‘Barely anyone left’: Sudan’s El-Fasher devastated by fighting

Sinds de oorlog tussen het Soedanese regeringsleger SAF en de paramilitaire Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in april 2023 in volle hevigheid losbarstte, is de situatie voor de burgerbevolking alleen maar dramatisch verergerd. Meer dan 10 miljoen mensen zijn inmiddels op de vlucht voor extreem geweld en honger. De ergste humanitaire ramp ter wereld, die zich voor de ogen van de wereldgemeenschap afspeelt, heeft in september even de aandacht getrokken van de jaarlijkse Algemene Vergadering van de VN in New York. Maar op het terrein gaat de oorlog onverminderd verder: de hoofdstad van Noord-Darfur, El Fasher, een stad van 2 miljoen inwoners, dreigt nu ook in handen te vallen van de RSF, de gevolgen zijn niet meer te overzien.

Uit een nieuw rapport van Human Rights Watch (HRW) blijkt ondertussen dat de wapenleveringen aan de strijdende partijen de oorlog gaande houden. Er moet dringend een sluitend wapenembargo komen voor heel Soedan, niet alleen voor Darfur. Vooral de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten blijken een nefaste rol te spelen, aldus HRW.

Civilians combed through the wreckage of their homes Sunday 22 September in the Sudanese city of El-Fasher, besieged for months by paramilitaries who have now launched a ‘full-scale assault’, according to the United Nations.

As the world body’s high-level General Assembly meeting prepares Sunday to debate Sudan’s 17-month war – which has claimed tens of thousands of lives and caused the world’s largest displacement crisis – world leaders have warned against cataclysmic violence in the city of two million.

US President Joe Biden has called on Sudan’s rival generals to “pull back their forces, facilitate unhindered humanitarian access, and re-engage in negotiations to end this war”.

But on the ground, shells have once again torn through civilian homes, in the latest flare-up of the war between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the regular army which has raged since April 2023.

“Most of our homes in the city’s south have been completely destroyed,” local resident Al-Tijani Othman told AFP by phone from his bombed-out neighbourhood.

“There’s barely anyone left here,” he said, after months of bombardment and starvation.

On Saturday 21 September alone, health authorities managed to confirm 14 civilian deaths and 40 injuries, a medical source told AFP. “But that’s nowhere near the real number of victims,” the source warned, requesting anonymity for his protection.

“People often have to bury their loved ones right then and there rather than brave the fighting on the road to the hospital,” he continued.

Fleeing en masse

UN chief Antonio Guterres‘ spokesperson said Saturday the Secretary-General was “gravely alarmed by reports of a full-scale assault” by the RSF and called on its commander, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, “to act responsibly and immediately order a halt to the RSF attack”.

Since May, the RSF has laid siege to the North Darfur state capital of El-Fasher – the only major city in Sudan’s vast western region of Darfur not under their control.

Even before their long-threatened multi-directional attack on the city, the violence had killed hundreds, according to medical charity Doctors Without Borders.

It had also displaced hundreds of thousands and forced the nearby Zamzam displacement camp into all-out famine, the UN said.

El-Fasher has long been surrounded by multiple displacement camps – including Zamzam and Abu Shouk – which have swelled by hundreds of thousands since the war began.

The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which tracks the violence in Sudan using satellite imagery, reported on Friday 20 September civilians had been fleeing “en masse by foot on the road from El-Fasher to Zamzam,” where famine was declared last month.

‘Maelstrom of violence’

On Sunday, those unwilling or unable to leave the city – such as resident Mohamed Safieldin – were compelled to take advantage of what they feared would be a brief respite in the fighting, venturing out to feed their families.

“But the food situation is difficult. We have to rely on community kitchens,” he told AFP while waiting for a meal from one of hundreds of volunteer initiatives that have popped up across Sudan – considered in places like El-Fasher the last defence against mass starvation.

The UN’s special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, said the “RSF’s multi-pronged assault, launched from at least four directions“, had “unleashed a maelstrom of violence that threatens to consume everything in its path“.

Eyewitnesses have reported bombardment by both the RSF and the army, both of whom have consistently been accused of war crimes including targeting civilians and the indiscriminate bombing of residential areas.

The RSF has specifically been accused of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. Their assault on the West Darfur town of El-Geneina last year left up to 15,000 dead, mostly from the non-Arab Massalit community, UN experts determined.

Darfur, a region the size of France home to around a quarter of Sudan’s population, is deeply scarred by years of ethnic violence committed by the Janjaweed — the militia from which the RSF emerged.

World leaders have repeatedly warned of a repeat of Darfur’s past.

“We will not bear witness to another genocide,” the European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said Sunday, urging a return to negotiations  — which experts warn have only ever been used by both sides to gain ground on the battlefield.

The World Health Organisation said this month at least 20,000 people have been killed since the war began, but some estimates show up to 150,000 dead, according to US envoy to Sudan Tom Perriello.

The war has also displaced more than 10 million people – a fifth of Sudan’s population – both within the country and across borders.

In early September UN experts, after a fact-finding mission, called for deployment of an impartial force to protect Sudanese civilians – either a UN-mandated mission or an African Union-backed regional force.

Dit artikel verscheen op 22 september 2024 op de website van RFI: https://www.rfi.fr/en/international-news/20240922-barely-anyone-left-sudan-s-el-fasher-devastated-by-fighting

Sudan: Abusive Warring Parties Acquire New Weapons – Renew, Expand UN Arms Embargo

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), warring parties responsible for widespread war crimes and other atrocities in the current conflict in Sudan, have newly acquired modern foreign-made weapons and military equipment, Human Rights Watch said in a report released September 9, 2024.

