Fears of a new ethnic genocide have grown in recent days in Sudan's Darfur region, where brutal violence killed as many as 300,000 people 20 years ago, with war-torn cities already under threat of starvation. attack is imminent.
The battle for control of El Fasher, the last city held by Sudanese forces in Darfur, has prompted alarm warnings from US and UN officials who fear major bloodshed is imminent. . Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. special envoy to the United Nations, told reporters on Monday that the city was “on the brink of mass genocide.”
El Fasher is the latest flashpoint in a year-long civil war between Sudanese forces and Rapid Support Forces. The Rapid Support Force is a powerful paramilitary group once raised by the military and now a bitter rival for power. The conflict has devastated one of Africa's largest countries and sparked a massive humanitarian crisis that UN officials say is one of the biggest crises in decades.
The crisis has also focused on the role of foreign powers, particularly the United Arab Emirates, which are accused of inciting the fighting.
Since April 14, fighters loyal to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have besieged El Fasher in preparation for what the United Nations calls an “imminent attack.” El Fasher, the former capital of the pre-colonial Kingdom of Darfur, has about 1.8 million residents, including hundreds of thousands who fled earlier waves of fighting.
This city is the last obstacle to the RSF's complete control of the region. Its warplanes swept across Darfur last fall and now control four of the region's five major cities.
Controlling El Fasher would give the group a territorial bloc that, along with neighboring areas, covers about a third of Sudan, and is likely to change the course of the war. One feared scenario is that Sudan splits into rival fiefdoms, similar to Libya, after Muammar al-Qaddafi's death in 2011.
At least 43 people, including women and children, have been killed in skirmishes and bombings on the outskirts of El Fasher in recent weeks, according to the United Nations, and residents fear they are just part of future violence. .
Dawarbeit Mohamed, a resident of El Fasher who was evacuated from the city last year, said, “Everyone is expecting an attack at any moment,'' and is in constant contact with his parents and siblings who are left behind. he said. “It seems inevitable.”
Darfur attracted world attention 20 years ago for a vicious conflict that involved ethnic genocide that left some 300,000 people dead. The worst killings, which were charged with genocide, were led by the Janjaweed. The Janjaweed were a feared ethnic Arab militant group that later evolved into the Rapid Support Forces.
Before Sudan went to war, RSF leaders were trying to shake off a reputation for ruthlessness, but that reputation returned last year following reports of massacres and looting.
Still, experts say an attack on El Fasher could be dangerous and costly for rapid support forces. This has given many Western and Arab officials, including some in the United States, hope that international pressure can still prompt both sides to withdraw and avert disaster.
The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss the crisis behind closed doors.
After the session, Ms. Thomas-Greenfield said the United States is appealing to all countries, including the United Arab Emirates, to stop supporting parties to the conflict in Sudan, adding: “A crisis of epic proportions is emerging.'' ” he warned.
“As I have said before, history is repeating itself in the worst possible way in Darfur,” Ms. Thomas-Greenfield said.
Sudan and some UN officials claim that Emirates provided the group with money and weapons. The New York Times reported last year on an Emirati arms smuggling operation to the RSF through eastern Chad.
The UAE has denied any support for rapid support forces, primarily in recent letters to the Security Council.
The civil war in Sudan, which reached its one-year anniversary on April 15, is intensifying and expanding at a dizzying speed.
What began as a power struggle between rival generals, army commander General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan, has turned into a large-scale conflict involving ethnic, religious and rebel groups. developed. Groups from both sides, as well as a number of foreign sponsors, also participated.
On Monday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov was in Port Sudan for talks with Sudanese military and civilian leaders. Russia's Wagner Group supplied missiles to the RSF in the early weeks of the war. The Kremlin has long coveted Sudan's access to the Red Sea.
Elsewhere in Darfur, RSF advances have been accompanied by widespread ethnic violence. United Nations investigators estimate that between 10,000 and 15,000 civilians were killed in the attack on the city of El Geneina in western Darfur last October. Most of the victims were from African ethnic groups that have long been targets of Arab-dominated rapid support forces.
However, peace remained in El Fasher thanks to a regional ceasefire between the RSF and other armed groups surrounding the city. However, this fragile agreement has unraveled in recent weeks as the Sudanese military persuaded or induced the Darfuri ethnic group to abandon its neutrality, triggering the RSF's advance into the city.
RSF accuses the military of provoking fighting with airstrikes on RSF-held areas, leading in one recent case to the deaths of seven pastoralists and an estimated 250 camels.
Starving people are caught in the crossfire.
In February, Médecins Sans Frontières reported that in the Zamzam camp, 16 miles south of El Fasher, 40% of children between the ages of six months and two years were severely malnourished, and one child died every two hours. He announced that the situation was “absolutely catastrophic.”
But U.S. and U.N. officials say both sides in the conflict are blocking food aid. Sudan's military has barred the United Nations from bringing in aid from Chad, except at the only border crossing controlled by its allies.
And RSF has set up its own control system for foreign aid in Merit, a town just north of El Fasher, to avoid risking aid operations if the delivery of urgently needed aid has effectively stopped. said an anonymous UN official.
Speaking by phone, El Fasher residents were worried about what would happen next.
Shadia Ibrahim, a radio station technician, said she was hunkered down in her home as heavy gunfire erupted in the east of the city on Sunday. Electricity was cut off and the price of water and food soared, she said.
Ibrahim hoped the city would be spared the fate of Geneina, whose battle was followed by a massacre. “I hope that doesn't happen here,” she said.