It’s still raining lead in Sudan. It is a prolonged reality. The innocent continue to flee towards the borders of the uncertain. They threaten hunger and sexual abuse, the outbreak of secondary conflicts, massacres of civilians and deceit. one month and one week After the start of the third Sudanese civil war, clashes between paramilitaries and the regular army (now supported by the police) continue in the capital, Khartoum, as well as in the hard-hit Darfur region, where the situation has become critical due to to the outbreak of racial struggles with bases prior to the current conflict.
The inability of NGOs and international organizations to access the most isolated areas of Sudan facilitate the successive violation of human rights by the parties involved, especially with regard to the RSF paramilitaries. Peter Kioy, regional director of the United Nations Immigration Office (OIM) confirms to LA RAZÓN that “There is a kind of isolation in Sudan. Our UN colleagues and other NGOs are facing difficulties when it comes to getting visas that allow them to enter Sudan.” After the first weeks of the conflict, a small number of United Nations workers managed to enter Sudan, but the numbers are insufficient to organize logistics to care for millions of Sudanese in a situation of vulnerability.
Massacres in West Darfur
On the other hand, any aid that can enter the country is directed almost exclusively towards Khartoum, as confirmed by various sources on the ground, while the Darfur region, a stronghold of the RSF, is in a critical situation as a result of the habitual inter-ethnic clashes in the area and that today have intensified due to the current inability of the State to maintain a stable nation.
The city of Geneina, in West Darfur, experiences hours of terror. The figures dance. The NGO Sudanese Women Of Change denounced last week that more than 2,000 people have been killed here in the last three weeks.; other organizations differ on the numbers and point to between 300 and 600 victims. Unacceptable numbers, in any case, and where those responsible for the violence are the Arab militias that they have been harassing for decades to the black populations of the region. The power vacuum that cities like Geneina are experiencing today give free rein to the wild impulses of these militias, who identify human rights defenders and civil society leaders, then hunt them down and kill them and their families. Impunity in these cases is absolute.
It is a conflict within another and one that finds a free way in the face of the confrontations that have the regular army and the paramilitaries busy. It is important to take into account this type of racial clashes when assessing the events in Sudan. Let’s remember that last week There were also clashes in the city of Kosti, in the province of White Nile, after a resurgence of violence between the Hausa and Nuba ethnic groups that killed 25 people.
A truce marked by hope
The United States and Saudi Arabia continue their role as mediators between the parties meeting in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia). Announcements of truces and ceasefires are repeated every week, and every week they are broken within hours of their signing. have already been a dozen promised truces that have ended with bombed hospitals, civilians uprooted from their homes or with the continuation of fighting in the hottest areas of the country. However, a ray of hope seems to illuminate the Sudanese with the last seven-day truce agreed to begin this Monday night: In the first hours of the ceasefire there have been no combats or bombardments in the capital. Seven days is very long and shooting can resume at any time, but the fact that the initial hours of the truce have expired is an unprecedented milestone since the beginning of the war.
The talks in Jeddah also stipulated the creation of a Supervision and Coordination Commission to monitor the cessation of hostilitiesanother step forward that could contribute to reaching a peace agreement between the generals.
It should be noted that this truce does not apply to hostilities in Darfur cited above, where those involved are foreign to both the regular army and the RSF and whose representatives do not participate in the dialogue process in Jeddah. For his part, General Hemedti called on his Twitter profile for an end to the tribal fighting in Darfur, implying his inability to control them by his own means.
The RSF, cornered by the army and by the civilian population
As for the capital, the RSF continues to occupy ever larger areas of Khartoum, Omdurman and North Khartoum, where it appears they have focused all their war efforts in the hope that a victory here would win the war. But the regular army, far from being defeated, has taken advantage of it, and in recent days has managed to isolate the paramilitary troops located in Khartoum thanks to the seizure of the main road that connects with the Darfur provinces. The RSF thus find themselves in a delicate situation: Without airborne means to supply Khartoum with troops and materials from Darfur, they will have to fight with what they have left, while the regular army has practically all the territory at its disposal for transporting troops, in addition to the Air Force. The situation in Khartoum is expected to reverse in the coming days.
An interesting rumor that has been spreading for weeks is that of the death of Hemedti, leader of the RSF. Although it is unlikely to be true, the truth is that the paramilitary leader has not made a public appearance since the start of the conflict, nor a statement on television or on social networks, nothing; the only sample of life that he has given (excluding the messages on his Twitter account) was a voice recording broadcast last week and where he claimed to be fighting on the front line and to be in perfect condition. While General Al Burhan, head of the army, has indeed appeared in public on several occasions.
It is interesting to see how the civilian population of Khartoum begins, albeit timidly, to lean, if not in favor of the regular army, then against the RSF: many neighborhoods in the capital have dug trenches around them to prevent the passage of paramilitary vehicles, who take advantage of the shelter of civilian buildings to spend the nights and thus use private residences as human shields. Likewise, the creation of a few neighborhood militias has been recorded which, although they do not actively participate in the fighting, are in charge of preventing the RSF from approaching their homes.
figures
The latest report published by the UN on the situation in Sudan indicates that 843,000 people are internally displaced, while 247,000 have escaped to neighboring countries. Egypt and Chad are the nations that are receiving the largest number of refugees (113,000 and 60,000, respectively)., among which there have been massive flows of South Sudanese who have decided to return to South Sudan (the UN estimates 58,000 returnees) despite the dangers they will find there. Of the 25 million people IOM has identified as vulnerable both on and around the Sudanese borders, 300,000 have been served intermittently by the World Food Program to date.
The Federal Ministry of Sudan has recorded 705 civilian deaths and around 5,000 injuries since the fighting began last April. Taking into account the continuous reports of bombing of civilian targets or the figures cited above for the Darfur region, the 705 official deaths are still the tip of an iceberg whose full extent will most likely not be known for several months. .
