Al-Fasher, the capital of Darfur, has fallen into the hands of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), after holding out for more than 18 months. Throughout that period, the population of the city, numbering at least 250,000, have endured hunger and relentless bombardment.
No sooner had the RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo “Hemedti” seized control of the city, than reports began to emerge of mass killings. The United Nations, along with the African Union and the European Union, warned of possible massacres of civilians, fears that were soon confirmed by the circulation of numerous video clips and photographs showing over 1,000 dead. The RSF killed some 450 civilians in several hospitals and prevented thousand others from fleeing the city to nearby rural areas.
Hemedti acknowledged the widespread abuses committed by his forces in Al-Fasher and announced the formation of an investigation committee — a move that many observers viewed with scepticism given his record. The RSF, originally known as the Janjaweed militia, earned infamy for its involvement in genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Darfur conflict that erupted in 2003. Hemedti, who hails from a family of camel traders and caravan guards belonging to the Mahamid tribe, was among the earliest young recruits of the Janjaweed, whose history predates 2003.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) accused former Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir of being the mastermind behind the genocide targeting non-Arab Muslim ethnic groups in Darfur, including the Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit. The ICC convicted Ali Mohamed Ali Abdel-Rahman, known as Ali Kushayb, who surrendered to the court in 2020, of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during the conflict that erupted in Darfur more than two decades ago. Al-Bashir, his interior minister Ahmed Haroun, and his defence minister Abdel-Rahim Mohamed Hussein remain wanted fugitives.
Darfur, an area larger than France in western Sudan, is home to between seven and eight million people, the majority being non-Arab Muslim farmers and Arab Muslim herders. For centuries, the two groups had coexisted peacefully, bound by geography and history. During the rainy season, herders would migrate northward to benefit from the pastures, while farmers focused on sowing seeds, applying fertilisers, and preparing their land.
When the harvest — dry — season came, the herders would return south to the farmers’ fields. Their camels and sheep grazed on the harvested land, consuming the remnants of crops and fertilising the land. Farmers, in turn, used those same camels to transport their produce to local markets, where they exchanged grains for livestock products. This was also the time of weddings and communal celebrations, often uniting farmers and herders in marriage and festivity. That was the ideal state of coexistence, occasionally disturbed by minor disputes resolved through traditional tribal councils.
In the 1970s, however, the effects of climate change began to take their toll. As rainfall grew scarcer, herders suffering from drought started raiding the relatively wetter farming villages. This was not the only development. The outbreak of war in Chad, in which the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi became deeply involved, further reshaped the region. Gaddafi established what was then called the Islamic Legion, which included large numbers of Darfuri herders who had been economically devastated by climate change. For many of them, Libyan funding became the sole source of livelihood. When Libya and its “pan-African” leader — an epithet fondly used by many of Gaddafi’s supporters — were defeated, the Islamic Legion disbanded, and its members returned to their tribes.
They came back to find the entire Sahel region suffering from severe drought and desertification, a crisis that contributed to the downfall of several powerful African leaders, including Jaafar Nimeiry in Sudan, Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia, and Moussa Traoré in Mali. These events threw the region into long-term instability. In Sudan, the government of Sadiq Al-Mahdi and his Defence Minister Nasser Barmah began arming Arab tribal groups who had previously fought in the Chadian war. Those groups were known as the “Murahileen” and later renamed the Popular Defence Forces, under the rule of Al-Bashir’s Muslim Brotherhood-backed government. The Bashir regime employed the Popular Defence Forces in its war against the south (1983-2005).
However, once the southern war ended with the Machakos (2003) and Naivasha (2005) agreements, Al-Bashir’s government turned to using the Janjaweed — whose name in Arabic means a “djinn riding a horse and carrying a G7” — against rebels from the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa groups. During that conflict, which reached its peak between 2003 and 2010, more than 300,000 people were killed, around 40,000 women and girls were raped, and nearly two million people were displaced. The war appeared to be an attempt by Al-Bashir and allied Arab tribes to depopulate Darfur, thus ethnically cleansing and turning it into exclusively Arab territory.
During the recent civil war, the RSF killed more than 15,000 people from the Masalit ethnic group in their capital, Al-Geneina, the westernmost city in Sudan. Millions of Darfur’s residents fled their villages and homes to escape the atrocities committed by the RSF. Historically, Darfur had been prosperous by the standards of sub-Saharan Africa until it was annexed by Egypt in the early 1870s to become part of Sudan. The region remained under Sudanese authority, except for a brief period between 1898 and 1916.
For centuries, Darfur maintained strong ties with Egypt through the Darb Al-Arbaeen, or “Forty Days Road,” a desert route dotted with wells stretching from Al-Fasher to Assiut, a principal city in Upper Egypt. Caravans traversed this route in about 40 days. Along the same trade route, the commercial exchange between the two regions facilitated the spread of Islam in Darfur. The Darb Al-Arbaeen carried products of the Sahara — hides, livestock, timber, and gum Arabic — to Egypt, while Darfur received agricultural produce from the Mediterranean regions of Egypt. Darfur also established trade relations with the Nile Valley in Sudan, exchanging goods such as oilseeds, particularly sesame, along with sorghum, livestock, timber, and other commodities.
The Sultans of Darfur were known for their tradition of providing the Kiswa, the cloth that covers the Kaaba, a practice they maintained until 1870, when the region was incorporated into Egypt’s Sudanese territories. Throughout history, the Kaaba has been adorned with coverings sent from many kingdoms across the Islamic world, the most renowned and magnificent of which was the Egyptian Kiswa, transported annually in the famous Mahmal procession. The tradition continued until the mid-1960s. Darfur also maintained active trade routes to the south and the west with African nations such as Chad and the Central African Republic. These historical, cultural and economic ties gave Darfur great strategic importance, which Gaddafi sought to exploit in his bid to dominate the Lake Chad Basin, whose western edge borders Darfur.
The Ansar movement regards Arab Darfur as one of its main strongholds. Hemedti’s family, along with many members of the RSF, belong to the Ansar. The Ansar are named after the social forces that supported the Mahdist revolution in Sudan between 1871 and 1898. With Darfur’s fall, several countries now fear a partition of Sudan along the lines of the Libyan model, according to Sudanese journalist and commentator Afrah Tag Al-Sir. Such a division would make reunification or peaceful resolution in Sudan far more difficult, leaving Egypt surrounded by two failed states — Libya and Sudan — and burdening it with additional security, political, and economic pressures.
Moreover, the fall of Al-Fasher could foster new African alliances, with Hemedti aligning with Ethiopia, Chad and Kenya, while the rest of Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia and South Sudan form an opposing bloc. In a region that is home to more than 400 million people, this growing polarisation could ignite broader regional wars, making restraint increasingly difficult for countries such as Egypt, Uganda, and Libya.
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