About a year and a half ago, I published an episode of Global Dispatches titled “A Genocidal Massacre Is Looming in Darfur.” At the time, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces had conquered nearly all of Darfur, in western Sudan, except for its largest city, El Fasher. The RSF was laying siege to the city in preparation for an assault, and everything we knew about how this group operates suggested that if El Fasher fell, a mass atrocity would follow. Earlier this month, as it became apparent that the RSF was poised to launch its final assault, I published another episode explaining what was at stake.
Three days ago, El Fasher fell.
And now, hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in the city are being systematically killed.
We know about the atrocities as they unfold because the perpetrators themselves are documenting them, posting snuff videos social media in which they execute unarmed civilians and brag about their body counts. These are not hidden crimes. They are being carried out in plain sight, by men who revel in their violence.
What is happening in El Fasher today was both predicted and predictable. The RSF are the rebranded Janjaweed—the same militia that carried out the first Darfur genocide twenty years ago. And since Sudan’s civil war began in April 2023, every city in Darfur that has fallen to the RSF has become the site of ethnic massacres and credible accusations of genocide. Now the largest city in the region and last bastion of resistance has fallen and a major mass atrocity event is underway.
My guest today, Mutasim Ali, is the same person I interviewed for that episode a year and a half ago. He is from El Fasher and serves as a legal advisor to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. We kick off discussing the significance of El Fasher in the context of Sudan’s civil war and discuss the RSF’s history of violence before having a long discussion about events ongoing in El Fasher today and what needs to be done to stop this violence. It’s a heavy conversation, but worthy of your attention.
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If nothing else, please share this conversation widely so we can draw as much attention to this crisis as possible.
