ReportWire

Tag: darfur

  • The Fall of El Fasher

    On October 27th, a video went out over social media that showed at least nine men sitting slumped in a row beside a dirt track in the city of El Fasher, in Sudan’s Darfur region. Their thin wrists dangle over their knees. They are exhausted and defeated, held prisoner by long-haired militiamen in camouflage slacks, one of whom brandishes a whip over his head. Another, Alfateh Abdullah Idris, who goes by the nickname Abu Lulu, casually begins firing a Kalashnikov rifle down the row of prisoners. The final man, in a last-second protective reflex, bows his head and crosses his hands over it, but bullets send him flying backward, and the other militiamen join in, firing repeatedly at the dead bodies. Abu Lulu posted the video.

    Abu Lulu holds the rank of brigadier general in the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group that broke away from and, since April of 2023, has fought against the Sudanese Armed Forces for control of Sudan, a gold-rich country in northeast Africa. The day the videos were posted, Abu Lulu and the other fighters were celebrating their capture of the city. The siege had lasted five hundred days, more than three times as long as the siege of Stalingrad. The R.S.F. used drones and artillery provided by the United Arab Emirates. In early May, the militia began building a thirty-five-mile-long berm around the city, to prevent food and humanitarian aid from entering; people have survived on grass and animal feed since. There were a million people living in El Fasher when the R.S.F. arrived. It was still home to two hundred and sixty thousand people in late October, when the last members of the government forces began to flee the city, leaving it open to the R.S.F. The group distanced itself from Abu Lulu after the fall of the city, and said that it had arrested him. Al Jazeera reported that he has since been released; he has continued to post on social media.

    “The world hasn’t caught up to what a big deal El Fasher is,” Nathaniel Raymond, the executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, told me. Raymond’s team has been tracking atrocities in Sudan using satellite imagery from NASA and commercial sources. The team’s analysis indicates that, since El Fasher fell, the R.S.F. has been conducting mass killings. “In some cases, if someone is shot when they’re running, and you take a picture of it with a satellite, it looks like a ‘C’ or a ‘J,’ because they drop and hit the ground on their knees or on their side in the fetal position,” Raymond told me. The satellite images show a proliferation of “C”s and “J”s, with bloodstains visible from space. “It’s simple math here,” he said. “We are talking tens upon tens of thousands of potential dead in five days.” And the berm built to keep aid out of El Fasher has now made it difficult to escape the city; only thirty-five thousand people are known to have done so. Raymond’s team now refers to El Fasher as the Killbox.

    Many of El Fasher’s residents were members of non-Arab Sudanese ethnic minorities, which the R.S.F., whose core is made up of nomadic Arabs, has targeted throughout the war. The Fur and the Zaghawa, who are Black Sudanese, have been first in the R.S.F.’s firing line, though the militia has attacked members of other non-Arab groups, such as the Berti, as well. Speaking on the phone from Cairo, Altahir Hashim, a Sudanese human-rights activist who helped organize a soup kitchen in El Fasher and aid distribution throughout Darfur, told me, “They’re ethnically cleansing. They’re killing, they’re destroying.”

    All through the beginning of the last week of October, R.S.F. fighters posted videos of the killings. In one, they shout “God is great” over corpses, flashing victory signs and lofting rifles. In another, they force men to dig their own graves. The R.S.F. is, in many ways, continuing a tradition of mass atrocities. In the early two-thousands, its predecessor organization, a militia known as the Janjaweed, perpetrated a genocide in Darfur that killed some three hundred thousand people. Hashim and his family, who are members of the Zaghawa, were forced to flee to El Fasher. Two of his brothers were killed. “After almost twenty-three years, genocide never ended,” he told me. “The world has just stood there watching, not taking any concrete action.”

    Nicolas Niarchos

    Source link

  • Survivor of Sudanese rebel attack describes

    Shaken, scratched and left with just the clothes he is wearing, Ezzeldin Hassan Musa describes the brutality of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces in the wake of the paramilitary group taking control of el-Fasher city in the Darfur region. He says its fighters tortured and murdered men trying to flee. The BBC’s Barbara Plett Usher reports.

