Recent events have led to fresh calls for the U.S. and its Arab allies should step up efforts to halt the carnage.
Leading such demands is the International Crisis Group (ICG), an independent organisation working to prevent wars.
Its work is urgently needed as the world is confronted with both new and chronic existing conflicts – and none more so than in Sudan.
The ICG, a highly respected NGO, says
“Sudan’s ugly civil war, already marked by famine and atrocities, recently “reached a new low.”
It says: On 26 October, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) overran El Fasher, the last remaining stronghold of its rival, the Sudanese army, in the country’s western Darfur region. What followed was apparent mass slaughter by the RSF, often caught on video.”
“The paramilitary group trapped civilians inside the city and then proceeded to mow people down – killing some at gunpoint and detaining, torturing and raping many others. Some estimate that the death toll is in the thousands.”
The International Criminal Court has now “given notice” that it is taking steps to preserve and collect evidence for use in future prosecutions.
The ICG, founded in 1995, says the El Fasher “bloodletting” follows two-plus years of international “dereliction” in a war that has been
“alternately fed and left to fester by outside actors.”
It goes on,
“Washington in particular has failed to give the conflict the attention it needs, its gaze having been drawn to crises in Ukraine and Gaza.”
But perhaps that is changing, adds the ICG.
For several months, the U.S. has been putting more diplomatic energy into peacemaking “and the El Fasher massacres may boost its interest yet more.”
Reports suggest that President Donald Trump himself was appalled at the footage of the violence. On 12 November, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke in unusually blunt terms about the war.
He also said external support for the paramilitary
“needs to stop”.
The ICG, which is headquartered in Brussels, says,
“Whether the atrocities will prove a genuinely galvanising moment depends to a great extent on what Washington does now. If it follows through on its heightened rhetoric, and throws its full weight behind ending the fighting, then it could make a real difference.”
The focal point of its efforts should, argues the ICG, be the truce proposal that the so-called Quad, comprising Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the U.S., has put on the table.
Progress, as the ICG states, has proven elusive to date.
The RSF has accepted the proposal (while continuing to fight), and the Sudanese army’s embattled leader, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, is still reviewing it.
“To get to a truce and make it stick, the Trump administration will simultaneously have to persuade Burhan to take the deal, over the objections of his shaky domestic coalition, and insist that the UAE throttle back its patronage for the RSF,”
states the ICG.
Sudan’s nightmarish war erupted in April 2023 amid a power struggle within the junta that had seized power in 2019 amid a popular uprising against the 30-year dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir. At that time, the Sudanese army and the RSF, headed by General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo “Hemedti”, jointly overthrew Bashir.
Protesters took to the streets to call for a civilian-led administration. While the generals acceded to that demand, by 2021 the ICG says they had reneged by staging a coup, arresting the prime minister and dissolving the civilian government. As outside pressure on the factious junta grew, the tenuous partnership between the army and the RSF frayed. Fighting broke out in the capital city of Khartoum and quickly spread to engulf most of the country.
The ICG points out that Sudan’s civil war also pits regional powers against one another.
Egypt and a number of other countries, including Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Iran, Algeria and Qatar, back the Sudanese army and – like the UN – deem it to be Sudan’s recognised government.
“Whatever qualms they may have about Burhan and his reliance on Islamist factions tied to the notorious Bashir regime, these are trumped by the sense that the army is a state institution and, therefore, the only legitimate claimant to sovereign authority in the current contest,”
says the ICG.
The RSF, on the other hand says the ICG,
“has one major patron, namely the UAE.”
The ICG states that the RSF
“arose out of Darfuri Arab militias, which Khartoum armed to fight its dirty wars with long-running insurgencies in Darfur and Kordofan, predominantly driven by non-Arab groups.”
“The RSF in time became a security and commercial conglomerate that sent tens of thousands of troops to fight the Houthis in Yemen on behalf of the Emiratis and the Saudis, served as a praetorian guard for Bashir in Khartoum and controlled lucrative gold mines, especially in Darfur.
In the RSF, the UAE sees a trusted partner in a strategic region it fears will at some point again succumb to Islamist political forces.”
The ICG adds,
“Though Sudan has a long history of atrocious violence, including by both sides thus far during the current war, the RSF’s conduct in El Fasher is jarring by even those standards.”
“For some eighteen months, the group besieged the city, blocking most food and other supplies from entering, causing a devastating humanitarian crisis.
