Category World News

Over the last two months in Darfur, Sudan, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have committed horrifying atrocities in the city of el-Fasher. There, they have fired on and killed civilians already shattered by more than 500 days of siege; people already so starved they have been forced to eat animal feed.

People who have managed to escape – often walking to the town of Tawila, 60km (37 miles) southwest of el-Fasher – are deeply traumatised. The killings have been indiscriminate and ethnically targeted, according to testimonies of survivors that Médecins Sans Frontières  (Doctors Without Borders – MSF) teams treat in Tawila. Women report harrowing testimonies of rape. Children have arrived, terrified, in the arms of strangers, having been orphaned in el-Fasher.

People have been massacred, tortured, and summarily executed. Many remain stranded or unaccounted for as the violence that has swept through the city continues unchecked; several thousand people remain detained, held for ransom.

My Sudanese colleagues are treating patients as they await news of their relatives. Most of my colleagues in Tawila have family members, friends, or colleagues whom the RSF killed in el-Fasher.

While the scenes unfolding across Darfur are shocking and outrageous, we should not be surprised. For months, Sudanese people and many observers, including MSF, have been warning that this massacre would be the inevitable result of the RSF takeover of el-Fasher.

That is because we had seen it before. At the onset of the war in 2023, at least 15,000 people, mainly belonging to the Masalit and other non-Arab communities, were killed as the RSF took West Darfur’s capital, el-Geneina. Displaced and injured people treated by MSF in Chad reported being attacked because of their tribe or ethnicity and were told to “leave this country or die”. An MSF retrospective mortality survey showed rates 20 times higher in the months following April 2023, compared with pre-war figures. Nearly one man in 20 aged between 15 and 44 was reported missing during this period. El-Geneina is now virtually empty of Masalit people.

The Zamzam camp, on the outskirts of el-Fasher, was once the country’s largest displacement camp. The carnage that occurred there when the RSF launched a large-scale assault in April was not a wake-up call either. Well before those massacres, our teams in Zamzam had repeatedly warned of the scale of malnutrition and called for a massive humanitarian response – to no avail.

Even when a state of famine was declared in the camp in August 2024, MSF trucks carrying food supplies were stuck for months in North Darfur; the RSF ordered them to go anywhere but near el-Fasher. Later, the displaced and besieged communities were regularly hit by shelling, forcing MSF to leave the camp in February 2025.

Far from being the actions of rogue RSF commanders, the mass atrocities culminating in el-Fasher have been part of a deliberate campaign to starve, forcibly displace, and kill civilians, often along ethnic lines.

The RSF, which, according to reports by international organisations and media outlets, is supported by the United Arab Emirates, bears responsibility for the crimes it has committed in el-Fasher. It must immediately halt mass atrocities and ethnically targeted killings and provide a safe passage to survivors.

Warring parties must uphold the obligations they have under international humanitarian law, but also those under basic humanity. Both parties must grant immediate humanitarian access to people in need, regardless of who controls the territory.

But that this tragedy was so predictable underscores how shared and collective the overall failure to protect civilians is.

The death and destruction are being enabled by too many governments choosing not to use their influence to try to pressure the warring parties to stop killing people or blocking humanitarian aid. Choosing to issue passive statements of concern, while they and their allies provide financial and political support, and the weapons that destroy, maim, and kill.

More than 20 years ago, when similar extreme violence was committed, the world mobilised for Darfur. The International Criminal Court charged former President Omar al-Bashir with crimes against humanity and genocide for the atrocities committed by his army and and the Janjaweed militias, which later were reorganised into the RSF.

Today, as other crimes are committed against the same ethnic groups, world leaders cannot look away. Countries that have influence with the warring parties, including the United States, the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, known as the Quad, must act to prevent further atrocities.

As the dust settles on the horrors of el-Fasher, we must refuse to move towards a “new normal” of accepting such atrocities. We need political commitment, sustained humanitarian mobilisation based on an impartial evaluation of the situation, and accountability. Last month, the UN Human Rights Council tasked the independent fact-finding mission for Sudan to investigate crimes committed in el-Fasher – a process which we call on all states and parties to support.

We need to do more for people whose lives are still in danger in el-Fasher and the surrounding towns. And we need to make sure that the cycle of violence and ethnic cleansing finally comes to an end in Darfur.

The conflict dynamics under way seem to indicate that the excruciating plight of el-Fasher may not be the end of horrific violence, but rather a milestone in a catastrophic war that keeps crushing civilian lives, notably at this moment in the Kordofan region. We fear that more civilian victims and other scenes of atrocities will unfold.

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United States President Donald Trump’s administration claims Europe is facing “civilisational erasure” due to mass migration, a narrative often used by far-right parties to drum up support during elections on the continent.

In a 33-page “national security strategy” document released late on Thursday, the Trump administration accused the European Union (EU) of “undermining political liberty and sovereignty” and insisted on the need for US “preeminence” in the Western Hemisphere.

Here’s what we know:

Does the Trump administration’s ‘strategy’ align with Europe’s far right?

