Sudanese paramilitaries threaten last capital outside their control in Darfur

After suffering some setbacks in central Sudan in recent months, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have launched an offensive in northern Darfur, in the west of the country, in recent weeks and are now preparing to attack the region’s capital , El Fasher, one of the most populous cities in the country and a refuge for hundreds of thousands of displaced people. It is also the last capital in the region that remains under the control of the army and allied armed groups, so it is feared that the assault will lead to the final battle for Darfur, already one of the deadliest of the conflict, which It was unleashed on April 15, 2023.

The advance of the Rapid Support Forces in the vast State of North Darfur, one of the five into which the historic region of Darfur is divided, began in mid-April with an attack on several towns around El Fasher. Since then, the paramilitaries and allied militias have dedicated themselves to sending more troops to the area and setting up checkpoints at some of the main entrances and exits of the city, according to satellite photos released by the humanitarian research center of the University of Yale. In parallel, the army has intensified bombings against paramilitary positions and has resupplied its ranks inside the city with air shipments, while the local armed movements mobilized at its side have sent reinforcements and armored its defenses in the face of the prospect of a large scale assault. More than a million people live in El Fasher and the city is home to two of the largest displaced persons camps in the State.

“The situation in El Fasher is dangerous and very worrying,” says former governor of North Darfur Nimr Mohamed. “There is an exchange of heavy artillery between the army and the Rapid Support Forces and shelling from time to time, causing constant loss of lives of innocent civilians. And what is more dangerous is that now the city is under siege from the outside,” he adds. “There is great concern among civilians, and clashes and battles are expected at any time,” he warns.

With the offensive of the paramilitaries and allied militias has come their usual list of atrocities against ethnic communities other than that of the majority of members that make up their ranks, and that more and more human rights groups point out that they amount to genocide. Between early March and mid-April, at least 22 towns near El Fasher were attacked and razed in apparently arson fires, according to analyzes by the Yale School of Public Health, which coincides with its scorched earth practices elsewhere. from Darfur. EL PAÍS has contacted a spokesperson for the Rapid Support Forces, but has not received a response at the time of publishing this article.

For its part, bombing by the army, whose actions in Darfur are almost exclusively limited to air strikes, are often indiscriminate; They use imprecise weapons and are carried out in inhabited areas, which leaves a high number of civilian victims.

Humanitarian crisis

The threat of an assault on El Fasher also occurs when the city, like the rest of North Darfur, is in a critical humanitarian situation that the paramilitary offensive is only aggravating. In recent weeks, power outages have become more frequent and shortages of essential supplies such as food, water and fuel are becoming more acute, largely due to difficulties in accessing the city. Since the second week of March, UN agencies have been able to send only 95 aid trucks to all of Darfur, 35 of them to the north, and now there are another 13 on the way and 25 more waiting at the border with Chad due to insecurity. and the lack of authorizations, according to Toby Harward, UN deputy humanitarian coordinator for Sudan. Harward notes that the politicization of aid by warring parties and insecurity in the region are critical impediments to expanding operations.

The situation is especially alarming in the extensive and unprotected displaced persons camps around El Fasher, among which Zamzam stands out, one of the largest in Darfur and where more than 450,000 people lived at the end of 2022, according to the Norwegian Council for Refugees. Before the paramilitaries launched their offensive, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which is one of the only international aid agencies in the camp, warned that its inhabitants are suffering from a crisis of catastrophic malnutrition and that malnutrition was causing the death of one child every two hours. MSF operates a field hospital and two of the four clinics it houses in this field. “The population of the fields [y de El Fasher] “It is in danger of death and devastation due to extreme hunger or weapons,” says Adam Rojal, spokesperson for a coordinator for displaced people and refugees in the Darfur region, in a statement shared with this newspaper.

The situation in El Fasher illustrates the complexity that has followed Sudan’s civil war. The fighting broke out as a conflict between the regular army and the Rapid Support Forces. But its prolongation, the fear of the paramilitaries and the weaknesses of the army have since pushed the main armed movements in the relegated peripheries of the country, once opposed to the Khartoum regime, to review their initial neutrality also in Darfur. Despite certain internal tensions and fractures, the majority has aligned itself with the military.

In El Fasher, the population belongs mainly to ethnic communities that form the bulk of many local armed groups, and which have traditionally been persecuted by the paramilitaries and their allied militias, to whom for years the army subcontracted the cumbersome task of repression. Today, more than a dozen of these groups have mobilized to defend the city and its people. “If the Rapid Support Forces attack [El Fasher]I believe that all armed movements will participate alongside the army, even some factions that have not done so [hasta ahora]”, anticipates Al-Amin Ishaq Zakaria, spokesperson for one of these movements, the Sudan Liberation Army-Transitional Council.

The other four states of Darfur, also considered traditional fiefdoms of the Rapid Support Forces, have been in the hands of the paramilitaries since they took full control in a rapid offensive launched at the end of last year, with the aim of taking the last positions held by the army, which barely put up any resistance. In recent weeks, paramilitary troops from these areas have headed towards El Fasher.

The war in Sudan, which broke out just over a year ago, has produced one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, according to the UN. Currently, 25 million people – around half of the country’s population – need humanitarian aid and 18 million suffer from high levels of hunger. The declaration of famine is only a matter of time. In addition, those displaced, inside and outside the country, exceed 10 million; 65% of the population does not have access to healthcare; and 19 million children do not go to school. The death toll is unknown.

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