Some call it ethnic cleansing, others speak of genocide. What is clear is that in Darfur, behind closed doors to independent observers, a tragedy is unfolding in which thousands of people are losing their lives and villages and residential areas are burning. Similarities emerge with the major conflict in 2003 in this area of Western Sudan. In that war, labeled as genocide by the US, between 200 and 300,000 inhabitants died.
This week two reports of mass slaughter were published. The International Criminal Court reopened investigations into crimes in Darfur. In a court statement writes prosecutor Karim Kahn that now is the time for “moral responsibility” to “people who have felt invisible for 20 years.”
The United Nations reported 87 bodies in a mass grave, including women and children, in El Geneina, West Darfur, near the border with Chad. The American Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a story about 28 executions of young men in the town of Misterei. In all the incidents investigated, the victims are Masalit, an African people in the border area. The perpetrators are Arab groups supported by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary forces of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, who are fighting against the government army of President Abdel Fattah Burhan elsewhere in the country.
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The conflict in Darfur, which has been dragging on for many years, flared up because of the fighting that started in April in the capital Khartoum between the fighting cocks Hemedti and Burhan. But other armed groups are fighting in Darfur. The government army is largely aloof and locked up in barracks. The RSF prepared for this war in Darfur even before the battle in Khartoum by recruiting fighters from Arab tribes on a large scale. They went on the offensive, mostly against civilians of African descent.
Their first target was the Masalit in El Geneina. The Arab militiamen burned down residential areas, executed young men and raped women. On the escape route to Chad, they then robbed the Masalit of their last belongings.
Traumatized, sometimes crying, tens of thousands of Masalit arrive in eastern Chad, where the infrastructure for humane shelter is lacking. When Khamis Abdullah Abaker, a Masalit and the governor of West Darfur, spoke about genocide in an interview a month ago, he was immediately attacked by RSF fighters. killed.
It’s about land
The crisis that broke out in the last century in the increasingly drier Darfur revolves around land. African populations, such as the Masalit and also the Fur, were deprived of it in the 2003 war and have been in large refugee camps ever since. Some went back to their homes and reclaimed their plundered land from the Arab occupiers. With this new war, the Arab militias are trying to retake those fields. They also attacked displaced persons camps and looted supplies from aid organizations.
Darfur consists of three regions and now the fighting in West Darfur is spreading to the other two regions. In Central Darfur, fighting raged in the regional capital Nyala, turning parts of the city into rubble.
In the capital Al-Fashir of North Darfur, Arab militias have caused a lot of destruction, but are facing resistance. A former resistance movement of African fighters has called on the population to arm themselves and helped defend the main market in Al-Fashir.
Burhan’s government army hardly plays a role in Darfur anymore, and it also fails to defeat the RSF in Khartoum. Should the RSF lose out in the capital, it will retreat to Darfur.
UN Secretary General António Guterres recently warned that Sudan is on the brink of “full-blown civil war”. After the 2003 war, a UN peacekeeping force came to Darfur, but withdrew two years ago. Although this hybrid intervention force of the UN and the African Union failed to bring about peace, it sometimes succeeded in protecting the population.