Sudan’s war has reached a critical turning point after more than a year of neglect by world leaders and underfunding of humanitarian aid. Warring parties are fighting to the death for control of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state and until recently one of the last refuges for civilians. Experts warn that the city’s fall would lead to horrific human rights violations, ranging from ethnic cleansing to outright genocide of millions of people.
What’s happening in El Fasher is just the latest in a years-long conflict between two rival military groups vying for power after conspiring to oust Sudan’s former president and his successor. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, a general in the country’s military, known as the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), became Sudan’s de facto ruler in 2021, but tensions with an interim ally, a paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), quickly exploded as leaders tried to merge the RSF into the SAF. The tensions escalated into a civil war last year, creating the world’s largest displacement crisis. On Monday, the United Nations told The Associated Press that more than 10 million people — about a quarter of the population — have already been internally displaced since the war began.
The SAF and RSF have clashed sporadically in El Fasher, the last stronghold of government forces in all of western Sudan, but the town had largely escaped the worst of the war until recent weeks. That changed on the morning of May 10, when heavy fighting broke out between the two groups. Nearly daily bombings, indiscriminate shelling and airstrikes have rocked the town since then. More than 1,000 civilians have been injured and 206 killed, according to Claire Nicolet, emergency program manager for Doctors Without Borders. Hospitals and internally displaced persons camps have been damaged by gunfire and explosions. Aid convoys carrying food and medical supplies have barely reached the city’s estimated 2 million civilians.
Understanding the Sudan War
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Throughout the war, as the RSF expanded its control to other towns in Darfur, it has engaged in ethnic targeting and brutal violence against civilians, including raping, torturing, killing and using racist slurs on non-Arab civilians, as documented by Human Rights Watch. Human rights experts fear that if El Fasher falls into RSF hands, it could trigger a new wave of ethnic cleansing reminiscent of the genocide that took place in Darfur in the early 2000s, when Janjaweed militias and government forces killed around 200,000 non-Arab civilians. The RSF evolved from the Janjaweed militias, a predominantly Arab fighting force created by the former president in the mid-1980s to fight the Darfurians.
The current war between the RSF and SAF is more of a power struggle than a sectarian one, but ethnic tensions have long simmered in Darfur since the genocide, explained Akshaya Kumar, crisis assistance director at Human Rights Watch. If the RSF gains the upper hand, it would give them control over the entire Darfur region, where most of the non-Arab community lives.
The situation is all too familiar. As in 2003, the crisis is on the brink of famine and genocide, and as was the case then, the world’s worst humanitarian crisis is still being ignored by foreign governments and international organizations with the power to intervene to promote a peaceful solution or to press the warring parties to comply with international humanitarian law. In the coming months, the humanitarian and human rights situation in Darfur, and across Sudan, may finally become too dire to ignore, but by that point it may be too late to do anything.
“History is repeating itself in the worst way possible in Darfur,” U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said at a recent press conference. “An attack on El Fasher would be disaster upon disaster.”

Mass displacement and hunger threat
This is not the first time violence has broken out in El Fasher during the civil war. Aid groups and local media have reported sporadic but deadly clashes between the RSF and SAF since the conflict began, despite a ceasefire in April 2023. There are also local militias operating to protect civilians who initially swore neutrality in the civil war. Sporadic clashes became frequent again in April after militias claimed to have been attacked by the RSF and sided with the SAF.
The RSF now control at least three of the four roads leading to El Fasher and have entered the town itself. The city’s three remaining hospitals, including the pediatric facility and the maternity center, have all come under mortar and bomb attack, killing three patients and wounding 11.
About half a million people have fled to El Fasher since mid-2023, crowding into schools and other informal gathering places, as well as nearby Zamzam, a camp for internally displaced people created during the genocide in the early 2000s. The displaced had relied on food aid. But now food markets are emptying, and the violence means neither aid groups nor commercial trucks can enter the town to replenish stocks or deliver food aid.
Even before the fighting in El Fasher escalated, nearly 25 million people in Sudan were in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, and 18 million faced severe food insecurity. The United Nations has warned that Sudan is on the brink of all-out famine. Doctors Without Borders reports that a child dies of malnutrition every two hours in Zamzam, and Nicolet estimates that 300,000 to 400,000 people have been displaced.
