Suffer the People: Rapid Support Forces collectively targeting civilians bloodlust in Darfur

 

Mohamed Daglo Hemedti as leader of the Janjaweed in Darfur in 2008. He was interviewed by British Sudanese journalist Nima El Bagir in her exclusive report with the Janjaweed leader for Channel 4 titled "Meet the Janjaweed" It was the few times during the early Darfur conflict that Western reporters were able to get close enough to the Janjaweed to interview Hemedti and his men. 

Darfur has become the second battleground for the ongoing war raging in Sudan. It should be remembered that most of Sudan's provinces outside of Khartoum and Darfur are relatively calm with the exception of the town El Obeid under RSF control in North Kordofan and Kaduqli in South Kordofan where Sudan People's Liberation Army-North under El Hilu is located. The Sudanese Army have been trapped in a gruesome tit for tat with the RSF troops who have embedded themselves inside various Khartoum neighborhoods without blowing up the city further despite the Army bombings. The RSF have been looting shops, homes, kidnapping, harrassing and killing people as they fight the army.A At the moment, they have slight lead on infrantry soldiers using private homes as bases to attack the army. The mainstream media's insistance that both sides are the same and that somehow a tabla rassa Sudanese Army read debaathization or a Free Syrian Army type will be the group to end the war ignores that the RSF militia are not equal to a nation, professional army and they are acting and operating as an insurgent group. The RSF are also highly undisciplined in terms of operating around civilians and military tactics. A lot of their current motives for fighting in Khartoum was developed in Darfur. They often collectively punish civilians, harass and steal from them, kill others, have freed questionable prisoners, have a free for all attitude when fighting against the army, have destroyed and looted irreplacble libraries and hospitals in Khartoum. They also rarely reprimand fellow RSF violators, its commanders and other soldiers and in terms of a militia group or even insurgent group. The RSF has no political or unifying policy and ideology to unite its supporters or the Sudanese people beyond blaming the government for the war and civilian deaths. The RSF has been trying to win hearts and minds with the ordinary Sudanese in Khartoum but has been unleashing hell and violence on the city residents and have unleashed an orgy of violence against the residents of Darfur. 

The violence ricocheted to shootings, massacres of civilians once the power and electricty was cut across West Darfur and El Geneina. The Sudanese Army had been battling the RSF who were their former allies across Darfur until the Sudanese army lost control of their bases and positions in Western Darfur and its capital of El Geneina. Intercommunal violence had been flaring on and off again for the past several years between Rezeigat, Masalit, Fur and Zaghawa. Sadly most of the violence began as innocent disputes between two neighbors that ended up breaking out into full blown street clashes and attacks on IDPs seeking shelters in schools, camps and safe neighborhoods. Many ordinary African Darfuris have long complained and mentioned that the intercommunal violence had an ethnic compenent to it. When the war between RSF and army flared again a few weeks ago, it confirmed to the Masalit people that the earlier violence did have an ethnic dimension to it as Masalit were targeted including the West Darfur governor see below.

The RSF formerly the Janjaweed who once designated a terrorist group in the early years of the War on Terrorism, had taken advantage of the weak security left by the ebbing intercommunal violence to kill anyone and anything that moves. The RSF violence isn't about revenge as the early conflict in Darfur was originally the Janjaweed and army fighting against the various Darfuri rebel groups who are absent from the current fighting in West Darfur. The RSF have gone a bloodlust rampage mowing down anyone who belongs to the Masalit ethnicity but also other ethnic groups usually African who have nothing to do with disputes and are trying to survive the new onslaught. . There is no army or insurgent group to protect the innocent children, women and men now fleeing from El Geneina and other parts of Darfur into the neighboring country of Chad. The RSF are purposely targeting men and boys and shooting and raping women and even children. Schools, hospitals and courthouses among other necessary infrastructure has been destroyed. The Masalit and other Darfuri civilians had been appealing to the media to send in a protection force to protect them from the RSF. The international and local aid groups are not able to reach West Darfur's war zone to offer aid. They have to go into Eastern Chad on the border with Sudan to small towns such as Adre, Gororo and others to assess the situation and hear eyewitness accounts from IDPs, refugees and residents. There are many women and children and few elderly coming across the border from Sudan into Chad. One aid group even noticed that unaccompained children are coming through the Chadian border from Sudan without their parents.

Special Note: The Governor of West Darfur Khamis Abakar had condemned and blasted the RSF for not only destroying EL Geneina and other parts of West Darfur but for purposely targeting certain ethnic groups and wontonly killing civilians in a new "genocide". He appealed to the world and called for international intervention in a TV interview with Al Hadith News and right after the interview was abducted and killed by the RSF to the horror of civilians and journalists.