‘Massacre’, ‘carnage’, ‘bloodshed’: UN observers and human rights groups say they fear the worst in current siege by Sudan Rapid Support Forces of El Fasher, the last bastion of the Sudanese armed forces in opposition. Darfur – results in attack.
Since the outbreak of war in Sudan in April 2023, El Fasher has become the largest humanitarian center in Darfur. Today, it is home to around 1.5 million people, including 800,000 internally displaced people.
An informal peace deal between the warring parties – the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and its rival, the head of the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo – had until now provided relative security for the city’s growing population.
However, this situation changed last month when two armed groups from El Fasher, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, announced their intention to side with the Sudanese armed forces.
“These two groups not only have their own local networks, but they see the Rapid Support Forces as a common enemy which is a very powerful engine to unite them,” Hager Ali, researcher at the German think tank GIGA Institute for Global and Area Studies. , told DW.
In turn, the RSF has intensified its military efforts to ensure that these new alliances do not become too strong and are not able to launch military counter-campaigns, she added.
Civilians bear the brunt of the conflict
“El Fasher is now home to the largest population of Darfur’s cities, including camps for displaced people and more than 50 shelter centers in the city,” said Michelle D’Arcy, Sudan director of the Norwegian organization. help to the people.
However, the current tensions around El Fasher have prevented the entry of humanitarian aid, she confirmed.
Toby Harward, the UN deputy humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, said earlier this month that the humanitarian situation in and around El Fasher was catastrophic.
“The security situation has deteriorated considerably, including an increase in arbitrary killings, cattle rustling, systematic burning of entire villages in rural areas, an escalation of aerial bombardments on parts of the city and a strengthening of the siege around El Fasher, which disrupted humanitarian aid convoys and stifled trade,” he said in a May 2 report.
A recent analysis from Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab also confirmed that 23 communities in North Darfur have been burned in arson attacks since mid-April.
And according to the United Nations World Food Program, “time is running out to avoid famine in this vast region.”
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters in late April that she feared “history would repeat itself in Darfur in the worst possible way,” adding that El Fasher was “on the brink of a large-scale massacre.
The murderous history of Darfur
After the outbreak of war in April 2023, fighting between the SAF and RSF quickly spread from the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, to Darfur – where part of the population identifies as Arab and others as African – and where the RSF are based.
According to Human Rights Watch, the Rapid Support paramilitary forces and their allied militias then launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Darfur’s non-Arab population.
On May 9, the watchdog released a report on the killing of the Masalit ethnic minority. in Darfur in 2023, where UN experts estimate that around 15,000 people have been killed in Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, and more than half a million people have been displaced.
Also this week, the Sudanese archivesan open source platform that collects digital information related to human rights violations, published images showing abuses against civilians, including women and children, by the Rapid Support Forces in Geneina in November 2023.
A large-scale attack on the RSF would lead to a “decline in local support”
It remains to be seen whether the RSF will launch a large-scale attack to take control of El Fasher and therefore a third of the national territory, including Sudan’s international borders with Libya, Chad and the Central African Republic.
However, achieving a victory in El Fasher would be expensive, observers agree.
“An all-out battle for control of the city, provoking massive bloodshed among civilians, would lead to revenge attacks in all five Darfur states and beyond Darfur’s borders,” the UN’s Harward said .
This view was shared by Constantin Grund, head of the Khartoum office of the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
“An attack would encourage more local armed groups to join the fighting, which would have disastrous consequences for the civilian population,” he told DW.
In addition, the RSF would lose its popularity and political position, he added.
“This would accelerate the decline of local support and would at once undo the enormous efforts made by RSF to give itself the appearance of legitimacy,” he added.
Hopes on international pressure
Meanwhile, international calls for a ceasefire and the reopening of humanitarian aid corridors remain ignored by both sides.
On May 2, the Saudi foreign minister telephoned the two generals and urged them to “stop the fighting for the protection of state institutions and the Sudanese nation.”
“This could, however, change if international pressure intensified,” said Hager Ali. “The RSF currently feels completely insensitive to the real consequences,” she told DW, adding that they had nothing to fear in terms of international prosecution or liability.
Edited by: Martin Kuebler
News Source : amp.dw.com
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