    Source link

  • Sudan militia leader convicted of war crimes during Darfur war

    A Sudanese militia leader has been found guilty of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity more than 20 years ago in the Darfur region.

    Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, led the Janjaweed, a government-backed group that terrorised Darfur, killing hundreds of thousands of people.

    Kushayb is the first person to be tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the atrocities in Darfur. He had argued it was a case of mistaken identity.

    The conflict lasted from 2003 to 2020 and was one of the world’s gravest humanitarian disasters.

    Five years after the end of that crisis, Darfur is a key battleground in another civil war, this time between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), whose origins lie in the Janjaweed.

    During Kushayb’s trial, survivors described how their villages were burned down, men and boys slaughtered and women forced into sex slavery.

    The militia leader was found guilty on 27 counts, centring on attacks committed between 2003 and 2004.

    Judges at the ICC found the Janjaweed’s brutal tactics – including mass executions, sexual violence and torture – were often inflicted by Kushayb and his men.

    Ahead of the verdict, a small group of Darfuris waited patiently to enter the court, in the Dutch city of The Hague.

    They were in no doubt about the pivotal role Kushayb played in their suffering, with one man saying: “He was the one who gave the orders. He was the one who got the weapons.

    “So if you ask me if he was important in Darfur, I will you tell you he was one of the most important ones.”

    The Darfur war began after the Arab-dominated government at the time armed the Janjaweed, in an attempt to suppress an uprising by rebels from black African ethnic groups.

    The Janjaweed systematically attacked non-Arab villagers accused of supporting the rebels, leading to accusations of genocide.

    That same systematic violence is still happening in Darfur as part of the Sudan’s civil war.

    Many of the Janjaweed fighters have morphed into the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group that is currently battling Sudan’s army.

    The UK, US and rights groups have accused the RSF of carrying out ethnic cleansing against non-Arab communities in Darfur since the conflict began in 2023.

    Kushayb will be sentenced at a later date.

    More BBC stories about Sudan:

    [Getty Images/BBC]

    Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

    Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica

    BBC Africa podcasts

    Source link

  • Landslide levels village in Sudan’s Darfur region, kills roughly 1,000 but one person survived, rebel group controlling area says

    Cairo — A landslide wiped out a village in Sudan ‘s western region of Darfur, killing an estimated 1,000 people in one of the deadliest natural disasters in the African country’s recent history, a rebel group controlling the area said late Monday.

    The tragedy happened Sunday in the Tarasin village in Central Darfur’s Marrah Mountains after days of heavy rainfall in late August, the Sudan Liberation Movement-Army said in a statement.

    “Initial information indicates the death of all village residents, estimated to be more than one thousand people. Only one person survived,” the statement read.

    The village was “completely leveled to the ground,” the group said, appealing to the U.N. and international aid groups for help to recover bodies.

    darfur, sudan, map

    AP


    Footage shared by the Marrah Mountains news outlet showed a flattened area between mountain ranges with a group of people searching the area.

    The landslide was one of the deadliest natural disasters in Sudan’s recent history. Hundreds of people die there every year in seasonal rains and flooding.

    The tragedy came as a devastating civil war has engulfed Sudan after tensions between the country’s military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces exploded into open fighting in April 2023 in the capital of Khartoum and elsewhere in the country.

    Most of the Darfur region, including the Marrah Mountains, has become mostly inaccessible for the U.N. and aid groups given crippling restrictions and fighting between Sudan’s military and the RSF.

    The Sudan Liberation Movement-Army, centered in the Marrah Mountains area, is one of multiple rebel groups active in the Darfur and Kordofan regions. It hasn’t taken sides in the war.

    Darfur’s army-aligned governor, Minni Minnawi, described the landslide as a “humanitarian tragedy that goes beyond the borders of the region,” according to French news agency AFP. “We appeal to international humanitarian organizations to urgently intervene and provide support and assistance at this critical moment, for the tragedy is greater than what our people can bear alone,” he said in a statement. 

    The Marrah Mountains are a rugged volcanic chain extending for 100 miles southwest of el-Fasher, an epicenter of fighting between the military and the RSF. The area has turned into a hub for displaced families fleeing fighting in and around el-Fasher.

    The conflict has killed more than 40,000 people, forced more than 14 million to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine sweeps parts of the country.

