In Darfur the war is never over – Philip Kleinfeld

The IDP camps on the outskirts of Geneina are reminiscent of scenes from Darfur’s past: a maze of burnt houses and empty streets stretches as far as the eye can see. Goats roaming the rubble are the main sign of life in this once-busy area.

Violence rampant in the camp in January in this medium-sized Sudanese city that is the capital of the state of West Darfur could be a glimpse of the future of the area. And this happens as peacekeeping forces leave the country and the political transition creates problems in this long-struggling region.

Rummaging through the remains of her burnt home in the camp, created for people fleeing the war in the early 2000s, Khamisa Ismail reflects on how bad things have gotten. “The last two years have been the worst since I arrived,” she tells The New Humanitarian one morning in late February. Hundreds of people lost their lives between 15 and 17 January, and more than 150,000 were displaced after Arab militias attacked the Geneina camp known as Krinding and inhabited mostly by people from the Masalit community.

At the beginning of April, new clashes and attacks on the city’s camps caused at least another hundred victims and caused thousands of people to flee, some of whom fled to neighboring Chad. Humanitarian organizations have suspended their operations, and a state of emergency has been declared throughout Western Darfur.

The explanations for the reasons for the violence vary. Many accuse the militias of stepping up the attacks, made more lethal by the withdrawal, in December, of a joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission, which had been on the ground for thirteen years. Others accuse the difficult political transition in Sudan of having polarized communities and fueled the grievances of local elites.

Darfurians had hoped the worst was behind them after the ousting of long-time leader Omar al Bashir in 2019. In 2003, the former president armed local Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to put down a revolt by rebel groups in Darfur, mostly non-Arabs. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in the violence, which led to the indictment of Al Bashir for genocide.

But even though the former leader is now behind bars in Sudan’s capital, trust in the civilian and military government that replaced him is rapidly fading, as armed conflicts intensify across the region, and the number of displaced people has reached levels not seen in years, according to the Internal displacement monitoring center.

The same militias
Humanitarian needs are not met. Darfur was once home to one of the largest humanitarian operations in the world, but funding for these initiatives has long since shrunk – a fact that is sadly evident in Geneina, where tens of thousands of Krinding residents now live in makeshift camps and overcrowded scattered around the city. “Justice and accountability are a mirage,” says Khadiga Ishag, who fled Krinding and lives today in a camp outside a local government building in Geneina. “We only ask for minimal assistance”.

Despite the new freedoms that can be enjoyed today in Sudan, the same militias that terrorized Darfur continue to move freely, except that there are no longer any peacekeepers to contain them. Particularly feared are the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a government force made up of Janjaweed veterans and recently implicated in a series of violence, including in Krinding. “It’s been like this since 2003,” confirms Madina Ali Mohamed, who lives in Krinding and whose brother was killed in the November attacks. “The militias just keep killing us.”

Conflicting views on the transition in Sudan and what it means for Darfur may also have contributed to this violence, as evidenced by dozens of talks with government officials, local humanitarian workers and civil society groups in Geneina. Feeling empowered by the transition, Masalit leaders in the city have stepped up calls for redress, justice and the return of large tracts of land that had been stolen from them by militias during past conflicts. The Arab communities, some of which occupy those lands, have consequently felt threatened.

The removal from power of local elites who were part of Bashir’s former ruling party, the National Congress Party (NCP), has further destabilized the situation. In Geneina, the elites are accused by many of fomenting inter-community tensions to sabotage the transition. “The violence is not tribal, but political,” says the governor of West Darfur, Mohamed el Doma. “The NCP wants to destabilize the situation”.

After taking power in 2019, the power-sharing government has made achieving peace one of its priorities. A peace deal signed in October 2020 with rebels from Darfur and other parts of the country should help deliver on that promise.

But many Darfur citizens are skeptical that the deal will carry a lot of weight, especially since the government – mired in an internal power struggle between its civilian and military components – has not been able to truly guarantee security on the country. ground. The failure is especially evident in Geneina, where a series of deadly clashes between Arab and Masalit communities have left behind a trail of burning fields and empty villages, reminiscent of the worst days of the Darfur conflict.