One section of the NSS document called “Promoting European Greatness” highlights the continent’s decreasing share in the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) but goes on to claim that the continent’s economic decline is “eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure”.

The document states that Europe’s migration policies “are transforming the continent and creating strife” which includes the “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence”.

Some European politicians are claiming that this message aligns strongly with European far-right claims. Far-right groups in Europe such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Vox in Spain, Front Populaire in France and Lega Nord in Italy, among others, have built their electoral campaigns on anti-immigrant and xenophobic narratives.

On Friday last week, Carl Bildt, Sweden’s former prime minister, wrote in a post on X that “in saying that Europe faces ‘civilizational erasure’ the Trump new security strategy places itself to the right of the extreme right in Europe”.

In saying that Europe faces ”civilizational erasure” the Trump 🇺🇸 new security strategy places itself to the right of the extreme right in Europe. Its language that one otherwise only finds coming out of some bizarre minds of the Kremlin 🇷🇺. pic.twitter.com/29vytDp6Hm

Gerard Araud, former French ambassador to the US, also wrote on X that “the stunning section devoted to Europe reads like a far-right pamphlet. It largely confirms this perception.”

Les États Unis viennent de publier une Revue de Stratégie Nationale dont je conseille la lecture. L’ahurissante partie consacrée à l’Europe se lit comme un pamphlet d’extrême droite. Elle confirme largement cette perception. https://t.co/6Iig27QJZv

Mark Sedgwick, a professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark, told US broadcaster NBC that the language of the Trump administration’s national security strategy also fits with the language used by supporters of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory.

That conspiracy theory was first introduced by French author Renaud Camus in his book Le Grand Remplacement in 2011, and claimed that “elites” in France were trying to replace the White European population by encouraging immigration from Muslim-majority countries.

Since then, it has been used by far-right groups in the West, including the US, to campaign against mass immigration.

Elsewhere, the Trump administration document suggests that “Western Europe is no longer a top priority for the US,” according to Gregoire Roos, director of the Europe and Russia and Eurasia Programmes at Chatham House.

What this means is that the Trump administration now “looks [more] favourably on central and Eastern Europe, where there are closer political proximities”, Roos told Al Jazeera.

“While they don’t agree on everything, countries such as Slovakia and Hungary share views [with the US] on EU bureaucracy, non-European migration as a threat to identity, and greater caution when it comes to siding with Ukraine in its war against Russia,” he added.

Why is Trump aligning with Europe’s far right?

Washington’s relations with European far-right leaders have certainly improved since Trump returned to office in January.

Late on Thursday, through the NSS, the Trump administration called on Washington to take a role in “cultivating resistance” within Europe and encouraged “its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit”.

“We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilisational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation,” the Trump administration added.

According to a December 5 report by The Associated Press news agency, Markus Frohnmaier, a member of Germany’s AfD, said Trump’s NSS is “a foreign policy reality check for Europe and particularly for Germany”.

But Roberto Forin, acting director of the Geneva-based Mixed Migration Centre (MMC), told Al Jazeera that the Trump administration’s NSS doctrine is an “unapologetic defence of whiteness”, and called it a “suprematist’s discourse”.

“The objective of the current administration is to divide Europe, and polarise the continent by weaponising migration,” he said.

“It is another example of how the new US administration is leading the race when it comes to not only migration issues, but rather multiculturalism,” he added.

On December 4, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told reporters in Berlin that Europe is able to deal with its issues without foreign interference. He said that while Washington remains an important security partner in Europe, the alliance is “focused on addressing security policy issues” and not topics such as the continent’s freedom of speech and expression.

“We see ourselves as being able to discuss and debate these matters entirely on our own in the future, and do not need outside advice,” he said.

What else has Washington’s NSS said about Europe?

Amid Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, the NSS document targeted European officials’ “unrealistic expectations” for ending the conflict, stating that the US has a “core interest” in doing so.

According to the Reuters news agency, Pentagon officials told diplomats in Washington this week that the US was not yet satisfied with Europe’s defence spending amid Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and said the US may stop participating in NATO by 2027 if European countries do not increase their investment.

The NSS stated that Washington would prioritise “enabling Europe to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including by taking primary responsibility for its own defence, without being dominated by any adversarial power”.

European countries, including Germany, France and the UK, have announced they will increase their defence spending and investments in military amid Russia’s war in Ukraine. At the NATO Summit in June, members of the alliance pledged to allocate up to 5 percent of their national GDP to defence and related sectors by 2035.

But on December 3, a US official told Politico that US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau told a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels that the EU should focus on “turning its defence commitments into capabilities” and highlighted that “protectionist and exclusionary policies that bully American companies out of the market” should be avoided since it “undermines” NATO’s “collective defence”.

Will this bolster Europe’s far right?

Ian Lesser, a fellow and head of The German Marshall Fund of the US (GMF)’s Brussels office, said in a report that EU and NATO observers are likely to view the NSS as “confirmation of established concerns about the direction and style of American policy”.

But he warned that it also “points to European cultural and demographic decline in ways likely to reinforce the views of hard-right elements in Europe”.

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