Sudan systematic killings reports evoke memories of past atrocities

(MENAFN) Emerging reports of large-scale killings in the Sudanese city of El-Fasher have led human rights and aid groups to describe the ongoing conflict between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the national army as a "continuation of the Darfur genocide."

The fall of El-Fasher, following an 18-month siege by the RSF, highlights both the country’s violent history and the brutality of its present war. The RSF has roots in the Janjaweed militias, which, in the early 2000s, were responsible for massacres of hundreds of thousands of non-Arab Darfuris. Since clashes with the army erupted in April 2023, the RSF has faced accusations of ethnic killings. While the leadership denies these claims, its head, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, acknowledged "violations" in El-Fasher on Wednesday.

Evidence for the charges has surfaced from within RSF ranks themselves. Fighters reportedly shared graphic videos showing summary executions, abuse of civilians, and celebrations over dead bodies. Survivors’ accounts similarly depict scenes of terror.

"The situation in el-Fasher is extremely dire and there are violations taking place on the roads, including looting and shooting, with no distinction made between young or old," one survivor said after fleeing to the nearby town of Tawila. Another witness described how RSF soldiers separated men from fleeing civilians at a barrier around the city and shot them.

Satellite imagery analyzed by researchers at Yale University suggests multiple massacre sites, with clusters of bodies and reddish patches interpreted as possible blood stains. El-Fasher "appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of… indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution," the report concludes.

The conflict carries a clear ethnic dimension. Local armed groups from the dominant Zaghawa tribe, known as the Joint Force, have allied with the army, while RSF fighters target Zaghawa civilians. Earlier this year, survivors of an RSF takeover of the Zamzam displaced persons camp reported similar targeting, according to an investigation by a medical charity. Meanwhile, the army has also been accused of attacking groups it suspects of supporting the RSF in areas it has reclaimed, including Sennar, Gezira, and parts of North Kordofan.

"Whether you're a civilian, wherever you are, it is not safe right now, even in Khartoum," said a strategic director of an IDP aid network in Darfur. "Because at the flip of a hat, the people in power who have the guns, they can and will continue to falsely imprison, disappear, kill, torture, everyone."

Both sides face allegations of war crimes, including ethnically motivated revenge attacks. The pattern echoes tactics employed by Sudan’s military government in 2003, which used the Janjaweed to suppress black African groups in Darfur who challenged political and economic marginalization.

Experts note the RSF has followed a familiar pattern in recent years. Referring to the 2023 massacre of the Masalit tribe in West Darfur, which the UN estimates killed up to 15,000, one NGO co-founder said: "For more than two years, the RSF have followed a very clear, practiced and predicted pattern. They first encircle their target town or city, they weaken it by cutting off access to food, to medicine, to power supplies, the internet. Then when it's weakened, they overwhelm the population with systematic arson, sexual violence, massacre and the destruction of vital infrastructure. This is a deliberate strategy to destroy and displace, and that's why I feel the appropriate word is genocide."

Despite claims by the RSF that the violence reflects "tribal conflicts," Gen Dagalo faces mounting international condemnation from the UN, the African Union, the EU, and the UK.

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