A Massacre Unfolding in Sudan

A new struggle on an old battlefield

I’m the chief Africa correspondent.

Since the city of El Fasher in Sudan fell to a paramilitary force last week, verified images and witness accounts have pointed to an unfolding massacre in the country’s Darfur region.

Residents were shot as they tried to flee the city. Videos show paramilitary forces casually executing civilians. Those who made the arduous escape to a town 65 kilometers away brought accounts of terror, starvation and death.

Two decades ago, the word “Darfur” rippled across the world as a symbol of unchecked atrocities in a distant land. Today, it is happening again.

A wave of killings is sweeping one of the region’s biggest cities. The same ethnic rivalries seem to be fueling the chaos. The paramilitaries unleashing the terror descended from the Janjaweed, the predominantly Arab militias that ran rampant two decades ago.

The first time Darfur tipped into chaos, there was at least some degree of Western pressure. This time, there’s little celebrity activism or political attention, and impunity for abuses is rife.

Then and now

The fighters rampaging across Darfur are armed, organized and funded better than ever. And they are backed by one of the wealthiest countries in the wider region, the United Arab Emirates, which is also a close partner of the United States. (The Emirates has denied backing either side in the conflict.)

Then, fighters rode mainly on horses and camels; today, they drive armored vehicles and pickups. Before, they torched villages; now, they fire heavy artillery and fly sophisticated drones.

In the last war, the paramilitaries fought on the same side as the Sudanese Army. Now, though, the paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces, or R.S.F., is fighting the national army in a battle that has ripped Sudan apart and caused, by many measures, the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The civil war between the Sudanese Army and the R.S.F., which erupted in April 2023, stemmed in part from the political ambitions of the group’s leader, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan. He has declared his own parallel government in the state of South Darfur.

His troops have perpetrated atrocities that the United Nations calls war crimes and the Biden administration called genocide, often targeting members of the Zaghawa ethnic group. Sexual violence is also widespread, the U.N. says.

Until this week, El Fasher was the only city in Darfur that the R.S.F. did not control. A contingent of Sudanese soldiers and allied Darfuri militiamen clung to a garrison near the airport, their last foothold in the region.

As the R.S.F. tightened its siege, fighters built a high earthen berm that looped around the city, trapping about a quarter-million residents inside. Civilians who tried to smuggle food or medicine over the berm were beaten or killed. Residents began to starve. In the city’s last functioning hospital, doctors resorted to giving malnourished children animal feed.

“Everybody knew what would happen when El Fasher fell — that in addition to the horrors of a starvation siege, the R.S.F. would massacre people,” said Michelle Gavin, a senior fellow for Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Limited outrage

Twenty years ago, celebrity activists like George Clooney made Darfur a cause célèbre. The crisis there was a foreign policy priority for President George W. Bush and became a source of friction with China, which had oil investments in Sudan.

The latest atrocities have brought strident condemnation, but it has been largely limited to policy circles — the U.N. Security Council, some members of the U.S. Congress and a handful of politicians elsewhere.

President Trump’s special adviser to Africa is trying to broker a cease-fire. But so far there has been little sign of success. One reason is that participants include diplomats from the Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia — the same Arab powers that are fueling the conflict.

Despite the American accusations of genocide, few officials have been willing to openly criticize the Emirati role in stoking the conflict, Gavin said. “The U.A.E. is arming and supporting a genocidal force,” she said. But there has been complete unwillingness to acknowledge it.

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