July 25, 2023
Three weeks after the beginning of the conflict, after the cease-fires agreed upon by the parties have failed one after the other, and without any international or regional force having been able to push forward a proposal to at least stop the death, the Sudanese continue to kill each other with fervor in the different active combat pockets throughout the country.
Two ambitious generals, the general and head of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the self-styled General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known by the diminutive name of Hemetti, patron of the paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Force (RSF). Both chiefs have been putative sons of former dictator Omar al-Bashir, whom they helped overthrow in 2019.
With the prodigal and infinite funds they have been able to accumulate in several decades of plundering natural resources, particularly gold and oil, and state corruption, without giving a damn about the 47 million Sudanese who only have the option of fleeing to some place where the projectiles of the rival sides do not reach or choose a side, before the side chooses them, they continue killing and increasing the crisis that escalates day after day without yet reaching its zenith.
Since last April 15, the day of the beginning of what can now be defined as a civil war, have begun to emerge -like the game of Russian dolls- a war that contains another and another and so on repeatedly not only within the country, but also of foreign interest.
The most evident is the war that the army continues to wage in Darfur where once again, as Hemetti has been doing since the beginning of this century with the consent of al-Bashir, it massacred close to half a million Darfuris in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups, settled in the region since the beginning of time, in a struggle against the Rizeigat, a tribe of Arab origin that arrived in the region from the beginning of time, a tribe of Arab origin that arrived centuries later and to which Hemetti and his janjaweed (armed horsemen) belong, which after the “success” in the war of extermination that lasted from 2002 to 2012, al-Bashir would elevate to the status of paramilitary force, reconverting into the FAR, which reactivated a few months ago and after the outbreak of the 15th have reached dreadful levels with fighting in the capital of West Darfur, el-Geneina and other nearby cities such as Nylan, capital of East Darfur, as well as in el-Obeid, el-Fasher and others in the same areas.
In Nylan, which was practically divided in two, the fighting intensified last Saturday 6th with the use of heavy weapons after the attempt of FAR commandos to infiltrate army warehouses in the neighborhood of al-Nahda, so that the second most populated city of Sudan – with about 600,000 inhabitants – after the Khartoum-Omdurman axis, which exceeds five million, the army controls the western side, where the government buildings and the army command are located, while in the east the FAR forces have the army command. 000 inhabitants – after the Khartoum-Omdurman axis which exceeds five million – the army controls the western side, where the government buildings and the army command are located, while in the east the FAR forces have the airport, the offices of the intelligence services and the central police headquarters, the seizure of which meant heavy fighting with an unknown number of casualties.
Both groups are struggling to cover the largest amount of territory not only in Darfur, but in the whole country where important battles are being fought, in view of the fact that last Saturday the groups of negotiators arrived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, who hurried to clarify that they were not there to discuss any cease-fire agreement, but to establish humanitarian crossings through which both civilians and supplies of medicines and provisions in general could circulate without risk.
Behind this meeting is not only Riyadh, one of the main parties interested in resolving the crisis given its proximity to Sudan through the Red Sea – with an average width of 280 kilometers – but also the United States, which, in view of the strong presence of both China and Russia in the region, does not want to give these two powers any possibility of interfering in the conflict.
While the fighting in Darfur intensifies, the United Nations reported that in the south of that region more than one million polio vaccines for the vaccination campaigns planned after the outbreak at the end of last year, were destroyed after multiple looting, which caused damage to health facilities, thus breaking the cold chain.
On the other hand, the World Health Organization reports that it has recorded some thirty attacks on health care facilities since the beginning of the conflict in which large quantities of medicines have been lost. In addition, some $14 million worth of supplies have gone missing, according to the World Food Program. Due to the attacks focused on hospitals, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported that it has halted its work in West Darfur.
The Aba Dhar camp for displaced people, as well as 20 other refugee centers, had been attacked earlier this month, so that thousands of civilians have had to flee to Chad, adding to the more than 20,000 who arrived in the first days of fighting.
Many of them had first been located south of the Chadian city of Adre, but once they had outgrown the facilities, camps have been opened near the villages of Taktakli, Darta, Gidenta and Denta, where humanitarian conditions are extremely precarious, considering that Chad is one of the poorest nations in the world.
The desolation of Khartoum
The fighting has not stopped in the capital of the country in spite of the cease-fire, where different international organizations mention that the number of dead is between 500 and 600, while the number of wounded is around 5,000 in the whole country. Some local entities, such as the always politically active since 2019 Doctors Union, reject these figures and denounce that the real numbers are much higher. They report that bodies are piling up in morgues and many more are rotting in the streets without anyone being able to lift them, let alone count them, because of the large space in which they are scattered, not counting those who have been left under the rubble after the bombings. This theory is not at all far-fetched if one considers the harshness of the clashes, the prolonged nature of the fighting and the areas in which it takes place, mainly urban. Most of the hospitals of the capital and many supply centers for the basic needs of the population have been destroyed, to which must be added that also, after the release of thousands of criminals from prisons in the first days of the conflict, gangs composed of these elements have begun to attack the population, having established themselves as an authority in some neighborhoods of Khartoum.
Among the many hardships being endured by the civilian population, we must also add the collapse of the electricity network, which has left important sectors without this service, to which must be added the shortage of drinking water, which has caused the price of drinking water cans to quadruple, while other Khartoumis have had to resort to the White Nile, which runs along the eastern shore of the city, to get their supplies.
Some tons of the little humanitarian aid that has arrived are entering the country through Port Sudan, on the Red Sea, some 800 kilometers by road from the country’s capital and 1,600 from Darfur. In spite of the UN’s demands regarding security for the transport of the aid, on May 3, six trucks on their way to Darfur were ransacked.
It is now estimated that more than 300,000 people have been displaced by the fighting, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which estimates that this figure could triple in the near future. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 115,000 people have already taken refuge in neighboring countries. Meanwhile, more regional armed militias have been joining the two major factions over the course of the past few weeks.
