Issue No. 34

Al Fasher's Last Stand 

Khartoum, Omdurman, Nyala, and El Geneina– all major cities in Sudan that have been torn apart by the destructive armed conflict since April 2023. Now, El Fasher appears set for a similar fate as fighting on the outskirts of the humanitarian hub in North Darfur continues to escalate. For much of the war, the regional capital had been largely protected from the worst of the genocidal violence that has consumed Darfur at the hands of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and their Arab allies. But after months of ratcheting tensions in North Darfur, including the pledging of several former Darfuri rebel groups to the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the paramilitary commander Hamdan Dagalo 'Hemedti' and his besieging forces are readying for a brutal tussle for the last Darfuri regional capital not under their control. The humanitarian toll, including the anticipated massacre of civilians by RSF troops, is expected to rival anything we have seen so far in Sudan.

An RSF spokesperson, Colonel Al-Fatih Gorashi, has insisted that the paramilitary forces will not attack the headquarters of the 6th Infantry Division that lies in El Fasher's centre. But in recent weeks, village after village has been razed by the RSF and their Mahameed Arab militia allies on the outskirts of El Fasher, as well as in the Kebkabiya and Kutum areas. Between 1 and 18 April alone, over 40,600 people were displaced by these attacks. And within El Fasher itself, the RSF has increasingly pounded the city with artillery barrages, which have been responded to in kind by Sudanese army air strikes. Dozens of civilians trapped in the besieged city have been killed by the exchanges. 

Over three days across the weekend, in a bid to break the near-encirclement of the city and the RSF troop buildup, the Sudanese army and its allied Darfuri groups attacked paramilitary positions to the north of El Fasher. The clashes were intense, with well over 150 people injured in the ensuing street-to-street battles and artillery strikes, including dozens of children. Some of the fighting in the city's northern outskirts took place near the Abu Shouk displacement camp, where at least 5 civilians were killed by shelling. While the situation has somewhat eased since 13 May, it is expected to deteriorate further, with the RSF continuing to draw in reinforcements and artillery for a decisive assault.

The humanitarian crisis in El Fasher has already spiralled out of control– and is set to deteriorate further. An estimated 800,000 displaced people are crammed into the city of at least 1.5 million, having served as a key humanitarian hub since 2003 amid the Janjaweed's first destruction of Darfur. Due to the escalating violence, there are no humanitarian corridors or protected routes out of El Fasher for those seeking to escape. The Chadian border is also over 400 kilometres from the city, unlike the walkable distance from El Geneina to the town of Adre in Chad. Even then, however, RSF fighters still massacred fleeing civilians on the roads out of the Darfurian city in mid-2023.

Key roads in and out of El Fasher are now nearly entirely controlled by the RSF. This, along with the growing instability, has prevented humanitarian aid delivery into the city for several weeks as the Sudanese army has further barred aid travelling along RSF-controlled routes. Food prices have subsequently rocketed in markets that are increasingly shuttered, while humanitarian agencies are reporting rising malnutrition cases and children dying of starvation. Despite the half-hearted promises in Jeddah about the protection of delivery of humanitarian assistance by the belligerents, the continued weaponisation of food aid in contravention of international humanitarian law has become a routine feature of the war in Sudan.

The horrors that unfurled in El Geneina are a likely sign of what is to come in El Fasher if the RSF seizes the city. There, the 'African' Masalit civilians bore the worst of the escalating violence, which left several thousand dead by June 2023 and displaced nearly 300,000 into Chad. Stories of brutal war crimes continue to emerge– including the discovery of mass graves, as many as 30, according to some sources. El Fasher's pre-war ethnic demography, largely made of Fur and Zaghawa, makes the likelihood of further war crimes and genocidal violence near-certainty at the hands of the predominantly Riezegat RSF forces, one of the dominant 'Arab' tribes of Darfur and their militia allies.

In part due to the fears of looming atrocities, the US government announced sanctions on two RSF commanders yesterday, Ali Yagoub Gibril and Osman Mohamed Hamid Mohamed. But these economic sanctions against just two individuals with no major US assets will do nothing to prevent the unfurling horrors in El Fasher. The pressure points for the RSF, and the SAF, are not sanctions on a handful of ground commanders, no matter how much they surely deserve them. Instead, if the US and others are serious about ending the war in Sudan or at least reaching a ceasefire, it must include sacrificing political capital in the Middle East to pressure Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to restrain their respective allies. This is also part of the broader problem of the Jeddah ceasefire talks-- that rather than being the appropriate structure for Sudan, they have instead been subsumed as a political tool into the wider US-Saudi relationship, which is more focused on the Israeli devastation of the Gaza Strip. With the impending fall of El Fasher, it is clear that the international community has once again failed to prevent the destruction of Darfur for the second time.

By the Horn Edition team