In late October, the Sudanese paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took control of El Fasher, a pivotal city in the western region of Darfur. Evidence points to mass killings of civilians, echoing genocidal violence committed there by a precursor of the RSF two decades ago.
The brutal siege also marks a major turning point in the northeastern African country’s civil war, which has claimed as many as 150,000 lives since it began in April 2023. With RSF control of El Fasher, the group now fully controls Darfur, which covers roughly the western third of Sudan. That is likely to severely complicate ongoing diplomatic efforts to end the war.
Who is the RSF and why are they fighting a civil war in Sudan?
Why We Wrote This
The fall of El Fasher in western Sudan to a paramilitary force underscores the difficulties of ending the country’s devastating civil war, now in its third year.
The RSF was formed in 2013 from the remains of the Janjaweed, Sudanese Arab militias that fought for then-President Omar al-Bashir to crush an anti-government uprising in Darfur two decades ago. They played a central role in the campaign, which killed an estimated 300,000 people, mainly from African and non-Arab ethnic groups. The United States, the International Criminal Court, and others have designated those killings a genocide.
The RSF later turned on its benefactor, helping to overthrow Mr. Bashir in 2019. Then, in 2021, the group joined with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) to stage a military coup that toppled Sudan’s transitional civilian government.
But in April 2023, the fragile alliance turned sour, and tensions between the rival generals leading the RSF and SAF erupted into a civil war.
More than 2 1/2 years later, the United Nations says that both sides have committed war crimes by deliberately targeting civilians and destroying “essential infrastructure for survival” like hospitals, markets, and displacement camps. In January, the United States formally accused the RSF of genocide, citing large-scale, ethnically-motivated murder and rape.
Why is the RSF takeover of El Fasher so significant?
The civil war has gradually redrawn Sudan’s map, with strong RSF control in the west and SAF control in the east. El Fasher was the SAF’s last stronghold in Darfur, and the RSF fought for control of the city for 18 months before seizing it on Oct. 26.
Sudanese political analyst Kholood Khair calls El Fasher the “jewel in the crown” of the Darfur campaign. She points to the fact that the RSF now has control of the entire Darfur region, which is strategically located along the Chad, Libya, Central African Republic, and South Sudan borders and is a significant source of Sudan’s gold.
What does the RSF takeover of El Fasher mean for civilians?
In short, it means violence and terror. Accurate figures are scarce due to a communications blackout in El Fasher and restrictions on journalists’ access to the city, but credible estimates suggest that between 1,500 and 2,000 people have been killed since the RSF officially took the city. More than 450 of those were in the city’s last functioning hospital, where many civilians were sheltering, according to the World Health Organization.
The RSF denies involvement in those deaths, but its fighters have also circulated graphic videos of killings during their campaign to take the city. Meanwhile, using satellite imagery and remote-sensing data, Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab has found evidence of human bodies and bloodstains at several sites in El Fasher.
The videos released by RSF fighters send a clear message to the people of El Fasher, says Khalid Medani, an associate professor of political science and Islamic studies at McGill University in Montreal. In a city where resistance to the group has been strong, “[The RSF] is telling them, ‘If you do not comply, this is what’s going to happen to you,’” explains Dr. Medani, who is Sudanese and lived in El Fasher during the conflict in Darfur in the early 2000s.
More than 36,000 people fled the city after the RSF takeover, a new wave of displacement in a war where more than 14 million Sudanese have already been uprooted. Most were headed about 50 miles west to the city of Tawila, which is already sheltering over 650,000 displaced people.
The scale and brutality of the violence civilians are enduring “is really difficult to describe,” Dr. Medani says.
On Tuesday, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) also confirmed that “famine conditions” are present in El Fasher, meaning that 1 in 500 people are dying from starvation on a daily basis. Across the country, 21.2 million people – 45% of the population – face what the WFP calls “crisis levels of hunger.”
What role is the international community playing in this war?
Sudan’s civil war is rooted in domestic conflicts, but has been “sustained, inflamed, and accelerated by external powers,” Dr. Medani says.
Foreign powers have significant geopolitical and material interests in Sudan, a gold-rich territory bisected by the Nile River, which borders seven countries and the Red Sea, a vital global shipping route. Notably, the United Arab Emirates is believed to be arming the RSF – and Iran, Russia, and Turkey have provided weapons to the SAF.
Meanwhile, the UAE, Egypt, the U.S., and Saudi Arabia are attempting to mediate an end to the conflict. In September, they agreed to press the RSF and SAF for a ceasefire and a plan to transition to a civilian-led government. Indirect negotiations between the two groups began in October, but are now on indefinite hold.
Ms. Khair says she is troubled that reports of genocide and famine in Sudan have not triggered greater response from the international community. The world’s failure to act in support of Sudan’s people, she says, amounts to a “dereliction of duty.”
