220 - Once More Into the Cauldron: Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide in Sudan
Not again! Obscured by the terror in Gaza and the desperate deadening fields in Ukraine, Arabs in Sudan – twenty years on – are once more wantonly killing the residents of Darfur, mostly Black ones. The ethnic cleansing and likely genocide in Darfur, Sudan’s westernmost state, are embedded in a fratricidal conflict that is consuming the life cores of Africa’s third largest state and threatening to tear apart a once secure and stable land. Moreover, Sudan’s intrastate mayhem continues largely beneath the international radar because of Western and American attention to Gaza and Ukraine. Even alongside those two vicious tragedies, Sudan’s is a major threat to humanity’s sense of itself; Sudan’s self-destruction should be triggering the UN’s Responsibility to Protect Norm. Instead outsiders largely stand silent.
Two decades ago, it took UN Security Council resolutions and strong advocacy by the United States to recognize and end Sudan’s tragic and determined genocidal effort to extirpate its own citizens. Despite the cascading calamity in today’s Sudan, the African Union, the UN, and the United States all seem prepared mostly to ignore the killing fields of Sudan, and their human toll.
This time round, more than 1.4 million Sudanese have fled across its borders. Approximately 7 million citizens are internally displaced, joining more than 4 million refugees. Possibly 10,000 civilians and soldiers have been killed – all since Sudan descended into the depths of senseless internecine warfare in April. Thanks to such a vicious internal dispute, the nation’s economy has shrunk by 20 percent since April. Major aid agencies declare that 6 million Sudanese are in danger of starving.
El Fasher, the capital of northern Darfur, is about to be captured by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a marauding legion of Arabs that grew out of the pillaging janjaweed irregular militias that rode camels to maim and kill more than 200,000 Masalit African civilians in 2003 -2006. Its leader then and now is Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti. His RSF militants in Darfur, mostly led in combat by Hemeti’s younger brother, have already massacred 10,000 Masalit since April, causing about 1.4 million fellow tribesmen, women, and children to flee to refugee camps across Darfur’s western border into Chad.
Nyala, a major city in south Darfur was conquered recently, with inhabitants fleeing the RSF, which ran wild after raping and killing its inhabitants. Nearby, in Ardamata, north of the border city of El Geneina (capital of West Darfur), the RSF employed new drones from the UAE to demolish the Sudanese Armed Force’s heavy artillery. Thereafter, the RSF separated Masalit men from women, assassinated 800 to 1,300 of the former, raped women, and sent escapees fleeing into Chad.
Back in Khartoum, a capital city once of 3.3 million people, RSF rampages against the SAF and remaining civilians have destroyed much of the city’s infrastructure, as well as a bridge across the Nile. The SAF still controls part of the northern half of Khartoum, but likely not for long. Already General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, leader of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) has moved his headquarters to Port Sudan, on the Red Sea, essentially abandoning Khartoum and Omdurman to the RSF militia – and to Hemeti.
The RSF has already taken control of the major southern Darfurian cities of Nyala and El Geneina, giving it access to the Central African Republic and to Chad. It has also conquered most of Khartoum and Omdurman, Sudan’s capital and its twin city at the confluence of the Blue and White Nile Rivers. Indeed, as of today, the RSF dominates much of western and southern Sudan. Nearly 7 million Sudanese have been internally displaced. Another 1 million have fled their country, seeking refuge in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, and Chad.
The RSF’s continuing extermination of the Masalit people, and attacks on the Zaghawa in north Sudan, seem determinedly genocidal, and only indirectly derivative of the major Sudan-destroying battles that broke out in mid-April between the upstart RSF and the Sudanese regular army (SAF) led by General Burhan. Together Burhan and Hemeti had ousted and imprisoned President and General Omar al-Bashir (dictatorial ruler of Sudan from 1989 to 2019 and the accused mastermind behind the genocidal events of 2003 to 2006).
Burhan and Hemeti ran Sudan together, with Burhan the nominal boss, until earlier this year when their concordat broke apart, each wanting sole command and sole access to Sudan’s revenues from a pipeline transporting oil to the Red Sea from South Sudan, and from gold (mined in Darfur).
Burhan at first believed that he and regular troops could quickly dispatch the RSF threat. He could count on more and better armed soldiers, an air force, and backing from Egypt. But Hemeti’s fighters are more motivated, driven perhaps by possibilities of looting riches and potential profits from extortion. Most of all, Hemeti and the RSF earlier carried out some missions for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Hemeti allied himself and the RSF to Russia’s infamous Wagner group of mercenaries. Since April, the UAE has been sending the RSF advanced weapons, drones, and even tanks, via airfields in eastern Chad. The Wagnerites seem to be sharing gold revenues from Darfur and military tactics.
Other than naked greed, and a naked lust for total power, the rivalry between Burhan and Hemeti is otherwise driven entirely by personal animosity. Burhan was also involved in promoting the original Darfurian genocide, so neither military leader has clean hands. And neither did much actual governing of Sudan, or improving the welfare of its citizens, while they together ran the country after imprisoning Bashir, their former boss, Hemeti’s protector, and a ruler indicted in 2010 by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for creating the first genocide in Darfur and many other atrocities.
Saudi Arabia convened peace talks between the rivals in Jeddah. But, with the RSF seemingly winning the contest for Sudan’s cities and for Darfur and the west, and Burhan ascendant mostly in the north and along the Red Sea, Sudan may soon split in two (Libyan style) rather than come to an agreement that prevents endless, senseless, destructive warfare. Burhan and Hemeti once shared power; now neither deigns to do so.
Until Washington can rein in the UAE or turn off the Russian/Wagner spigot, Egypt turns from Gaza and backs Burhan with tanks and bombers, or the African Union suddenly pays attention and demands that both Sudanese sides stop killing each other, there will be desperate weeks and months ahead for the majority of Sudanese, few of whom gain from the continuing bloodshed.
Their mutual enemy is neglect. “The SAF is able to starve its people and the RSF is able to ethnically cleanse Darfur largely because of Sudan’s affliction: the wider world’s utter indifference,” says an American expert.
May readers enjoy a peaceful and enjoyable Thanksgiving despite the carnage and human frailties about which I too often write.
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