Indiscriminate killings of civilians, sieges of entire towns, sexual assaults, collective poisonings and reports of ethnic cleansing. Sudan is bleeding from a civil war that has accumulated unprecedented peaks of violence since its beginning, in April 2023. With the end of the seasonal rains, the conflict has intensified with more murders, bombings and more intense fighting for the territory that is disputed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia and the regular army with their allied armed groups. Meanwhile, the possibility of sitting around a negotiating table to agree on a ceasefire is becoming more distant every day.
The latest death toll in what is already the largest active conflict in sub-Saharan Africa shows more than 61,000 deaths during the first 14 months of war, according to research published in the middle of this month by the prestigious London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. . This figure triples the estimates that the United Nations had until now. UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo has blamed both sides of the conflict for the violence. “Certain so-called allies of the parties are allowing the killing in Sudan. This is inconceivable, it is illegal and it must end,” he stated during an appearance before the Security Council.
The violent episodes compete in atrocity. In Gezira State, dozens of villages have been under siege for a month in revenge for the defection of a senior RSF commander to the army, as documented by numerous NGOs and media outlets. In addition to the more than 135,000 displaced people caused by these raids, 40 decomposed bodies were found in the town of Al Sariha by the residents themselves when they returned to their homes, days after an attack by the RSF in which they killed around 140 people. . In Wad Ashayb, at least 69 civilians were shot dead this Tuesday, and a week earlier, 315 deaths were recorded in Al Hilaliya, 295 attributed to poisoning, according to the Government of Sudan.
The Sudanese ambassador to Spain, Maha Ayoub, disagrees: “The water killed them immediately, so it wasn’t just pollution. “She was clearly poisoned,” he said during a recent meeting with some media outlets, including Morning Express, at the embassy headquarters in Madrid. Some of the victims of these alleged poisonings were the grandparents, uncles and cousins of one of the diplomats on the ambassador’s team present during the meeting.
Meanwhile, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) warns that the number of refugees has exceeded three million, an unprecedented figure since the war began on April 15, 2023. In total, it is estimated that 11 million people, almost 30% of the population, are displaced in the country, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM); Nearly 25 million people need humanitarian assistance, at least 750,000 are on the brink of famine and more than 800 have died from cholera. In an emergency meeting held in the Security Council at the end of October, the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, declared himself alarmed by the “total humanitarian catastrophe.” Dominique Hyde, Director of External Relations at UNHCR, has just visited the refugee camps on the border with Chad and explains by phone that the humanitarian situation is “desperate, with continuous bloodshed.” It is, he assures, “the worst civilian protection crisis in the world in decades.”
On the other hand, in the State of Khartoum, captured by rebel militias at the beginning of the conflict, an increase in violence has also been recorded, coinciding with the first advances of the Sudanese Armed Forces to recover the territory. In the bloodiest event, in early November, at least 73 civilians were killed and more than 200 injured under two army airstrikes on the cities of Omdurman and Ombada, west of the capital. The INGO Sudan Forum, which represents 70 NGOs in the country, has reported that the warring parties have significantly intensified the use of airstrikes.
Fear of genocide in Darfur
In Darfur, where the RSF controls almost all major cities, there are fears of a repeat of the 2003 genocide on non-Arab minorities. The latest report from the UN fact-finding mission denounces that paramilitary forces have committed war crimes, including rape, sexual slavery, kidnappings, recruitment of minors, looting and pillage. And they have done it with especially cruelty among the Masalit minority of El Geneina, whose members they have murdered, tortured and raped. “They told me again and again that this attack was based on their ethnic origin. They saw how men and boys were killed. They raped women while they were fleeing,” says Hyde, about the conversations he had with Masalit survivors.
Meanwhile, the prospect of a ceasefire is increasingly distant; The Sudanese Armed Forces did not even send a delegation to the last US-led talks last September in Geneva. The ambassador points out that the Government will not sit at a negotiating table until the RSF complies with the Jeddah agreements of November 2023, aimed at guaranteeing the protection of civilians. Tom Perriello, US special envoy for the African country, traveled to Port Sudan last week to try to increase the flow of aid to the country.
One of the reasons why the Government of Sudan was absent from these talks was the inclusion of the United Arab Emirates, given reports of this country’s military support for the RSF. Furthermore, a recent Amnesty International investigation has identified French-made military technology on the battlefield in Sudan, specifically in armored vehicles used by the RSF, in what is likely a violation of the UN arms embargo on Darfur. .
Ayoub also insists that the international community must consider the RSF a terrorist group similar to the Islamic State or Boko Haram. “The Government of Sudan has explained since the beginning of the conflict that the RSF is a terrorist militia and must be condemned, and the international community cannot behave as if both sides are equal. If this would not be acceptable in any other country, why would it be acceptable in Sudan?” he asks.
The war pits two high-ranking soldiers in Sudan: the army chief and leader de factoin the country, Abdel Fattah al Burhan, and his former ally and number twoMohamed Hamdan Dagalo, now leader of the RSF, formalized as a paramilitary organization that emerged from the former Janjaweed militias, which committed the worst atrocities during the previous conflict in Darfur. Both joined together to seize power after the overthrow of former president Omar Hassan al Bashir in 2019, but they distanced themselves and in 2023 the conflict broke out.
