With RSF victory, western Sudan feared to be on verge of ethnic cleansing as mass killings start

With the paramilitary group RSF’s victory in Sudan’s western Darfur region, fears have mounted that the region’s non-Arab ethnic communities could be on the brink of facing another episode of ethnic cleansing.

In the ongoing Sudanese civil war, the RSF on Sunday seized control of El-Fasher , the military’s last stronghold in Darfur. With this victory, the RSF and its allies have gained complete control of the region, effectively splitting the country into western and eastern halves.

Since the RSF’s takeover, reports have emerged—from Sudanese civilians, the United Nations (UN), and open-source investigators—that the paramilitaries have begun mass killings, raising concerns that the region could face another genocide.

Between 2003 and 2005, the same paramilitaries, who are Arabs, waged a genocidal campaign in Darfur, killing around 300,000 people from the non-Arab Masalit, Fur, and Zaghawa communities, according to the UN.

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The current Sudanese civil war began in 2023 following the collapse of an uneasy power-sharing arrangement between the country’s military, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti. Following the fall of El-Fasher, the RSF’s coalition now controls Sudan’s western and southwestern regions, while the Sudanese military holds the east and the capital, Khartoum.

Since 2023, the RSF and its allies have already killed over 17,000 people in Darfur in a series of massacres. In one such mass killing in El-Geneina, the UN reported that up to 15,000 people were killed.

Evidence of mass killings and fears of another ethnic cleansing mount

The Joint Forces, an ally of the Sudanese military, has claimed that the paramilitaries have killed over 2,000 people in El-Fasher since Sunday, according to AFP.

The Joint Forces stated that the RSF and its allies “committed heinous crimes against innocent civilians in the city of El-Fasher, where more than 2,000 unarmed citizens were executed and killed on 26 and 27 October, most of them women, children, and the elderly".

While the exact number could not be independently verified, open-source investigators from Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) confirmed that mass killings had indeed occurred in El-Fasher.

In a report published on Monday, HRL investigators said they had discovered piles of corpses lying near RSF vehicles in a neighbourhood known to shelter non-Arab communities. They concluded that those killings were carried out in a door-to-door search and victims were singled out on the basis of ethnicity.

Separately, UN rights chief Volker Turk said there was a growing risk of “ethnically motivated violations and atrocities” in El-Fasher.

Turk’s office said it was “receiving multiple, alarming reports that the Rapid Support Forces are carrying out atrocities, including summary executions”.

Separately, the AFP authenticated a video from El-Fasher that showed a fighter known for executing civilians in RSF-controlled areas shooting a group of unarmed civilians sitting on the ground at point-blank range.

World’s worst humanitarian crisis

The UN has previously declared the Sudanese civil war the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian crisis.

An estimated 150,000 people have been killed, hundreds of thousands injured, and 14 million displaced.

Around 24 million people are considered to be in acute hunger across Sudan, with 600,000 facing famine. The city of El-Fasher, where approximately 260,000 people are still believed to be living, is also gripped by famine after more than a year under siege.

In addition to the massacres of over 17,000 people, the RSF and its allies have been widely accused of committing systematic sexual violence against women during the conflict, including rape, gang rape, forced marriages, and sexual slavery.