During 550 endless days, the historic capital of Darfurin the southwest of Sudansurvived subjected to one of the oldest and most brutal tactics in the history of war: the siege or siege. Already mentioned in the ‘Iliad’ to describe the siege of Troywas also used by the Nazis in Stalingradthe Bosnian Serbs in Sarajevo and, more recently, by the Russians in Mariupol and Israelis throughout Gaza. But unlike these last episodes, while The Fasher was dying, the world looked the other way. “For 18 months they blocked all the access to the city and they cut the basic services. Neither water nor food nor medicine, nothing was allowed to enter,” Mohamed Hassan, spokesperson for the Sudan Doctors Network, tells this newspaper. “They bombed the hospitals with drones and artillery, displaced persons camps and the mosques. Thus until October 26, when they took the city and The atrocities began. he adds on the other end of the phone.
The Fasher It was the last capital of the entire Darfur region controlled by the Sudanese Army forces that the general commands Abdel Fatah Burhan. A vital strategic place for its logistical connections and supply routes with the capital (Khartoum) and the rest of Darfur. It was also a multiethnic city in a conflict that began in April 2023 as a struggle for power between military, but it also has ethnic components. In Fasher, the majority of the population, some 260,000 people according to estimates from the month of August, belong to non-Arab African tribesminorities in the country. And the conquerors of the city, the paramilitary militias of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF, of its acronym in English) Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hamedtihave a long history of ethnic violence.
“These are the same forces that perpetrated the genocide in Darfur 20 years ago. They are not the successors of the militias Janjaweedthey are the same Janjaweed“, says Hassan categorically, referring to the arab militias who then spread terror in the region. In those years, with the support of today’s former president Omar Al Bashir, pursued by international justice.
Since the entry into El Fasher of Hemedti’s paramilitaries, evidence of atrocities has accumulated. Some have been documented by the RSF gunmen themselves as war trophies and published on networks. In one of the videos, collected by Sudan War Monitor, armed men with military fatigues are seen combing a kind of trench or mass grave full of corpses and finishing off those who are still alive. In another, a paramilitary jokes with two kneeling men, asks them if they know who he is and when they answer, he tells them that he doesn’t have time for that and shoots them at point-blank range.
Escape from El Fasher
“Patients who have come to our care points tell us about mass murders, torture y kidnappings in exchange for money, atrocities motivated by ethnic issues“says Natalia Romero, spokesperson for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Sudan. The organization runs a hospital in Tawilawhere it has also installed a medical post at the entrance to the town to care for the displaced. Located about 60 kilometers from El Fasher, Tawila is the main refuge for those who manage to flee the city.
“It is very difficult to leave El Fasher. The price you expose yourself to is your own life,” confirms in an interview with EL PERIÓDICO, his colleague Myriam Laroussi, MSF emergency coordinator in the country. “The displaced tell us that some are shot down the roadtortured or kidnapped. The type of injuries we see in Tawila is very much in line with those testimonies. The main injuries are from gunshots, as well as fractures and other injuries resulting from beatings and torture,” he adds.
The paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces they have been going too house by house. And some of its members have confirmed to Sudan War Monitor that the hunting against some ethnic groups It was planned in advance. The organization estimates that 7,000 people would have been murdered since the taking of El Fasher.
Background in Western Darfur
Conclusions similar to those of Yal University Humanitarian Research Laboratorye, which is supported by satellite images, video analysis and testimonies on the ground. “There seems to be a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of non-Arab indigenous communities Fur, Go around y Berti“he said this week. Those same paramilitaries, financed and armed by United Arab Emirates According to various sources, they have already been accused of kill 15,000 civilians of non-Arab ethnicities mainly in Geneinathe capital of Western Darfur, since the beginning of the war. The United States described those events as a “genocide”.
For the moment, however, there is no end in sight to the horrors in Sudan. International diplomacy has been reactivated and this week Hamedti’s Rapid Support Forces announced their willingness to accept a humanitarian truce. But to date, the opposing side, Burhan’s Sudanese Army – supported by Egypt, Türkiye e Iran— and also accused of committing war crimes, has not responded to the offer.
Until now he has maintained that he will only accept a truce if the RSF withdraws from the conquered territories and lays down their arms. The consequence is the de facto partition of the country, at least temporarily, with the western sudan controlled by the RSF, while the rest remains under the control of the Army Meanwhile, millions of people face a famine scenario extended, the mass displacement and daily atrocities that continue without generating a firm response from the so-called international community.
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