Fears of a new ethnic massacre in Sudan’s Darfur region, where genocidal violence killed up to 300,000 people two decades ago, have grown in recent days, with an imminent attack on a besieged city already threatened with famine.
The fight for control of El Fasher, the last town held by the Sudanese army in Darfur, has drawn alarmed warnings from U.S. and United Nations officials who fear a massive bloodbath is imminent . Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, told reporters Monday that the city was “on the brink of a full-scale massacre.”
El Fasher is the latest flashpoint in a year-old civil war between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces, a powerful paramilitary group that the army once nurtured and is now its bitter rival for power . The conflict has devastated one of Africa’s largest countries and created a vast humanitarian crisis. what UN officials are saying is one of the most important in decades.
The crisis also highlights the role of foreign powers accused of fueling the struggle, notably the United Arab Emirates.
Since April 14, fighters loyal to the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, have surrounded El Fasher in preparation for what the UN called an “imminent assault.” El Fasher, former capital of the pre-colonial kingdom of Darfur, has around 1.8 million inhabitants, including hundreds of thousands who fled previous waves of fighting.
The city is the last obstacle to RSF’s total domination of the region. Its fighters invaded Darfur last fall and now control four of the region’s five main towns.
Control of El Fasher would give the group a block of territory that, combined with neighboring areas, covers about a third of Sudan and would likely precipitate a change in the course of the war. A feared scenario is that of Sudan splitting into rival fiefdoms, as Libya did after the death of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
At least 43 people have been killed in El Fasher in recent weeks, including women and children, according to the United Nations, in skirmishes and bombings on the outskirts of the town that residents fear a foretaste of the violence to come.
‘Everyone expects an attack at any time,’ Dawalbait Mohamed, a resident of El Fasher who fled the city last year, said he was in constant contact with his parents and brothers and sisters who remained behind. “It seems inevitable.”
In the early 2000s, when ethnic massacres in Darfur were the center of global attention, the worst atrocities were committed by the Janjaweed – a fearsome group of ethnic Arab fighters who later evolved into the Rapid Support Forces .
Before Sudan descended into war, RSF leaders had tried to shed their reputation for cruelty – although that reputation returned last year, amid reports of massacres and looting.
However, an assault on El Fasher would be risky for the Rapid Support Forces, and potentially costly, experts say. This gives hope to many Western and Arab officials, notably in the United States, that international pressure can still persuade both sides to reverse course and avoid calamity.
The United Nations Security Council held an emergency session on Monday to discuss the crisis behind closed doors.
After the session, Thomas-Greenfield said the United States was calling on all countries – including the United Arab Emirates – to stop supporting warring parties in Sudan, warning that a “crisis of epic proportions is brewing”.
“As I said before, history is repeating itself in Darfur in the worst possible way,” Ms. Thomas-Greenfield said.
Sudan and some U.N. officials say the Emirates provided the group with money and weapons; The New York Times reported last year on an operation to smuggle Emirati weapons to the RSF via eastern Chad.
The UAE has denied any support for the Rapid Support Forces, including recently in a letter to the Security Council.
The war in Sudan, which passed the one-year mark on April 15, is intensifying and expanding at dizzying speed.
A conflict that began as a power struggle between rival generals — army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF chief Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan — has morphed into a sprawling conflict which attracted ethnic, religious and rebel groups. groups, from both sides, as well as a set of foreign sponsors.
On Monday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov visited Port Sudan to meet with Sudanese military and civilian leaders. The Russian Wagner group supplied missiles to the RSF from the first weeks of the war. The Kremlin has long coveted access to the Red Sea in Sudan.
Elsewhere in Darfur, RSF advances have been accompanied by widespread ethnic violence. UN investigators estimated that between 10,000 and 15,000 civilians were killed during an assault on the town of El Geneina, in West Darfur, last October. Most of the victims were from African ethnic groups long targeted by the Arab-dominated Rapid Support Forces. The total number of deaths in the year-long civil war is unknown.
Peace, however, reigned in El Fasher, thanks to a local truce between the RSF and other armed groups surrounding the town. But this fragile agreement collapsed in recent weeks when the Sudanese army persuaded or incited Darfur groups to abandon their neutral position, prompting the RSF to intervene in the town.
RSF accuses the army of provoking the fighting with aerial bombardments on RSF-controlled areas which, in one recent case, led to the deaths of seven herders and around 250 camels.
A starving population finds itself caught in the crossfire.
At the Zamzam camp, 16 kilometers south of El Fasher, 40 percent children aged 6 months to 2 years suffer from severe malnutrition and a child dies every two hours, Doctors Without Borders said in February, calling the situation “an absolutely catastrophic situation.”
Yet both sides of the conflict are obstructing food aid, according to U.S. and U.N. officials. The Sudanese army has barred the United Nations from passing aid from Chad, except at the single border post controlled by one of its allies.
And the RSF has set up its own foreign aid controls in Melit, a town just north of El Fasher, halting emergency aid deliveries, a senior UN official said which could not be identified to avoid compromising aid operations.
Speaking by telephone, residents of El Fasher were worried about the outcome of events.
Shadia Ibrahim, a radio station technician, said she was cowering at home as heavy gunfire broke out east of the city on Sunday. Electricity was out and water and food prices were skyrocketing, she said.
Ms Ibrahim hoped the town would be spared the fate of Geneina, where the battle was followed by a massacre. “We hope nothing like that happens here,” she said.
