Abubakr Ahmed was prepared to perish from Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), despite his tireless fighting.
El-Fasher was a member of the “popular resistance,” a neighborhood organization that helped the army and allies fight back against the RSF, their adversary during the two-and-a-half-year civil war, for 550 days.
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Up until its fall on October 26, the besieged city served as the last army stronghold in the sprawling Darfur region.
In an effort to stop a bloodbath, the army surrendered and negotiated the safe exit of its troops, according to Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
However, their withdrawal left 250,000 people, mostly beleaguered and starving, without access to the RSF.
Ahmad recalls “shooting” his way out of town with a small group of underage men. After a nearby car was destroyed by a rocket-propelled grenade, shrapnel struck Ahmed in the abdomen during the final clashes.
He was able to escape, unlike many others.
After fleeing El-Fasher, Ahmed, 29, told Al Jazeera, “The RSF killed civilians and left their bodies in the streets.”
They were not shown mercy, they were killed. ”
Exodus in large numbers
According to the local monitor Sudan’s Doctors’ Network, the RSF killed at least 1,500 people in the first three days after capturing El-Fasher. The World Health Organization has also verified the murders of 460 patients and their companions at the nearby al-Saud hospital.
Sanad, Al Jazeera’s own verification unit, verified a number of videos that showed RSF soldiers executing rows of unarmed young men while standing over a pile of dead bodies.
More than 33,000 people have already fled as a result of the mass murder, many of whom have already departed from Tawila and Tine, which are located about 60 kilometers (37 miles) away.
Most people are still hid from RSF gunmen in El-Fasher, though.
People are still making the long, tiring journey through the open desert, likely without food or water, to safety.
Mohammed, a survivor, claimed he arrived in Tawila on October 28 and that he anticipates seeing tens of thousands of newcomers soon.
Mohammed is a member of one of the sedentary “non-Arab” tribes, like most people from El-Fasher, which has historically been targeted by the nomadic “Arab” tribes that make up the majority of the RSF.
The RSF has terrified the majority of people, so they choose to stay in El-Fasher. They don’t trust the RSF because they are aware that they will face persecution, Mohammed said.
The non-Arabs will reside in another place, while the Arabs will reside in another. Unfortunately, that is the way it is right now, he continued.
Rwandan echoes
Mohamad Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, the head of the RSS, stated in a speech on Wednesday that he would investigate reports of “abuses” occurring.
However, survivors claim that the killing in El-Fasher appears to be a deliberate attempt to eradicate the non-Arab population.
In a report released on October 28th, the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), which analyzes the fighting in Darfur, claimed there was clear evidence that the RSF was killing people as they attempted to flee.
According to the HRL report, the scale of these mass killings cannot currently be determined from satellite imagery alone, and it is likely that any estimates of the total number of RSF victims’ deaths are underestimated.
The United Nations Children’s Foundation (UNICEF) representative for Sudan, Sheldon Yett, described the scenes in El-Fasher as “killing fields.”
There are echoes of this here because I was in Rwanda during the genocide. What frightens me is the kind of slaughter we are witnessing, as well as the pride the perpetrators have in killing innocent people in El-Fasher, Yett told Al Jazeera.
He added that UNICEF has lost communication with many of the local relief workers and initiatives they are supporting on the ground, including those that oversee community kitchens, which are crucial for reducing hunger in Sudan.
Many of them are in immediate danger, he claimed.
Local relief workers in Sudan have a history of being targeted by the RSF because they frequently accuse them of “collaborating” with the army.
We have had trouble contacting many of the people we rely on to provide services to people because of the precarious nature of many of our national partners [in El-Fasher].
They are not dead, they simply are. But many are hiding and moving, he continued.
condemnation in a loud manner
The UN, the US, and the European Union all issued condemnations of the atrocities committed in El-Fasher in response to news reports and videos.
They all demanded that the RSF follow international law and “protect civilians.”
However, survivors and analysts claim that the international community should have used its diplomatic leverage to stop atrocities from ever occurring.
The RSF attempted to take control of El-Fasher for a long time, and it did so right away. If El-Fasher were to succeed, we would know what would happen, according to Manchester University PhD candidate Hamid Khalafallah.
The international community has shown no sign of being proactive in protecting civilians, he told Al Jazeera, especially from multilateral organizations like the UN and Western powers.
According to Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch’s Crisis, Conflict and Arms Division, the RSF regularly commits mass atrocities after seizing or invading new territory, as it did in El-Geniena and Aradamata in West Darfur.
He argued that diplomats had failed to put an end to the practice of impunity by denying support to RSF leader Hemedti, possibly out of fear that it would stifle ceasefire talks.
According to Gallopin, this persistent impunity has made the RSF comfortable enough to film their own crimes in El-Fasher.
Diplomats are focused on achieving a elusive ceasefire, and they disregard any measures they take to protect civilians or prosecute those who violate it, he told Al Jazeera.
Source: Aljazeera
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