Issue No. 6

Twenty years ago, towns like Am Boru across Darfur were systematically destroyed by Janjaweed fighters and the Sudanese army. The ‘devils on horseback’ laid waste to the dusty, impoverished region of Sudan, raping, displacing and murdering non-Arab, indigenous Darfuri communities. Hundreds of thousands died in what the US termed a ‘genocide,’ as the Sudanese regime used these brutal Arab militias, the precursor to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), as a counter-insurgency force against the rebel groups of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/ Army (SPLM/A).

Today, Darfur is gripped by renewed conflict. The Janjaweed have returned in all but name, with the RSF targeting the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) as well as the black ethnic African groups of the Masalit, Fur, and Zaghawa. In the 2000s, the Janjaweed were largely drawn from the Arab tribes of the Juheiyna Abbala, and a handful of Baggara groups such as the Beni Halba. Many of the RSF, however, are from other Chadian Arab and western Darfur tribes, including the camel-herding Rizeigat that the RSF Commander Hemedti hails from. And since April, several historically neutral tribes in eastern Darfur have been coopted into the violence on the side of the RSF.

The brutal tactics of these militias have barely changed in the intervening two decades. Looting, murder, and sexual assault through a racist lens remain their modus operandi. Women and girls have faced widespread rape and sexual violence. Since April, the militias have plundered and burned dozens of villages and towns in Darfur in their scorched earth policy.

El Geniena, the capital of West Darfur, has seen the worst of the violence, culminating in the slaughter of thousands of non-Arab civilians by the RSF and allied Arab militias. Between 24 April and late June, they launched several waves of attacks on the city, eventually capturing it on 22 June. Communications were severed, much of the city was looted, and hospitals were emptied of medicine as the RSF targeted the city’s ethnic Masalit population. As many as 10,000 ethnic Masalit were likely killed in just a few weeks. The United Nations (UN) human rights body has received reports of hundreds of bodies in 13 mass graves.

Particularly shocking was the murder of Khamis Abbakar, the governor of West Darfur, on 14 June. He was kidnapped and killed by men in RSF uniforms, just a day after he accused them of “genocide.” This precipitated the fleeing of over 150,000 Masalit into Chad, where they have received limited humanitarian support in swollen refugee camps. The mass exodus has been rapid and comprehensive, emptying nearly entire villages and towns across Darfur. Residents of Zalingei, the capital of Central Darfur, called it a “ghost town” following clashes between the RSF and SAF.

Abbakar, a former Masalit commander in the SPLA/M, had been appointed governor in 2021 by Sudan’s interim Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in an attempt to cement the Juba Peace Agreement. The accord saw former rebels and representatives take over government posts in the country’s peripheries. While it did make some positive steps, it did not begin to comprehensively address the gaping disparities in influence and wealth between Khartoum and the country’s peripheries.

Yet the United Nations peacekeeping force, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), withdrew in June 2021, seemingly content to leave Darfur’s security to a coalition of SAF soldiers and RSF forces. Simmering tensions continued however, and dozens of people were killed in ethnic clashes. In April 2022, the RSF and Arab militias laid seige to the Masalit in Kreinik town, killing at least 200 people and displacing thousands. The eruption of conflict in April 2023 proved to be the spark that reopened the door for these militias to resume a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Since April, inter-communal violence has not been limited to the persecution of indigenous Darfuri groups. There are increasing signs of clashes between Arab cattle-herding communities in South and Central Darfur, particularly the Beni Halba and Salamit militias. On 10 September, Salamit fighters and RSF members clashed with other Arab militias in Markondi town, killing dozens. When the Salamit fighters seized the town, they burnt it to the ground after looting it.

The violence today is clearly reminiscent of the horrors of the 2000s. This time, however, the international community has barely mobilised, seemingly paralysed and unwilling to intervene. The enshrined commitment of ‘responsibility to protect’ civilians in the face of atrocities has not been discussed. On 11 October, not a single African country voted in support of an independent mechanism to investigate human rights abuses in Sudan at the United Nations Human Rights Council. Thankfully, the motion was still passed, but only just.

It is undoubtedly an important signal to those in Darfur who believe they can commit atrocities with impunity. But the recent, timid closure of the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia (ICHREE) has taken some of the sting out of the prospects of these UN investigations. If a country can seemingly easily prevent the continuation of these critical investigations, what’s to prevent the Sudanese government from doing the same once the conflict has subsided? The international community must now find common ground, and quickly, over holding those responsible accountable for past violence, protecting civilians and halting the evolving atrocities in Darfur.