The rumblings of war are so menacing in Darfur’s besieged capital that residents have enrolled in first-aid classes to help loved ones who might come to harm, and leaflets are distributed explaining how to prepare a body for burial.
“Death has become normal,” said Al-Ghali Adam, 37, who worked at the state finance ministry before the conflict upended his life and cast Sudan further into the abyss. “We don’t stop too much nowadays when we hear that somebody we know has been killed.”
His city, El-Fasher, is the biggest in the vast Darfur region to have resisted the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that is fighting the Sudanese military in a brutal civil war now into its second year. El-Fasher’s residents are mostly drawn from communities that were targeted during the previous conflict in Darfur, some 20 years ago, by the Janjaweed militia that was the forerunner to the RSF.
The predominantly Arab RSF, led by a camel trader turned warlord who goes by the name Hemeti, has over the past 12 months seized four of the five states in Darfur, a desert region in the west of the country that it considers its stronghold.
While North Darfur state and El-Fasher remain outside its control, the fate of the city now hangs in the balance amid indications that Hemeti, whose full title is General Hamdan Mohamed Dagalo, is preparing a new offensive.
UN human rights commissioner Volker Türk late last week said he was “gravely concerned by the escalating violence in and around El-Fasher”, accusing both sides in the conflict of “indiscriminate attacks” in residential districts.
The battle for El-Fasher and the complexities that underpin it encapsulate the multi-layered war that analysts say is spiralling out of control.
About 17 armed groups are in and around the city, with the RSF particularly wary of rebels from the Zaghawa ethnic group who have allied themselves with the Sudanese army, according to observers. These include one band led by Darfur governor Mini Minawi, and another under Jibril Ibrahim, the national government’s finance minister.
Nationwide, Sudan’s civil war has displaced 8mn people, nearly one in six of the country’s population, some 2mn of whom have fled, many to neighbouring Chad and Egypt. It has also pushed 18mn people into acute hunger and triggered a humanitarian crisis that the World Food Programme ranks alongside those in Yemen and Afghanistan.
Sudan’s government, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, is based in Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast, where he fled as its forces were routed early in the war. But Burhan’s military has since staged a comeback, with fighting returning to the capital Khartoum and its twin city Omdurman, as well as to Darfur.
The inability of the RSF to take El-Fasher in part reflects the city’s ethnic make-up. Its Arab residents largely fled after air strikes targeted their neighbourhoods, and those who remained are mostly from the Fur and Zaghawa communities who, along with the Masalit, were targeted in the early 2000s conflict.
Then, attacks by the horseriding Janjaweed, which prompted charges of genocide by the International Criminal Court, took place mostly in smaller towns and villages, forcing many to flee to the cities. This time, the fighting has come to the cities themselves. And in El-Fasher, which before the war was home to about 500,000 people, there is a deep sense of fear over what comes next.
Rabie Dinar, sultan of the Fur people, told the Financial Times that if “the RSF took the city it would be the ugliest scenario ever”. He doubted whether they could, but doing so would come at “a very high human cost”, he said.
Most El-Fasher residents support Burhan’s military, according to residents, despite government forces carrying out regular air strikes on the city that result in indiscriminate destruction.
The fighting is stop-start, with the frequent local ceasefires interrupted by clashes between the RSF and one or other of the government-allied rebel groups. Night-time strikes from government jets take place roughly twice a week, and the army fires heavy artillery at RSF positions.
The RSF responds with shells, but many of these land on people’s houses, causing civilian casualties. At least 43 people, including women and children, have been killed in the fighting since April 14, according to the UN.
For many in El-Fasher, life has become a battle for survival. There is no electricity or running water, with residents largely reliant on supplies that arrive by donkey. Shortages meant goods such as meat and sugar have doubled in price.
During the day, people wander the streets and bazaars, including the once-thriving leather handbag market that has now ceased functioning. In most parts of the city, a curfew keeps people in their houses after sundown.
The urban area is divided, with the army and the allied rebels in the west and south, and Hemeti’s forces in the north and east. The RSF has taken control of seven counties outside El-Fasher and is contesting an eighth. This month it attacked several villages around the city, killing 13 people and injuring dozens more, activists said.
El-Fasher has amid all this become a refuge for those fleeing the fighting elsewhere in Darfur, filling its schools and government buildings.
Toby Harward, the deputy head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said some 40,000 displaced people were in the city, with more set to arrive. Some have travelled from neighbouring cities such as Nyala and Zalingi, which are now under RSF control.
With tensions running high, Ahmed Mustafa, a leader of the Zaghwa and a rebel forces spokesperson, raised the prospect of an assault on Arab areas of Darfur so as to take the fight to the RSF and the communities from which it draws its support.
For the moment, he said, his forces were “controlling themselves” by not targeting the Arab populations. But, he added ominously, “this won’t last if the RSF keeps attacking our people”.
Read the full article here
