Violence in Darfur lays bare deepening crisis

Attacks on UN facilities, a surge in tribal clashes, lootings, rape, and anti-coup protests — Sudan’s Darfur region is reeling from a widening security gap after last year’s coup.

Sudan is one of the world’s poorest countries but the vast, arid Darfur region has for years suffered more than its share of the nation’s challenges.

When a coup took place in October hundreds of kilometers away in the capital Khartoum, Darfur was still reeling from the legacy of a conflict that broke out under former strongman Omar Bashir in 2003, and which left hundreds of thousands dead.

Though the main Darfur conflict subsided, the Darfur region bordering Chad is awash with guns and is home to most of Sudan’s 3 million displaced people.

Clashes broke out last week between government forces guarding a former UN peacekeeping base in North Darfur and members of an armed group that signed a peace deal with the government in 2020. There were multiple deaths on both sides.

The same facility, which had been a logistics base for the now-disbanded UN and African Union peacekeeping mission, UNAMID, had already been looted in December.

Around the same time, the World Food Programme suspended operations following more than a day of looting at its warehouses in North Darfur, an act which “robbed nearly 2 million people of the food and nutrition support they so desperately need,” the agency said.

Disputes over land, livestock, access to water and grazing have since October triggered a spike in conflict that has left around 250 people killed in fighting between herders and farmers.

At the same time Darfuris — like Sudanese across the country — held demonstrations against the October military coup in Khartoum led by army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan.

“The security situation has become extremely dangerous over the past four months, with armed men often stopping and looting cars and people’s belongings,” Mohammed Eissa, a Darfur resident, said.

Those living in camps since the 2003 Darfur conflict have again been gripped by fear.

“Lootings and rape of women have also become rampant,” said Abdallah Adam, a resident of Zamzam camp for displaced people near North Darfur’s El-Fasher town.

Renewed violence since late last year has displaced thousands more people from their homes and forced others — already uprooted — to flee once more both within Darfur and over the border to Chad, the United Nations said.

The unrest that began in 2003 pitted ethnic minority rebels, who complained of discrimination, against the Arab-dominated government of Bashir. Khartoum responded by unleashing the Janjaweed militia, blamed for atrocities including murder, rape, looting and burning villages.