Sudan: RSF close in on lone army garrison in El-Fasher
The city of El-Fasher in north Darfur, which hosts one military garrison, is being closed in on by fighters from Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, according to The National on July 1st.
El-Fasher is the sole city in Darfur – a western region of Sudan which is roughly the size of France – that remains under military control. The rest of the vast region is controlled by the RSF.
The RSF has besieged the city since May 2024, with the military’s 6th Infantry Division and allied groups its last remaining defenders. RSF legal adviser Mohamed al-Mukhtar al-Nour claimed on June 29th that the majority of El-Fasher’s civilian residents have fled to areas such as Tawila, Karma, and Jebel Marra to escape the violence.
According to residents, RSF raids on the city have been conducted on past occasions which were quickly deterred by military-aligned combatants. However, they revealed that the RSF recently ordered for the expulsion of the remaining inhabitants located in the southern and eastern parts of the city, suggesting that the group is preparing a major incursion to overrun the garrison and flush out the remaining military elements in the city.
The RSF and the Sudanese military have been embroiled in a highly destructive civil war which erupted in April 2023 as a power struggle between the armed groups. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced over 13 million. Both sides have been accused of committing atrocities in the conflict, with recent instances including an alleged military attack on a hospital and continuous RSF ethnically-motivated killings. Moreover, 26 million of the country’s 50 million inhabitants are facing hunger.
The garrison is located in the northern part of El-Fasher, which remains relatively densely populated, according to residents who spoke to The National on the condition of anonymity out of fear they would fall victim to reprisals should the RSF seize control of the city.
The RSF’s media team shared video clips online which purportedly showed deserted roads inside El-Fasher which were scattered with charred vehicle skeletons and shattered tarmac.
Alongside fighters, the team posed outside the heavily damaged local office of the security and intelligence agencies, alongside the Al-Kabeer, or grand mosque. Both locations are in the heart of the city, which suggests that the RSF has penetrated it.
Sporadic gunfire was audible in the video’s background as the team claimed that they were within 300 metres of the 6th Infantry Division headquarters.
Although the authenticity of the footage has not yet been confirmed, residents who live in the area said that the videos were filmed in El-Fasher. Members of the RSF media team said that the clips were shot on June 30th.
No formal updates on the ongoing situation in El-Fasher have been issued by the military or the RSF. On June 27th, the military agreed to the UN’s request to implement a week-long humanitarian ceasefire in the city. However, the RSF claimed on June 29th that it had not been formally contacted regarding the truce and proclaimed that it unequivocally rejects any partial or full pause to hostilities.
The loss of El-Fasher would be a major strategic setback for the military, which regained substantial control of the capital Khartoum in March and pushed the RSF out of central Sudan shortly prior. The northern and eastern parts of Sudan are also under military control.
On the other hand, the RSF controls parts of Kordofan in the south-west, where it has formed an alliance with a powerful rebel group. It also has control over all of Darfur, apart from El-Fasher.
Darfur is the birthplace of the RSF’s forerunner, the Janjaweed militia, who were notorious for their vicious history in Darfur. It is also home to RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, more commonly known as Hemedti.
The region has been mired in extreme violence since 2003, when ethnic Africans took up arms against Omar Al-Bashir’s government to put an end to discrimination and the monopoly on power by a northern Sudanese elite.
Up to 300,000 people were killed in that conflict, with another 2.5 million displaced according to UN records. The Janjaweed contributed to much of the violence, going from village to village on horseback and inflicting atrocities on the inhabitants on behalf of the government in Khartoum. The root causes of the conflict have never fully been resolved.
If Darfur were to fall under total RSF control, the likelihood of Sudan’s partition would increase substantially. Hemedti has flirted with this prospect by framing his militia as the de facto government of an independent nation in the west of the country. To further exacerbate concerns over a partition, the RSF and its allies recently signed a charter in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi to establish a rival government in Sudan.
The National, Maghrebi.org
Want to chase the pulse of North Africa?
Subscribe to receive our FREE weekly PDF magazine
