El-Fasher Massacres by RSF in Darfur were Predictable (Pity Sudan)
Kanako Mita, Sawako Utsumi, and Lee Jay Walker
Modern Tokyo Times
Last year, the United Nations (UN) urged the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and their allied Arab militias and mercenaries to end their deadly siege of El Fasher in Sudan — appeals that, predictably, went unheeded. After surrounding and eventually entering the city, the RSF began a campaign of brutal violence against civilians, including killings within hospitals — reminiscent of the atrocities committed by Sunni Islamists in Syria against the Druze during their attack on Suweida’s National Hospital (recent pogroms against the Alawites and Druze in Syria).
International media, which often overlook the ongoing horrors in Sudan — including the enslavement of Black African ethnic groups by Arab Muslim forces in the Darfur region (echoing the continued captivity of Yazidi women and girls by ISIS in Iraq) — are now drawing attention to the devastation in El Fasher. However, the global response remains detached, similar to other conflicts that are neglected.
UN News reports, “After overrunning the Sudanese Armed Forces’ (SAF) last major stronghold in Darfur, which had held out for over 500 days, RSF fighters moved house to house, he said, with ‘credible reports of widespread executions’ as civilians attempted to escape.”
Tom Fletcher (UN humanitarian official) said, “There must be accountability for those carrying out the killing and the sexual violence. For those giving the orders. And those providing the weapons should consider their responsibility.”
He pointedly said that the “crisis of apathy” remains.
Naturally, the RSF denies the ethnic angle. The BBC reports, “The group has also denied widespread allegations that the killings in el-Fasher are ethnically motivated and follow a pattern of the Arab paramilitaries targeting non-Arab populations.”
France 24 reports, “Within 48 hours, RSF attacks on the city had left more than 2,000 civilians dead, according to armed groups allied to the Sudanese army.”
RSF forces in El Fasher are notably killing non-Arabs (Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit are being singled out).
Mohamad Faisal (Sudan Doctors Network spokesperson) notified BBC Newsday that “The RSF soldiers went into the wards killing inpatients as well as going to the outpatient areas and killing the people who are waiting to be seen in the clinics – so many people.”
Nothing encapsulates the tragedy of El Fasher more starkly than this: nearly 40% of its young children are suffering from acute malnutrition, their fragile lives hanging by a thread. At the same time, the world’s attention remains fixed on Gaza and Ukraine.
Darfur — once a global rallying cry against genocide — is again drowning in blood. Two decades ago, Arab militias were accused of slaughtering Black African communities such as the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa, leaving hundreds of thousands dead. Now, that same nightmare has returned. Since Sudan’s latest war began, ethnic violence has reignited, and Black African civilians across Darfur are once again being hunted, displaced, and killed.
The world once vowed “never again.” In Darfur, that promise lies in ruins.
Catherine Russell (the Executive Director of UNICEF – actively involved in highlighting the crisis in Sudan) said, “Children as young as one being raped by armed men should shock anyone to their core and compel immediate action… Millions of children in Sudan are at risk of rape and other forms of sexual violence, which is being used as a tactic of war. This is an abhorrent violation of international law and could constitute a war crime. It must stop.”
The RSF’s campaign of ethnic cleansing extends far beyond Darfur. Across Sudan, other regions are suffering similar brutality. In the Nuba Mountains and South Kordofan, credible reports of ethnic massacres reveal the systematic and coordinated nature of the violence.
Both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF have carried out massacres — against each other and against Arab Muslim civilians. However, the RSF and its allied militias have become particularly notorious for perpetrating ethnically targeted killings.
Martha Pobee (Assistant Secretary-General for Africa) ominously reports, “The territorial scope of the conflict is broadening.”
UN News reports, “Drone strikes by both RSF and SAF, she said, are now hitting new targets across Blue Nile, South Kordofan, West Darfur and Khartoum.”
Pobee said, “The risk of mass atrocities, ethnically targeted violence and further violations of international humanitarian law, including sexual violence, remains alarmingly high.”
The Guardian reports, “The world’s indifference to the conflict is maddening in the face of war crimes committed by Sudan’s army and the RSF. The RSF and allied militias have attacked non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur, with fighters saying they would force women to have “Arab babies”, according to a UN report published in November 2024. In January 2025, the US government formally declared that the RSF had committed genocide.”
Since Sudan’s war broke out in 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF, as many as 150,000 people have been killed — a number that likely underestimates the true scale of the carnage. Some 12 to 14 million people have been forced to flee. At the same time, harrowing accounts continue to surface of rape, sexual slavery, and ethnic massacres by the RSF, along with brutal killings of prisoners by both sides.
It is often conveniently forgotten that Arab Muslim involvement in the enslavement of Africans spanned more than 1,300 years — and extended far beyond the continent. In fact, slavery was only officially abolished in the land of Mecca in the early 1960s, and even later in Oman and Mauritania. The racial and ethnic hatred seen today in Sudan toward Black African communities echoes this enduring history — a legacy that still manifests in modern atrocities, such as ISIS’s continued enslavement of Yazidi women and girls in Iraq.
The role of external nations must also be addressed. For instance, the United Arab Emirates has provided support to the RSF without imposing meaningful constraints to prevent civilian massacres. Other countries, too, are entangled in the conflict, pursuing their own interests. Meanwhile, the people of Darfur — and of Sudan as a whole — continue to suffer amid these devastating conditions.
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