Hundreds of thousands dead, cities destroyed: what’s happening in Sudan
The world has condemned RSF killings in El Fasher, Darfur — but foreign weapons and money are fuelling both sides of this conflict
The slaughter in Sudan is the horror the world swore would not happen again. As gunmen overran the last army-held city in Darfur in October, doctors described corpses piling up in the streets, hospital wards turned to killing grounds and entire families executed where they had tried to hide.
At the Saudi Maternity Hospital in El Fasher, nurses were shot alongside patients. In nearby camps, men were allegedly dragged out and killed for belonging to the wrong tribe. Satellite images have captured what appear to be mass atrocities: large patches of bloodstained ground littered with corpses.
For those who remember Darfur’s earlier agony, it feels as though history’s nightmare is returning. Two decades after the Janjaweed militia carried out genocide, leaving 300,000 people dead, their modern descendants, rebranded as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), have come back to finish the job.
“The RSF is recycling the tactics of the Janjaweed — mass killings, sexual violence, starvation and abduction,” said Michael Jones, a Sudan expert at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) in London.
What happened in El Fasher?
Once home to more than one million people, the city of El Fasher has endured a year-long siege in which the attackers walled it off and left it to starve. People survived on animal feed, weeds and peanut shells. UN pleas for help went unanswered.
Overrun by the RSF at the end of October, the city’s residents have been subjected to rape and murder. Independent researchers estimate that at least 3,000 people were killed in the first four days after the fall of the city and deaths are now estimated to be more than 80,000. Executions have been filmed on phones and circulated online, their grainy footage a haunting record.
Emergence of the RSF
The killing this time is not confined to Darfur but is part of a wider civil war that threatens to break Sudan beyond recognition.
It began in April 2023 when a rift at the top of Sudan’s military regime exploded into a power struggle between two rival generals and their armies.
After the fall of long-time president and dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019, Sudan briefly flirted with democracy. It had lost half its territory and three quarters of its oil in 2011 with the secession of South Sudan. Protesters filled the streets demanding civilian rule, and a fragile power-sharing deal was struck.
But in 2021 General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the commander of the Sudanese armed forces, joined forces with his deputy, Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo — known by the sobriquet Hemedti — to topple the civilian government and seize full control.
The uneasy partnership did not last. Hemedti, a former camel trader from Darfur who rose to power commanding the feared Janjaweed, had built his own private army, the RSF, as well as an empire of gold mines, smuggling routes and mercenaries.
When Gen. Burhan tried to fold the RSF into the regular army, Hemedti refused. Each man feared the other was plotting to dominate the new Sudan. Their quarrel descended into war in the capital, Khartoum, in April 2023. Soon after, much of the country was burning.
Eighteen months later, neither side has won. Khartoum lies in ruins. Millions have fled. The UN counts more than 13 million displaced — the world’s largest displacement crisis — and warns that famine is already causing deaths across western and central Sudan. Aid convoys are looted or blocked, hospitals bombed and relief workers driven out.
The RSF controls most of Darfur while the army clings to the capital and the east, including Port Sudan where Burhan runs a shadow government. Each side accuses the other of genocide. Civilians are shot for water or bread, and children die of malnutrition in camps cut off by fighting.
Role of foreign powers
The conflict is both an old war and a new one. In 2003 Bashir’s regime unleashed the Janjaweed militias of Darfur to crush a rebellion by non-Arab groups: razing villages, slaughtering men, raping women and displacing millions. The world called it genocide and Bashir became the first sitting head of state indicted by the International Criminal Court.
Foreign powers have made everything worse. The RSF are the Janjaweed reborn — but now they have drones, satellite phones and a gold-fuelled war chest allegedly financed by the UAE, which funnels them arms and money while denying it. British military equipment is said to have been found in Sudan, used by the RSF, raising questions about UK sale of arms to the UAE.
On the other side, Egypt, terrified of instability on its southern border, backs Burhan’s army. Iran supplies it with drones. Turkish defence firms, too, have been linked to army procurement.
Russia’s Wagner group, entrenched in Sudan’s gold trade, plays both sides. The West, for its part, watches from the sidelines. Britain, once Sudan’s colonial ruler, has voiced concern but has done nothing of consequence.
What happens next?
The fall of El Fasher marks a turning point. With Darfur under Hemedti’s control, Sudan risks partition — an RSF-run west rich in gold and smuggling routes, and an army-held east on the Red Sea. But this does not suggest any imminent end to the killing. On the contrary, in fact.
“I suspect what we are looking at a very protracted struggle, I don’t see a clear pathway to a ceasefire or peace,” said Mr Jones of Rusi.
One way to slow the killing, according to experts, would be to squeeze the Gulf states fuelling Hemedti’s war machine. “There are levers we haven’t pulled yet,” Mr Jones said. “Previously there was no political appetite for it. That might change, though, with what we’re seeing in El Fasher.”
The Times
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