The United Nations Security Council should renew and expand the arms embargo and its restrictions on the Darfur region to all of Sudan and hold violators to account.

“Sudan’s conflict is one of the world’s worst humanitarian and human rights crises, with warring parties committing atrocities with impunity, and newly acquired weapons and equipment are likely to be used in the commission of further crimes,” said Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, senior crisis, conflict, and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“Fighters from both the SAF and the RSF have since mid-2023 posted photos and videos of new foreign-made kit, such as armed drones and anti-tank guided missiles.”

Human Rights Watch analyzed 49 photos and videos, most apparently filmed by fighters from both sides, posted on the social media platforms Facebook, Telegram, TikTok, and X (formerly known as Twitter), showing weapons used or captured in the conflict.

The apparently new equipment that Human Rights Watch identified, which includes armed drones, drone jammers, anti-tank guided missiles, truck-mounted multi-barrel rocket launchers, and mortar munitions, was produced by companies registered in China, Iran, Russia, Serbia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Human Rights Watch was not able to establish how the warring parties acquired the new equipment.

The new visual evidence of equipment not known to previously be in the possession of Sudanese actors, and evidence that it is being used, suggests that the warring parties acquired some of these weapons and equipment after the start of the current conflict in April 2023. In one case, lot numbers indicate the ammunition was manufactured in 2023.

Since the conflict between the SAF and the RSF began in Sudan in April 2023, countless civilians have been killed, millions have been internally displaced, and millions face famine.

The SAF and the RSF may use such weapons and equipment to continue to commit war crimes and other serious human rights violations not just in Darfur, but across the country.

The United Nations Security Council is expected to decide on September 11 whether to renew the Sudan sanctions regime, which prohibits the transfer of military equipment to the Darfur region. The sanctions regime was established in 2004, when Darfur was the epicenter of a conflict with widespread human rights abuses, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing.

Since April 2023, the new conflict has affected most of Sudan’s states, but Security Council members have yet to take steps to expand the arms embargo to the whole country.

These findings demonstrate both the inadequacy of the current Darfur-only embargo and the grave risks posed by the acquisition of new weapons by the warring parties.

A countrywide arms embargo would contribute to addressing these issues by facilitating the monitoring of transfers to Darfur and preventing the legal acquisition of weapons for use in other parts of Sudan.

The Sudanese government has opposed an expansion of the arms embargo and in recent months has lobbied members of the Security Council to end the sanctions regime and remove the Darfur embargo altogether.

The prevalence of atrocities by the warring parties creates a real risk that weapons or equipment acquired by the parties would most likely be used to perpetuate serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law, harming civilians.

Two verified videos filmed by drones and posted on pro-SAF social media accounts show the drones attacking unarmed people in civilian clothes in Bahri (Khartoum North), one of Khartoum’s twin cities.

One video, posted to X by a pro-SAF account on January 14, 2024 shows a drone dropping two mortar projectiles on apparently unarmed people in civilian clothes as they cross a street in Bahri, killing one person on the spot and leaving four others motionless after the explosions.

Another video, posted to a pro-SAF account on March 19, 2024, shows a drone dropping a munition on people wearing civilian clothes who are loading a truck with apparent sacks of grain or flour in the busy courtyard of the Seen flour mills in Bahri, injuring or killing a man who lies motionless on the floor. No weapons or military equipment are seen near the targeted areas in either video.

Ending the arms embargo would end the work of the Panel of Experts on the Sudan. The panel is one of the few entities that provides the Security Council with regular, in-depth reporting on the conflict in Sudan since the SAF-aligned government successfully demanded the closure of the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan in December 2023.

In recent weeks, the discussion around renewal at the Security Council has shifted toward a renewal of the Darfur embargo and associated sanctions regime, which means, if adopted, the status quo would continue.

The Sudan sanctions regime has faced challenges since its inception. The Panel of Experts and Amnesty International have documented that the governments of Belarus, China, and Russia violated the embargo for years, yet only one individual has ever been sanctioned for violating the embargo.

In a report published in July, Amnesty International found that “recently manufactured weapons and military equipment from countries such as Russia, China, Türkiye, and the UAE are being imported in large quantities into Sudan, and then diverted into Darfur.”

At a minimum, the Security Council should proceed with the planned renewal and maintain the existing Sudan sanctions regime, which, despite its limitations, provides the UN and Security Council members with crucial reporting and tools for sanctions.

It should also take more robust actions in the face of violations of the existing embargo, notably by sanctioning the individuals and entities violating it.

“The Security Council should expand the Darfur arms embargo to all of Sudan to curb the flow of arms that may be used to commit war crimes,” Gallopin said.

“The Security Council should publicly condemn individual governments that are violating the existing arms embargo on Darfur and take urgently needed measures to sanction individuals and entities that are violating the embargo.”

Deze tekst werd door HRW gepubliceerd naar aanleiding van het verschijnen van een nieuw rapport op 9 september 2024: https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/09/sudan-abusive-warring-parties-acquire-new-weapons

To view the 33-page briefing paper, “Fanning the Flames: Sudanese Warring Parties’ Access to New Foreign-Made Weapons and Equipment,” please visit: https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/09/fanning-flames

For more Human Rights Watch reporting on Sudan, please visit: https://www.hrw.org/africa/sudan

Lees verder (inhoud september 2024)