Survivors describe an unfolding genocide in Darfur
- Ben Farmer | The Telegraph
- 5 minutes ago
- 7 min read
'I saw many die with my own eyes': As Sudan’s civil war spirals, refugees recall witnessing pogroms, mass killings and barbarism
By Ben Farmer
Abdullah Mufadl has survived not one, but two pitiless ethnic massacres as his country has been convulsed by civil war.
Firstly he saw thousands of his Masalit neighbours killed when his home town of El Geneina was overrun by Arab militiamen early in Sudan's catastrophic conflict.
Then five months later it happened again, when militiamen once more went on a murderous rampage in the suburb of Ardamata where he had taken refuge.
As many as 17,000 died in the two killing sprees. Many of the survivors are now destitute and traumatised, living in limbo in refugee camps near the Chadian border town of Adré.
Ask around in the 100,000-strong Adré transit camp for anyone who witnessed these massacres, or who lost relatives, and a queue quickly forms.
“I saw many die with my own eyes,” says one woman. “I lost 14 from my family: both sons and cousins,” says another. “Everyone here has suffered,” says a man.
Sudan's slide into war between the de facto president, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and his deputy, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, has turned almost the whole country into a battlefield.
In the Darfur region, it has also renewed ethnic purges which beset the area 20 years ago.
Hemedti's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and its allies are accused of trying to wipe out, or drive off, non-Arab and Black African groups like the Masalit in order to take their land.
A similar massacre is now feared to be imminent in El Fasher, the besieged capital of north Darfur, after the RSF captured and razed the nearby Zamzam refugee camp last week.
At least 300 people died during the fall of the camp and some 400,000 fled, either into El Fasher itself, which has been encircled, starved and bombarded for a year, or to the nearby town of Tawila.
Survivors have reported civilian men being lined up and shot, women being raped, and homes and markets being burned down. El Fasher is the last army stronghold in Darfur and the last obstacle to the RSF consolidating its control in the region.
The RSF has denied accusations of atrocities and said the Zamzam camp was being used as a base by forces loyal to the army.
America says what is happening is a genocide.
In the last days of Joe Biden's administration, the United States said the RSF and its allies had “systematically murdered men and boys – even infants – on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence.
“Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies.”
Marco Rubio, Donald Trump's new secretary of state, in January added: “By its very definition, this is a real genocide. This is the ethnic targeting of specific groups for extermination, for elimination.”
Britain typically leaves courts to determine a genocide, but has said atrocities are being conducted. David Lammy, Foreign Secretary, said earlier this month that those sheltering in El Fasher were facing “unimaginable violence”.
The Sudanese army and its allied militia are also widely accused of atrocities, including killing civilians in air strikes.
Mr Mufadl, aged 42, sold shoes in El Geneina before the war. Tensions were already high. The current bloodshed in Darfur continues decades of clashes in competition for land, water and resources between Arab herders and non-Arab farmers.
The city already held large camps housing Masalit and others who had fled their homes 20 years earlier when the government used Arab militia called the Janjaweed to wage a brutal counter-insurgency campaign against rebels protesting that Khartoum was neglecting the area.
The Janjaweed later evolved into the RSF paramilitary group within the army and in 2020, the army signed a peace deal with rebel groups in Darfur.
Yet, when the long-running rivalry between Gen al-Burhan and Hemedti, flared into open fighting in Khartoum on April 15, 2023, it was only around 10 days before the war again reached Geneina, 700 miles away.
RSF forces and other aligned Arab militia fought the army garrison, then turned on Masalit neighbourhoods where young men had armed themselves for defence.
Mr Mufadl said: “They came and shot everyone. They did not distinguish between a woman, or a man or a child. They shot everywhere.”
“Civilians took refuge in schools and government buildings.”
The purge continued for seven weeks and killed several thousand civilians, as the Masalit tried to fight back and defend their neighbourhoods, according to an account by Human Rights Watch.
