Sudan conflict brings new atrocities to Darfur region
CAIRO >> Amna al-nour narrowly escaped death twice. The first was when militias torched her family’s home in Sudan’s Darfur region. The second was two months later when paramilitary fighters stopped her and others trying to escape as they tried to reach the border with neighboring Chad.
“They massacred us like sheep,” the 32-year-old teacher said of the attack in late April on her home city Geneina. “They want to uproot us all.”
Al-nour and her three children now live in a school-turned-refugee housing inside Chad, among more than 260,000 Sudanese, mostly women and children, who have fled what survivors and rights groups say is a new explosion of atrocities in the large western region of Sudan.
Two decades ago, Darfur became synonymous with genocide and war crimes, particularly by the notorious Janjaweed Arab militias against populations that identify as Central or East African. Fears are mounting that that legacy is returning with reports of widespread killings, rapes and destruction of villages in Darfur amid a nationwide power struggle between Sudan’s military and a powerful paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces.
“This spiraling violence bears terrifying similarity with the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated in Darfur since 2003,” said Tigere Chagutah, a regional director with Amnesty International. “Even those seeking safety are not being spared.”
Fighting erupted in the capital, Khartoum, in midapril between the military and the RSF after years of growing tensions.
It spread to other parts of the country, but in Darfur it took on a different form — brutal attacks by the RSF and its allied Arab militias on civilians, survivors and rights workers say.
During the second week of fighting in Khartoum, the RSF and militias stormed Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state, located near the Chad border.
In that and two other assaults since, the fighters went on a rampage of burning and killing that reduced large parts of the city of more than half a million people to wreckage, according to videos shared by activists.
“What happened in Geneina is indescribable,” said Sultan Saad Abdelrahman Bahr, the leader of the Dar Masalit sultanate, which represents Darfur’s Masalit ethnic community. “Everywhere (in the city) there was a massacre. All was planned and systemic.”
The sultanate said in a report that more than 5,000 people were killed and 8,000 others were wounded in Geneina alone in attacks by the RSF and Arab militias between April 24 and June 12.
The report detailed three main waves of attacks on Geneina and surrounding areas in April, May, and June, which it said aimed at “ethnically cleansing and committing genocide against African civilians.”
The RSF was born out of the Janjaweed militias that during the conflict in the 2000s were accused of mass killings, rapes and other atrocities against Darfur’s African communities. Former President Omar al-bashir later formed the RSF out of Janjaweed fighters and put it under the command of Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who hails from Darfur’s Arab Rizeigat tribe.
The RSF didn’t respond to repeated requests by The Associated Press for comment on the allegations concerning the recent violence, including rapes.
On its social media, the paramilitary force characterized the fighting in Darfur as renewed tribal clashes between Arabs and non-arabs.