In recent months, Sudan's independent military force, the Rapid Support Force (RSF), together with allied armed groups, have been besieging the city of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state. If the city collapses, another wave of murders could begin. This is happening in the complete absence of the United Nations or any other international or regional entity mandated to protect civilians.
RSF forces and associated armed groups have already killed thousands of mostly Masalit people in El Geneina and surrounding areas in West Darfur state, forcing more than 500,000 people, mainly Masalit, to flee to neighboring Chad. The current risk is that they will target the hundreds of thousands of displaced people who have taken refuge in El Fasher, fleeing violence elsewhere in Darfur.
As I read about the new and frightening developments in Darfur, I am reminded of July 2023. At that time, his colleagues and I traveled to eastern Chad to collect evidence of the mass murder in El Geneina.
On a hot July day, my translator and I were walking through the arid outskirts of Adre, a small town in eastern Chad. It was home to hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Masalit women and children, who had fled violence in the west. Darfur. Men were noticeably absent. The family was living in an improvised shelter made of four sticks and a tarpaulin, but it offered little protection from the scorching sun and heavy rain. There was little electricity, running water, or regular food supplies.
My interpreter was a key member of El Geneina's Masalit human rights community and knew almost everyone. Our walk through this vast makeshift settlement was punctuated every few minutes by the almost cheerful chirping of greetings.
But when we reached out to her best friend, Zahra Hamis Ibrahim, the raw pain that all the families were experiencing became clear. The women looked at each other, each raised their hands, palms facing up, and began whispering prayers for the dead. Then they fell on each other and began to sob.
Zahra's 17-year-old son was brutally executed by armed Arab militias on June 15 as he and a friend fled the horrific massacre in Ergeneina, the same day tens of thousands of civilians fled to Chad. .
Despite her terrible loss, Zahra continued to document cases of sexual violence and continued her work over the years as the founder of an organization that supports survivors. At the camp, she introduced me to a slim, shy 28-year-old economics student who wished to remain anonymous.
She was sitting on a mattress across from me in a sweltering tent. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she said that on June 8, eight armed men – two in RSF uniforms and six in civilian clothes – broke into her parents' home. Told. They beat her relatives, shot her mother in the leg, and one of them raped a student. When she reached that part of the story, her entire body seemed to collapse on its own and was about to disappear. When I asked if she thought she might return to El Geneina, she physically winced and forcefully shook her head to the side.
I interviewed her 24-year-old cousin, who also requested anonymity. An armed man raped her as she tried to retrieve three children's clothes from her home, which had been ransacked by the RSF and Arab paramilitary forces several weeks earlier. With her hands shaking, she told me that she hadn't had her period yet, and she begged, “I can't get pregnant anymore. Please help me find a solution.” She was told the next day, when she was finally able to access medical services, that she was indeed pregnant.
A few days later, we interviewed Zahra's son's best friend. He was with his son when RSF-aligned gunmen forced everyone who had fled with them to chest down to the ground. One man said to them: “I've got 10 bullets. I'm ready to shoot whoever I want.”
The man shot Zahra's son in the head and killed his two teenage friends, the 17-year-old friend said, his eyes downcast. At the end of the interview, I asked him how he was coping. “He doesn't think he's okay,” he said. “I can't sleep at night and remember everything I saw.”
The scale of the suffering of the Masalit residents of Adre was palpable and at times almost unbearable. I could see people smiling and laughing at each other, then silent and staring off into the distance, as if remembering the horrors they had witnessed.
I have witnessed this kind of grief before – Yazidi survivors of ISIS killings and sexual slavery in Iraq in 2014, mass killings and rapes by Myanmar's military in 2017. Rohingya survivors, and Palestinians at a hospital in northern Egypt. Last month, he was injured in an atrocity committed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip.
While these three crises have rightly garnered global attention and outrage, the abuses witnessed by Masalit over the last year have barely been mentioned in the news.
From my current base in Ukraine, I also have a front row seat to the stark contrast between the global outrage over Russian military atrocities here and the muted response to what is happening in Sudan.
The UN Fund for the Sudan Crisis is woefully underfunded, even though the victims of this conflict are as vulnerable as can be imagined. As a result, medical services are limited in Adore, and psychosocial services are even more limited, although they are much needed among the displaced population.
Attention from foreign governments, media and non-governmental organizations is important. It is necessary to ensure life-saving humanitarian assistance and bring greater scrutiny and ultimate justice to those who commit mass atrocities.
Heavy rain suddenly began in the late afternoon, but people did not rush to the shelter of tarps and sticks, fearing their belongings would be washed away, as had been expected. Most people had nothing. RSF fighters and their allies stole what the dwarfs had as they fled Darfur.
A few days ago, as people fleeing El Fasher were pouring across the border into Adre, Zahra sent me a message. She said conditions in refugee camps are worsening as numbers grow and resources dwindle.
As we urge in our recently published report on Darfur, the United Nations and African Union will deploy a peacekeeping mission to Darfur to protect civilians, monitor violations of human rights and humanitarian law, and provide assistance to displaced populations. They must be tasked with laying the foundations for a safe return. . The real risk is that without a military that prioritizes the protection of civilians, the horrors experienced by Zahra and hundreds of thousands of others will be repeated not only in El Fasher but also in other towns and cities in Darfur.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
