When war broke out in Sudan in April 2023 between the regular Army and a powerful paramilitary group, initially in the capital, Khartoum, one of the greatest fears was that the fighting would extend to the punished land of Darfur. This vast region in the west of the country is the fiefdom of the Rapid Support Forces and is marked by deep ethnic tensions, so there were fears that the conflict there would take on its own dimension.
The omens did not take long to come true and the advances of the Rapid Support Forces in the region have gone hand in hand with serious atrocities. Violence against civilians in Sudan is widespread, but in Darfur it takes on a markedly ethnic character against local non-Arab communities, with the intention of erasing them from the map in campaigns that more and more voices and human rights groups consider could constitute genocide.
The atrocity of the crimes in Darfur generate alarm due to the recent history of the region. They come two decades after former president Omar al Bashir launched a devastating counterinsurgency campaign there against armed movements of non-Arab communities rising up against his policies of marginalization and plunder. The Al Bashir regime exploited local tension arising from increasing competition between non-Arab agricultural communities and Arab pastoral communities over increasingly scarce natural resources.
Many considered that that campaign led to a genocide of non-Arab communities, mainly Masalit, Fur and Zaghawa. Hundreds of thousands of people died, a scorched earth policy was applied against entire towns and large areas of land, large territories were forcibly depopulated, and sexual violence was systematically used against women and girls. Part of the militias to which the State delegated the cumbersome task were institutionalized years later into the Rapid Support Forces.
Massacre in El Geneina
The largest atrocities so far have been perpetrated in the capital of West Darfur and the Masalit community, El Geneina, where between late April and early November 2023 the Rapid Support Forces and allied militias carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing, according to a report published this Thursday by Human Rights Watch.
The massacres in El Geneina were in a way the chronicle of a tragedy foretold. The turbulent period that opened in Sudan in 2019, with the fall of Al Bashir, attempts to redefine the political and security architecture of Darfur, and the withdrawal of UN and African Union peacekeeping forces caused great instability and left El Geneina exposed, which suffered three large-scale attacks in just three years. “Between 2019 and now [se han producido] numerous and important attacks against the same Masalit civilian population, and in none of these cases have they been held accountable,” notes Mohamed Osman, one of the authors of the HRW report. “It is carried out by the same groups, the Rapid Support Forces and allied militias, [y] “There is no accountability, no real investigations, and no priority given to the protection of civilians.”
Just 10 days after fighting broke out between the army and the Rapid Support Forces in Khartoum in April 2023, the two engaged in brief fighting in El Geneina. And what followed were two months of systematic attacks and looting by paramilitaries and allied militias in Masalit-majority neighborhoods and displaced persons centers. The situation seriously deteriorated on June 14, when the Masalit self-defense groups collapsed and the governor of West Darfur, Jamis Abbakar, was arrested and killed. Then there was a first mass exodus in two directions: towards Chad and towards Ardamata, a Sudanese suburb that houses a garrison of the Armed Forces. From dawn the next day, the paramilitaries and their allied militias dedicated themselves to expelling, house by house, those who had remained. They also ambushed those who escaped, who suffered widespread beatings, executions and extortion, according to the exhaustive HRW report. The escape roads were strewn with corpses.
In early November the final blow came. The Rapid Support Forces and their allies stormed Ardamata, and survivors told HRW that they again opened fire on fleeing civilians, executed people in their homes, detained hundreds, including children, carried out mass looting, and set fire to residential areas. . The Rapid Support Forces, which recruit primarily from Arab communities in Darfur, were central to all of these attacks and the abuses that accompanied them, and the HRW report notes that Arab tribal militias apparently provided the majority of men. Another armed group of unclear origins, but allied with the paramilitaries, also participated, and some witnesses claimed to have seen foreign fighters. In front they encountered Masalit self-defense groups and an armed movement led by Abbakar, the Sudanese Alliance, who were much fewer and worse armed, so they were unable to stop the coup. The army and police never intervened.
The string of atrocities of the campaign against El Geneina was heartbreaking: widespread homicides in houses, streets and checkpoints, search for Masalit people to execute them, use of explosives in densely populated areas, selective murders of prominent members of the community, rapes, torture and arbitrary detentions.
They also deliberately looted, vandalized and burned Masalit neighborhoods, attacked medical clinics and staff, markets, critical infrastructure and prevented community members from accessing shelter, food and water, in an apparent attempt to seriously undermine their ability to ever return. day, according to HRW. A panel of UN experts assured that the assaults were planned and coordinated, according to a document leaked in December, which estimated the number of people killed, according to intelligence sources, at between 10,000 and 15,000. HRW also documented significant coordination between the raiding forces in and around El Geneina.
Burned ground
Although El Geneina has been the city in Darfur where the largest campaign of atrocities has occurred, it has not been the only one. Numerous other non-Arab majority towns, particularly in West Darfur, have suffered similar assaults. Between April and July 2023 alone, paramilitaries and their allies attacked and burned at least seven towns in the region, according to HRW. The best documented case is that of the city of Misterei, from which the army withdrew in April, leaving it vulnerable to a possible attack. This occurred the following month, when the Rapid Support Forces and allied militias assaulted the city on SUVs, motorcycles, on horseback and on foot. They killed about 100 Masalit, shot those who tried to flee, looted and burned hundreds of homes, according to a report by the Raoul Wallenberg Canadian Center for Human Rights Studies.
Similar massacres have also occurred in North Darfur, a bastion of non-Arab armed movements. Last June, paramilitaries and allied militias stormed Kutum, a town 120 kilometers from the provincial capital, El Fasher, killing more than 40 people and wounding dozens, according to the Raoul Wallenberg Center, which has documented a similar attack in at least one town with a majority Fur population. This report, which was supported by thirty experts, concludes that the atrocity crimes of the Rapid Support Forces and allied militias in West Darfur are intended to destroy the Masalit community in whole or in part, therefore it indicates that constitute an ongoing genocide. He also believes that there are reasons to believe that they are committing genocide against other non-Arab groups.
The UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, stated in November that several of the attacks carried out in Darfur “could constitute acts of genocide” and that the risks are “grimly high.” Soon, the United States determined that the situation has “disturbing echoes of the genocide that began almost 20 years ago in Darfur.” And International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan announced as early as July 2023 that his office is investigating crimes in West Darfur.
All these precedents cause us to now fear the worst in North Darfur. In April, the Rapid Support Forces launched a major offensive in this State, and are currently preparing to attack El Fasher. It is one of Sudan’s most populous cities, a refuge for hundreds of thousands of displaced people, and its population is predominantly non-Arab ethnic communities that form the bulk of many local armed groups, so an assault could trigger an uprising. of the worst battles of the war.
“Geneina highlights the brutality of the Rapid Support Forces against the non-Arab civilian population,” warns Osman. “But at the same time, the international community did not respond, and now we see a massacre unfolding, or possibly unfolding, in El Fasher,” he notes. “We are seeing strong messages from international leaders and actors not to attack, but civilians are still in danger,” he adds, which is why he believes it is time to start considering the deployment of a civilian protection mission.
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