The tipping point was the killing of the state governor, Khamis Abbakar, himself Masalit, on June 14.
Masalit defences crumbled and fighters and civilians alike tried to flee to either Chad, or the Ardamata neighbourhood where the Sudanese army had a base.
Their desperate convoy was constantly ambushed and raked with gunfire as it retreated through Arab-controlled neighbourhoods. Men were separated out and executed.
Many drowned, or were shot as they tried to reach safety across the swollen Kaja wadi.
“It was very crowded, there was shooting and ambushes everywhere. There were dead everywhere,” said Mr Mufadl who took the six-mile road to Ardamata.
“The rains had come and the wadi was full of water. They drowned old men and old women. A very big number were killed on the road to Ardamata. We dug five or six mass graves. In each hole, we put many people. We were not able to bury anybody until the night came.”
Huwaida Adurahman Adam and her daughter Fathia Arbab Ishaq were also among those who fled El Geneina that desperate day. Fathia, now aged eight, had already in 2021 lost a leg after being shot when RSF fighters raided her camp.
Mrs Adam said that as she fled, she saw men hauled out of the convoy and executed.
She said: “We were mixed with men. They were separated from us, they took them to one side and shot them. I saw this with my own eyes.
“They want to take our land. They said we will not let any Masalit live here. We don't want any black people here.”
The United Nations estimates that overall, somewhere between 10,000 to 15,000 died in Geneina.
When survivors arrived in Ardamata, they hoped the army would protect them. But in early November, history repeated itself.
The RSF began shelling the garrison on Nov 1 and on Nov 4 troops pulled out leaving refugees like Mr Mufadl again at the mercy of the militia.
Adam Ismail, a staff officer in the army who had been serving in the garrison, said the army retreat had been so chaotic and rapid that he and 200 comrades had been left behind.
He woke in his position on the southern flank to be told officers had fled without him.
He said: “Nobody informed us. We left immediately. I was very scared and I was very sorry such behaviour had occurred by my commanders. We thought we would die. When we moved north to see the defensive positions, no one was there. We soon fell into an ambush.”
He was shot in the leg above the knee and left for dead. He lay in open ground for three days, before becoming so desperate that he took the gamble of giving himself up to RSF fighters.
“Some nomad boys had found me and given me some water,” he recalled. “I saw there was an RSF checkpoint nearby and I said to the boys 'tell them there's a Sudanese soldier lying shot and wounded for three days'.
“When I sent the boys over, I expected anything could happen to me. I had two choices: I can die there in the field, or call to them and take my chances. It was risky, but that was the choice.”
Fortunately for him, they turned him over to the Red Crescent aid organisation. He later found three quarters of his detachment had died.
With the army gone from Ardamata, civilians like Mr Mufadl were again forced to flee through a gauntlet of RSF ambushes, this time heading to Chad.
He said: “Immediately [after the army left], they started to shoot civilians. They went to the civilians and started shooting randomly.
“It was the same as Geneina all over again. Some of them were killed in very brutal ways. Some of them were buried alive. Everyone fled out again.”
Up to 2,000 are thought to have died in Ardamata.
As survivors from Zamzam make it to Chad in the coming days, further reports of massacres that took place there are likely to emerge.
The situation in El Fasher, where mainly members of the Zagawa and Fur tribes are sheltering, is meanwhile expected to become more desperate because of the arrival of large numbers into an enclave which was already starving.
Few in Adré's camps believe they can safely return home to Darfur while the RSF are in control. Some still have relatives across the border, but say they live completely at the mercy of militiamen. Many say Arab families are living in their homes, or have taken their land.
There is no work in the refugee camps. Many young men conclude their best chance is to join armed militia fighting alongside the Sudanese army to try to evict the RSF from their land.
Col Yassin Ahmad Arbab, an intelligence officer with the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA), a former rebel group now aligned with the army, said his group had many recruits. He said: “We are ready to fight and die.”
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