    It has been marked by gross atrocities including ethnically motivated killing and rape, according to the United Nations and rights groups. The International Criminal Court said it was investigating alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    The village of Tarasin is in the central Marrah Mountains, a volcanic area with a height of more than 9,800 feet at its summit. A world heritage site, the mountain chain is known for its lower temperature and higher rainfall than surrounding areas, according to UNICEF. It’s more than 560 miles west of Khartoum.

    Source link

  • UN uncovers 87 bodies in Darfur mass grave horror | CNN

    UN uncovers 87 bodies in Darfur mass grave horror | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    The head of a United Nations agency has called for an investigation into the killing of at least 87 people who were discovered in a mass grave in Sudan’s West Darfur region.

    United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has demanded a “prompt, thorough and independent investigation” into the grim discovery outside the region’s capital El-Geneina.

    Inside the mass grave were bodies of ethnic Masalit who along with other non-Arab communities are often targeted by Arab militias, supported by the RSF, according to Human Rights Watch.

    The deceased were allegedly killed last month by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and their allied militia.

    “According to credible information gathered by the Office, those buried in the mass grave were killed by RSF and their allied militia around 13-21 June in El-Geneina’s Al-Madaress and Al-Jamarek districts…,” the UN body said in a statement Thursday.

    The statement added that the bodies included individuals who were victims of the violence that occurred following the assassination of Khamis Abbaker, the Governor of West Darfur, on June 14.

    Furthermore, the victims also include those who died due to untreated injuries.

    Türk strongly condemned the killings and said he was “appalled by the callous and disrespectful way the dead, along with their families and communities, were treated.”

    “There must be a prompt, thorough and independent investigation into the killings, and those responsible must be held to account,” Türk added.

    He urged the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and other parties involved in the conflict to abide by international law and facilitate prompt searches for the deceased, their collection, and evacuation, without discrimination based on ethnic background.

    “The RSF’s leadership and their allied militia as well as all parties to an armed conflict are required to ensure that the dead are properly handled, and their dignity protected,” Türk stressed.

    West Darfur remains one of the most conflict-ridden areas in the Sudanese Darfur region, with a long history of severe violence.

    The recent killings reflect the atrocities committed during the early 2000s, where hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives in an ethnic cleansing campaign led by the Janjaweed, an Arab militia that preceded the RSF.

    Source link

  • Opinion: How did Sudan go from casting off despotic rule to this? | CNN

    Opinion: How did Sudan go from casting off despotic rule to this? | CNN

    Editor’s Note: Justin Lynch is a researcher and analyst in Washington, DC. He is co-author of the book “Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy.” The views expressed here are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    Four years ago, almost to the day, the people of Sudan were celebrating a revolution after overthrowing longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir. Now the East African country faces the possibility of a complete collapse similar to the chaos we see today in Yemen or Libya.

    On Saturday, rival military factions began fighting each other in the capital of Khartoum. The two sides battled for control of the nation’s airports, bases and military compounds. Violence quickly spilled into the streets and across the country.

    Some 45 million Sudanese effectively are held hostage and are unable to venture out of their homes for fear of being killed in the crossfire. At least 180 people have perished in the fighting, including three World Food Programme humanitarian workers.

    The conflict pits two bitter rivals and their powerful armed forces against each other. On one side are the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. On the other side are the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti.

    There is no good side in this conflict. Both have been accused of a long litany of human rights violations.

    How did Sudan go from casting off despotic rule and creating a fledgling democracy a few years ago to teetering on the brink of state collapse?

    On April 11, 2019, Sudan’s longtime dictator, Bashir, was overthrown. The cause of Bashir’s removal was months of protests led by Sudan’s unions, which spurred a military coup from the SAF and RSF. Both Burhan and Hemeti joined forces to remove their former boss.

    It was a moment of promise because there was hope for democracy. I remember walking around the “sit-in” — a giant carnival of freedom in the middle of Khartoum that protesters had blocked off to demand change. It was electric.

    But social movements such as the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) — the union behind the protest — often struggle to translate the momentum of their demonstrations into real political power.

    The reason for this is, in part, structural. Social movements such as the SPA are often based on grassroots activism. A dictator can arrest one or two leaders of an organization but not an entire country.

