudan in 2003 accused of weapons – asking the janjaweed to end the rebellion by black groups in Darfur who accused Khartoum of political and economic politicization.
Some women and children were able to make it in Tawila but many people in El-Fasher are worried [AFP via Getty Images]
The pattern of violence that was established then has been repeated in Darfur now, says Kate Ferguson, founder of the NGO Existing Protection.
This was most evident in the 2023 massacre of members of the Masalit tribe in El-geneina in West Darfur, which the UN says killed 15,000 people.
“For more than two years, RSF has followed a clear, predictable pattern,” Ms. Ferguson said at a press conference.
“They start to surround the city or their target city, they weaken it by cutting off access to food, energy treatment, they suffer, that’s why I feel the appropriate name is born.”
RSF has refused to get involved in what it has called “national conflicts”, but it is widely known as hemedti, it has appeared to be heard by the UN, the European Union and the UK.
Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo said that the alleged killing will be investigated [Reuters]
He released a video saying he apologizes for the tragedy that befell the people of El-Fist
Any “soldier or any person who commits a crime or crosses the lines against any person … shall be immediately arrested and [of the investigation] To be announced immediately and publicly before everyone, “more is more.
However, observers noted that similar promises made in the past – to respond to allegations over El-geneina, and allegations of group control over the situation in central Gezira – were never fulfilled.
It is also unclear how much control the RSF’s leadership has over its foot soldiers – an amalgamation of mercenaries, Arab groups, and regional mercenaries, many from South Sudan.
“The truth is that the RSF, it is very difficult to believe that the command will be given by hemedti, and then there will be the character of the help of MS Mahmoud. At that time, we will lose many, many people.”
Aid groups and activists warn that if the pattern of the past two years is allowed to continue, it could happen again. They insist that the killing of innocent people was totally foreseeable, but the international community failed to do anything to protect the civilians despite adequate warning.
“The fact is that we put these options over and over again in meetings over six years and things with the Security Council, and the US government, and the British government, basically they said they should be ready to get a kinetic option [direct military action] Last summer,” said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Yale Antitarian Research Lab.
“This cannot be something that can be solved by a press conference. It has to be something that can be solved with immediate action.”
In particular, activists are encouraging pressure on the United Arab Emirates, which is widely accused of providing military support to the RSF. The UAE denies this despite the evidence in the UN Report and international media investigations.
“This is like the siege of Sarajevo,” said Ms. Mahmoud, referring to the Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian war, which was carried out by the international community. “This time for Srebrenica.”
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