Genocide resumes in Darfur

Arab Muslim forces in Darfur have slaughtered 773 civilian Muslim members of the Masalit tribe in recent days.

Reports say the massacre was perpetrated by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a militia currently at war with the Sudanese government. Footage published to social media appears to show RSF operatives whipping and beating unarmed Masalit members — mostly young men — in a village in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur. Other footage appears to show scores of Masalit corpses.

The incident has regional observers concerned that the genocide which began at the turn of the century is making a comeback.

When civil war broke out in Darfur in 2003, the Masalit joined rebel forces against the Sudanese central government which they accused of oppressing the non-Arab population. Government forces and their allied militias, chief among them a group called Janjaweed, fought back against the rebels. 

Over the course of several years following the outbreak of war, Janjaweed’s Arab forces helped quell the rebellion. While doing so, they killed an estimated 300,000 civilians as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign. They mainly targeted the Masalit, Fur and Zaghawa tribes who, while also Muslim, are of non-Arab Black African descent.

In the meantime the European Union accused the Sudanese government of bombing its own people and blocking aid to over 350,000 civilians.

In 2007 the Bush administration declared the killings a genocide, and in 2009 the war, for the most part, was declared over.

But the war resumed this April when the Janjaweed — now rebranded as the RSF — rebelled against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). The SAF is the official Sudanese military and serves a government born from a coup d’etat two years ago.

While its name is different, the RSF appears to be resuming the ethnic killings it began twenty years ago. Aside from the recent massacre of nearly 800 Masalit — now the RSF’s main ethnic target — reports mention mass graves and burned villages.

In June West Darfur Governor Khamis Abdullah Abakar, himself a member of the Masalit tribe, was assassinated by RSF forces after he accused them of killing civilians. Under the command of Abdul Rahim Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF has now reportedly seized control of four out of five states in Darfur.

Many Masalit, including some SAF soldiers, are escaping to neighboring Chad.