Ethnic targeting, crimes against humanity and genocide
Last month, while a fragile peace held sway in El Fasher, the RSF marched into Darfur, leaving a trail of destruction that many human rights groups say amounts to ethnic cleansing and war crimes. At least one investigation has concluded that the RSF is committing genocide in Darfur.
Human rights analysts have pointed to past attacks on El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state, about 300 miles from El Fasher, as evidence that the RSF is employing ethnic cleansing tactics, and similar attacks are likely to be repeated in El Fasher. According to a Human Rights Watch report, between April and November 2023, the RSF and allied militias “carried out a systematic campaign” to kill and eliminate non-Arab Massalit residents. According to survivor testimony, during the attacks, the RSF told the Massalit that “the land was no longer theirs, that the land would be ‘cleansed’ and become ‘Arab land.'”
In June, the RSF raided a clinic in El Geneina, killing all but two patients. A total of 10,000 to 15,000 civilians have been killed in El Geneina. The RSF have also destroyed entire villages across Darfur, looting villages and stealing livestock. Sexual violence is widespread, with more reports of rape recorded in Darfur than in the capital, Khartoum, located in the center of the country. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and other aid workers on the ground, girls and women are sold in slave markets in areas of Darfur under RSF control.
The international community is fuelling the conflict through military support and total neglect
Despite the ongoing dire humanitarian and human rights situation and the likelihood that it will worsen, there appears to be little momentum for world leaders to act. Despite huge demand, as of early June the UN had raised only 16 percent of the roughly $3 billion needed to provide humanitarian assistance in Sudan in 2024. Of the $2.5 billion the UN appealed for last year, just under 50 percent was donated.
“I think one of the saddest things is that people who were once strong activist voices, like current USAID Administrator Samantha Power, and even President Biden himself, who was very vocal about Darfur when he was a senator, are now largely silent,” Kumar said. “But the total lack of action by the UN Security Council, which has both the responsibility and the capacity to act for international peace and security, is inexcusable.”
So far, the US has imposed sanctions on two RSF commanders for their actions in Darfur, while the UN Security Council has only passed one resolution calling for a ceasefire during Ramadan. According to David Simon, senior lecturer in international affairs and director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, there has been no pressure from the UN or member states to convene and deploy an international peacekeeping force that is urgently needed to prevent further atrocities in Darfur. The African Union has remained completely silent, neither pursuing a mediation role nor forming its own peacekeeping force.
When the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights launched an independent investigation into RSF’s actions in Darfur, its authors not only argued that RSF’s actions constituted genocide, but also wrote that the genocide was “fueled directly and indirectly by powerful external interests.”
While the UN and foreign governments have largely maintained apathy and ignorance, other countries and state actors have actively supported the warring parties, adding fuel to the fire. Moscow has historically been Sudan’s largest arms supplier, and is currently negotiating a deal with the Sudanese military to provide guns and ammunition in exchange for access to Red Sea ports.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) may be the most significant foreign power supporting this war. The US and the UN have found credible evidence that the UAE is providing military support to the RSF in the form of weekly arms shipments via neighboring Chad. The UAE has consistently denied these accusations. In December, members of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee sent a letter to the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs asking it to reconsider its support for the RSF. It was only a few weeks ago that Congress introduced a bill to restrict certain arms exports to the UAE. Tensions over the Gaza conflict may make it difficult for the US to put real pressure on the UAE, Simon said.
It’s hard to explain why conflicts like the one in Sudan are so ignored. In contrast, the ongoing conflict in Gaza regularly makes headlines and sparks international condemnation and massive protests. With so many crises and conflicts in the world, the inability of U.S. and European governments to intervene decisively to end the conflicts in Sudan and other parts of Africa may simply be due to compassion fatigue, or even racial aspects, Kumar said.
“In the past, just publishing evidence that a town had been destroyed was enough to shock and upset people and spur them to action,” Kumar said, “but that no longer seems to be the case, at least when it comes to conflicts in Africa.”
Update June 10, 2pm: This article was originally published on June 8 and has been updated to reflect new UN data on the number of internally displaced people in Sudan.