    However, once a dictator is overthrown, these kinds of social movements often struggle to build the leadership hierarchy necessary during political negotiations that take place. Like many other movements, Sudan’s protesters were unable to translate mobilization into political power.

    Civilian leaders entered into a negotiation with the military over the future of the country shortly after Bashir fell in April 2019. The two sides were not evenly matched. Because of these leadership challenges, the pro-democracy forces struggled to bargain with the disciplined military.

    Any momentum that pro-democracy advocates had during the negotiations was stamped out in June 2019 when RSF soldiers violently dispersed the sit-in. More than 100 people were killed.

    After the June massacre and the leadership challenges, a transitional constitution was signed in August 2019 that gave the SAF and RSF most of the power in Sudan. Burhan was the head of state, and Hemeti was placed in an elevated political position. Elections were promised in 2022, but few believed they would actually happen.

    The transitional period began in August 2019, and I interviewed Abdalla Hamdok, the civilian prime minister, several times for a book that I co-wrote on Sudan’s revolution. The way that the constitution was written meant that Hamdok had limited power as the prime minister. Burhan was the head of state and wanted to preserve the powers of the SAF.

    Hamdok often told me that revolutions come in cycles. The 2019 removal of Bashir was a high point of revolution, and he saw his job as making as many reforms as possible before the low tide of counterrevolution swept him away.

    Hamdok found that the legacy of 30 years of dictatorship meant that Sudan’s political and economic models were dilapidated. But Burhan and Hemeti blocked the big reforms that Hamdok wanted to make.

    Outside Khartoum violence grew. Parts of Sudan such as Darfur saw a new round of conflict between ethnic groups orchestrated by RSF troops. More than 430,000 people were displaced due to conflict in Sudan, mostly in Darfur.

    Soldiers did not hide the atrocities they committed against civilians. I remember drinking tea with a soldier aligned with the RSF at his house in Darfur as he explained why he had recently participated in the burning down of a village from another ethnic group.

    The soldier reasoned that a member of his tribe had been killed in an altercation, so the RSF-aligned forces took revenge by torching a village that had been home to 30,000 people. At least 163 people died.

    Tensions between the SAF and RSF grew. Burhan viewed Hemeti and his RSF forces as upstart usurpers from Darfur who were undisciplined. Hemeti on the other hand believed that it was time for Darfur to lead Sudan.

    Hamdok was on the cusp of beginning to turn the economy around when Burhan and the SAF intervened. As we wrote in the book “Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy,” the potential success of a civilian government was too much for Burhan. In October 2021, Hamdok was removed in a military coup.

    After the October 2021 coup, the United States and United Nations pushed a worse version of the transitional constitution in Sudan. They argued that it was the best way to bring democracy.

    The idea was to restart the transitional period, but I and many others argued it was shortsighted and wouldn’t work. Returning to a government led by Burhan was clearly not going to usher in democracy. If the plan ended in a coup the first time, why would it work the second time?

    Some activists stopped partnering with the US and came to see the UN mission as a roadblock to democracy because of these policies. I felt sorry when I spoke with the best American and foreign diplomats, who also understood the international policy in Sudan wouldn’t work. They saw the flaws but felt powerless to dissent and were forced to carry out decisions made many levels above them.

    What preceded this weekend’s outbreak of clashes was a controversial part of the international policy that tried to unify the SAF and RSF. The idea was to make a single army, but neither Hemeti nor Burhan wanted to give up the power they had amassed.

    The plan to unify the military hadn’t worked in similar contexts. It was a repeat of the 2013 and 2016 unification processes that took place in South Sudan with similarly bloody results. Instead, the tenuous relationship between Burhan and Hemeti boiled over due to the pressure.

    It can be easy to look at the recent history of “revolutions” in countries such as Myanmar, Tunisia, Egypt and Sudan and conclude that they eventually backfire. I don’t agree. I learned from Sudanese activists that a nation’s political fortune is an active battle.

    We can one day hope that Sudan sees dreams of democracy come true. But right now, the Sudanese people are just hoping to survive the day.

    The lesson from Sudan is that a revolution is only the start of change, not the end.

    Source link