RSF Detains Hundreds in Sudan's El-Fasher, Survivors Report

18 hours ago7 min read

The choking dust of Sudan’s Darfur region carries whispers of a past the world vowed never to repeat, yet in the sprawling, sun-baked outskirts of El-Fasher, history’s grim echo is now a deafening reality. Hussein, a young man whose name we protect as his safety hangs by a thread, represents one of hundreds of men and boys systematically captured and imprisoned by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in a brutal campaign that has overrun towns like Garni, located a mere 25 kilometres northwest of the besieged city.His testimony, delivered on a Sunday shadowed by terror, is not an isolated account but a fragment of a larger, horrifying mosaic of human rights abuses. 'We were rounded up and taken,' he stated, the simplicity of the phrase belying the chaos of the moment when he and roughly 200 other young men were seized after attempting to flee the advancing fighters.For days, they were held in conditions that defy basic human dignity, subjected to beatings with sticks and dehumanizing slurs, called 'slaves' by their captors—a term that chillingly evokes the Janjaweed militias from which the RSF itself evolved, forces responsible for the genocide that scorched Darfur two decades ago. This is not merely a military operation; it is a deliberate tactic of collective punishment and terror, designed to break the spirit of communities and consolidate territorial control through fear.The strategic importance of El-Fasher, the last major city in Darfur not under RSF control, transforms these detentions into a key component of a broader siege warfare strategy, aiming to depopulate the periphery and weaken the city's defenders from within. Aid groups on the ground, operating with skeletal resources amid communications blackouts, report a catastrophic convergence of mass displacement, rampant malnutrition, and the systematic obstruction of humanitarian corridors, creating a man-made famine in real-time.The international response, thus far, has been a cacophony of condemned statements and stalled diplomatic initiatives, a painful reminder of the global inertia that allowed the 2003-2008 genocide to claim hundreds of thousands of lives. Analysts fear that the fall of El-Fasher would not only hand the RSF a symbolic and strategic victory but could also unleash a new wave of ethnically targeted violence on a scale not seen in years, potentially finishing the grim work started a generation ago. For Hussein and the countless others whose stories remain untold, each passing day is a lottery of survival, their fates intertwined with a city on the precipice, while the world, once again, seems to be looking away.

#featured

#Sudan

#RSF

#El-Fasher

#human rights

#detention

#conflict

#paramilitary

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