Then, in the months leading up to the final takeover, the paramilitary built an earthen wall around the city to prevent civilians from escaping without going through an RSF checkpoint.”
While a picture is still emerging about what happened inside that wall, press reports and available video evidence indicate several bouts of mass killing, including at a maternity hospital which RSF fighters appear to have shot hundreds of men, women and children in cold blood.
The ICG goes on,
“RSF fighters also appear to have conducted systematic summary killings of men both inside the city and outside, where they captured some trying to flee.”
Images of the horrors, many caught on video taken by RSF fighters themselves, have gone viral.
The ICG says,
“They appear to reflect deliberate targeting of non-Arabs based on ethnicity, especially Zaghawa, a community that mobilised many fighters to wage war on the RSF on the army’s side.
“Women and girls have been subjected to widespread sexual violence; there are harrowing accounts of gang rape in front of relatives. For survivors, there is scant to no medical care, and many are on the brink of starvation. Those who can pay to leave are apparently spared.
“Meanwhile, RSF troops are holding other residents hostage for ransom. The reported atrocities have caused an outcry inside and outside Sudan, denouncing not only the RSF, but also the UAE, which stands accused of arming the insurgents.”
The Crisis Group states that, “As the reputational costs are tallied, the balance on the battlefield is clearer: El Fasher’s seizure is a boon for the RSF and a major setback for the army. The RSF now controls most of western Sudan, with the army holding the central area around Khartoum and everything east of the Nile River. The front is now centred in Kordofan, which sits south west of Khartoum and east of Darfur. With the El Fasher battle resolved, fighting in Kordofan looks set to escalate.
“But the RSF could also direct its newfound bandwidth elsewhere, including putting new towns and cities under siege in Kordofan, as it now appears to be doing.
It might also, for example, strike Omdurman, the sister city of Khartoum that sits west of the capital across the Nile and is surrounded by vast tracts of desert, or the northern riverine areas that are home to many army officers and Sudanese elites and have thus far seen little fighting.”
There is additionally a concern – shared by many analysts – that the war could settle into a prolonged stalemate that will morph into durable partition. Neighbouring countries fear that such a failed-state scenario would spell even more long-term instability that spills beyond Sudan’s borders.
What the ICG calls the
“RSF’s bloody victory in El Fasher dealt a blow”
to diplomatic efforts to end the war, which had appeared to be gaining traction for the first time in over a year.
Just days before El Fasher’s capture, Washington gathered representatives from both warring parties as well as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to discuss a truce.
Officials from the U.S. and its three Arab Quad partners shuttled between the Sudanese belligerents probing for common ground on a proposal but failed to achieve a breakthrough.
Those meetings followed months of difficult U.S.-led negotiations within the Quad that culminated in a 12 September joint roadmap for ending the war, starting with a humanitarian truce, followed by a permanent ceasefire and a new transitional civilian-led government.
The ICG says that while an important step forward, the roadmap has yet to get under way, and U.S.-led shuttle diplomacy toward that goal has continued despite the events in Darfur.
“Success continues to be elusive,”
adds the Group.
The RSF on 6 November publicly accepted the U.S. truce proposal, even as it continues to push forward with its offensives, but Burhan has yet to commit.
“His hesitancy no doubt reflects political forces that are pulling him in opposite directions. He is under pressure from the U.S., Egypt and Saudi Arabia to agree to the truce proposal, but powerful generals and allies want him to reject it. He chaired a stormy meeting of his government’s security and defence council in Khartoum, trying to build a consensus negotiating position, where he heard fierce opposition to peace talks. Some in his coalition demand that the RSF withdraw from all major cities and disarm – in effect, surrender – before a ceasefire can be discussed. The RSF is certain to reject those conditions,” predicts the Group.
Far too much blood has been spilt in this ruinous war,it says.
“But while El Fasher is an indelible stain on the world’s conscience, it may also be the prod that powerful capitals need to help bring the horrific fighting to a close.
“Now is the time for the U.S. and key Arab countries to double down on the diplomatic efforts they have made in the year to date and work to make their roadmap a reality, including the promises of a civilian-led transitional government should the war finally halt.
Sudan is already a grim example of the challenges of peacemaking in a world between orders, but it need not be an example of total failure. If key world leaders take this chance to push for peace, the war could end.”
It ends with a stark warning,
“Otherwise, the tragedy of El Fasher could too easily repeat itself.”
