If the reports emerging from the city of el-Fasher in the Darfur region of western Sudan are even remotely true, then it is a name that will live in infamy. The rebels known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured the area from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) some days ago after an 18-month siege, and thousands have been the victims of atrocities. The Yale University Humanitarian Research Lab has been monitoring the situation using human intelligence sources and satellite imagery, and says it is a “Rwanda-style wave of hyper-violence” (recalling the indiscriminate mass killings in 1994 there).
It would hardly be surprising if that were the case, such has been the viciousness of the fighting and the routine fact of genocide taking place across this fractured nation. While the world’s eyes have been trained on the merciless conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, the civil war in Sudan, less enmeshed in great power rivalries and with fewer geopolitical connections, has attracted less attention. Yet the scale of human suffering in the last few years has been on a historic, unimaginable scale, with sadistic killing allied to famine and administrative collapse: 11.7 million people forcibly displaced, with 4.2 million seeking asylum outside their own country; hundreds of thousands of children dead through malnutrition; widespread rape and violence against civilians, much of it ethnically motivated.