The violence took place in various stages. In December 2019, a dispute between the two groups ended with a large-scale attack by Arab militiamen against Krinding. After fleeing the camp, the residents returned, only to be attacked again in January 2021. Subsequent mediation efforts have failed and positions have tightened. Arab leaders asked the displaced to leave Geneina, while the Masalit leaders procured weapons and trained their young people to fight. The third wave of violence, which erupted in early April, was sadly inevitable. “There is a deep distrust,” said Governor Doma.

Accomplices in the violence
According to many residents, the withdrawal of the peacekeeping mission, known as Unamid, has aggravated the situation. The peacekeepers had not always protected civilians properly, but few think that the latest wave of violence would have been so long and deadly if they had been present. Local officials, researchers and aid workers report that more than four hundred people may have died in the three days of fighting in January, mostly Arab men and Masalit engaged in the clashes, which also spread to nearby camps and villages outside Geneina.

In their first real test after UNAMID’s withdrawal, Sudanese soldiers failed to intervene, and more than ten Krinding residents told The New Humanitarian that a government force was actively complicit in the violence: the RSF. Many said that affiliates of the group provided weapons and vehicles to the Arab militiamen, while others accused them of directly participating in the fighting. “We have seen the RSF shoot, kill and burn our homes,” says Ishag, the displaced woman. Krinding residents say that even after the attack, affiliates of the group – whose leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo is now a prominent figure in Sudan’s transition – continued to target them.

In a camp set up on the grounds of a local university, residents say that uniformed RSF men blocked access to nearby water pumps and fired shots into the air at night to scare them. In other camps, the threat of sexual violence by members of the group has prevented displaced women from collecting firewood outside the camps. Some families have delegated this task to older people, considering them to be less at risk. “When women leave the camps they are harassed,” confirms Suleiman Abdallah, the leader of a camp. “The RSF tell us: ‘why are you still here? Didn’t we kill you? ‘ “.

Pressures and resistances
To improve security in Darfur, the new peace agreement provides for the disarmament of the region’s myriad militias and the creation of a force of twelve thousand capable of protecting civilians in the absence of Unamid. But the deadlines for the creation of this armed force have slipped, and the displaced communities are resisting the idea that RSF exponents are included, who they believe should be disarmed.

“This agreement is empowering people who are criminals,” Ishag argues. Although the Masalit displaced people fear the power of the militias, and are aware of the weaknesses of the peace agreement, their leaders have nonetheless used the transition period to further their rights. The inhabitants of Geneina believe that this has generated tensions with the exponents of some local Arab communities, who feel that the balance of power is evolving to their disadvantage, especially since the peace agreement claims that the land is returned to its occupants. originals. “This makes Arabs feel threatened,” said Ibrahim Musa Hussin Ali, a civil society activist from El Geneina. “They will wonder where they can go.”

If displaced people have pressed for things to change, exponents of the Arab communities, which are far from homogeneous, explain that the rhetoric used often paints them as if they were all the same. “Arabs are increasingly stigmatized,” says Gido Mohamed Adam, an Arab student and El Geneina activist. “They have been accused of being Janjaweed and of being the new colonizers. Their leaders rely on this rhetoric to campaign and fuel the mobilization ”.

Often associated with the old regime, local Arabs, Adam says, also felt marginalized by various institutions of the revolution, particularly the neighborhood resistance committees that organized the protests that ousted Al Bashir. According to local government officials, researchers and Geneina aid workers, those linked to the old security apparatus and Al Bashir’s former ruling party are ready to exploit the tensions that are emerging between communities.

Becoming governor of West Darfur last year, Doma says he has removed several local NCP leaders from their positions of power. The governor believes these leaders are behind the recent violence, a view shared by many other people. “When the regime collapsed, they became politically inactive,” explains Doma. “And now they plan to return to the political scene. And for this they use tribal divisions ”.

Speaking from his office, which overlooks a displaced person camp, Doma urges Geneina’s communities to “reconcile” and “coexist”. But with little support from the new Khartoum government, his room for action is limited, he admits: “So far no one has helped us. The government is not ready yet ”.

(Translation by Federico Ferrone)