The war in Sudan worsened the disaster in the city of Darfur on the border with Chad

When war broke out in Sudan’s capital last month, it quickly spread to West Darfur, reigniting an age-old conflict and sending a wave of refugees across the border into Chad, according to reports. Reuters.

Nasr Abdullah sent his wife, sister and five children to Chad last week, where he has been waiting for news of a 17-year-old son in the capital, Khartoum. But when his neighbor’s house burned down and gangs took to the streets, he too fled.

said the 42-year-old after arriving exhausted on Wednesday in the Chadian town of Adre, about 27 kilometers from El Geneina, the main town in western Darfur state.

“I crossed the bush and walked west all night.”

Residents link the renewed violence in El Geneina and other parts of Darfur to the power struggle between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Khartoum, which have allowed the region’s militias to proliferate.

People who have been interviewed before Reuters Attacks since late April on the Janjaweed have been carried out by Janjaweed militias, they said. They are usually believed to belong to nomadic Arab tribes riding trucks, motorbikes and horses, the same militias from which the RSF was born.

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The RSF denies inciting violence in Darfur and blames the army.

Witnesses said the attacks in El Geneina destroyed its markets, electricity grid and medical facilities, rekindling memories of the horrific violence of the early 2000s.

The Sudanese Ministry of Health said that as many as 510 people have died in this city of nearly half a million people. At least 250,000 people from West Darfur have been internally displaced, while another 90,000 have fled to Chad.

With communications cut off from El Geneina, Abdullah’s account provided a rare glimpse into the chaos.

“Heavy weapons and machine guns are being fired everywhere. When you go out in the morning, you see fresh bullet holes in the walls,” he said, adding that the water supply was cut off and food was scarce in the city he abandoned.

regional conflict

The feared Janjaweed militia first seized power when the government used them against rebels in Darfur two decades ago. More than 300,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced.

The Rapid Support Forces emerged from it and grew into a large paramilitary force with a legal personality. Its leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, became vice president of Sudan’s Governing Council after he helped oust former leader Omar al-Bashir during a popular uprising in 2019.

Although the conflict in Darfur is often portrayed along ethnic lines, pitting Arab tribes against non-Arabs, it is also rooted in conflict over land, exacerbated by climate change.

“This is between the shepherd and the farmer. This is about resources and land,” said Sultan Saad Bahr al-Din, leader of the Masalit tribe, the largest bloc of El Geneina’s population.

Arab pastoralists migrated to less arid regions during Darfur’s droughts in the 1970s and 1980s, which raised tensions, according to Jerome Tubiana, a researcher on the region.

They gained more territory when the Janjaweed helped government forces push back the rebels in a conflict that began in 2003.

However, they considered that the 2020 peace agreement with some rebel factions, which promised the return of the displaced to their lands, ignores their needs. Attacks increased with the withdrawal of international peacekeepers.

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Five El Geneina residents, most of whom prefer to remain anonymous to avoid reprisals, testified by phone – before the lines were cut – that they believed the militias intended to empty the town and that the army did little to provide protection.

They enter homes and shoot.

Instead, Masalit militants and members of the Sudanese Alliance, the signatory group to the peace agreement, are fighting from within their own neighborhoods.

“The militias attacked anyone present in the city, even though they targeted the Masalit tribes at first. Even the Arab population was not safe,” said Mohammed al-Douma, a former state governor and a member of the Darfur Bar Association, a human rights organisation. Lawyer group.

Lawyer Jamal Abdallah said that some witnesses told him of an accident in El Geneina in which seven people were killed in a house and another in a makeshift clinic where 12 people were actually injured and a doctor was shot dead.

“The Janjaweed enter the houses and shoot,” Abdullah added, who said he saw dead bodies and dead animals strewn in the street.

He said three people live in El Geneina Reuters Who saw attackers wearing beige Rapid Support Forces uniforms.

In the past, the RSF has berated individual soldiers for their involvement in Janjaweed attacks, but has accused the army and allied militias of being behind the recent violence in Darfur.

Hamidti, who hails from an Arab tribe, called on the people of El Geneina, in an audio message earlier this week, to “renounce regionalism and tribalism. And stop fighting among yourselves immediately.”