Panic over the siege of El-Obeid by Sudanese paramilitaries

Barcelona"There is an atmosphere of constant fear and panic". Halima Mustafa, a young Sudanese psychologist, describes by phone the situation in El-Obeid, Sudan, in recent days. Like her, nearly 500,000 people are trapped in the capital of North Kordofan region, which is under the control of the Sudanese army.The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who have been confronting them for three years in a brutal fight for control of the country, have surrounded the city and are besieging it, waiting to enter. "We have reports indicating that the RSF are preparing to launch a massive attack on El-Obeid," confirms Amnesty International's Sudan researcher, Abdullahi Hassan, to ARA, warning that "time is running out to act".

The concern for the violence that could be unleashed is such that the UN has issued an alert warning that the entry of paramilitaries could mean a "catastrophe". "We are gravely alarmed by the urgent risks of atrocities and deliberate killings in Sudan," warned the organization's High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, last week. While RSF fighters concentrate at the gates of El-Obeid, daily dozens of drones are ravaging civilian infrastructure and terrorizing the population. In addition to attacking hospitals, schools, and gas stations, they have bombed the main power plant, leaving the civilian population in the dark and forcing the shutdown of potable water pumping systems.

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The trickle of deaths is constant and escaping the city has become almost impossible. Exits are monitored by unmanned devices or subjected to abusive tolls, looting, and summary executions by militias. Humanitarian aid also entered through these same monitored routes, especially necessary for the more than 150,000 refugees from other regions of the country who are temporarily housed in the city. "The humanitarian situation is catastrophic – the psychologist recounts. There is a severe shortage of essential goods: there is no drinking water or food and it is very difficult for medical aid to arrive because supply routes are often attacked by drones.

The images of this siege have awakened the ghosts of the massacres that took place last year in Al-Fashir, the capital of the Darfur region, which the UN has described as genocide in new research published this Wednesday. When the city fell to the RSF in October after a long siege, the population was plunged into a spiral of mass killings, systematic rape, and deliberate starvation. Now, the same pattern of suffocation is being repeated in El-Obeid. “In Al-Fashir, they imposed a siege of more than eighteen months that starved people to death, they dug trenches around the city to prevent people from fleeing. And finally, when they attacked, they subjected already malnourished people to serious human rights violations, such as mass killings, kidnappings, detentions, and rape,” states Hassan, author of another report published in early July that inventories the atrocities committed by these paramilitary militias in the Darfur region. “They are replicating the same strategy manual in El-Obeid – he warns. They do not distinguish between combatants and civilians”.

A strategic hub for the control of the country

If this locality is subjected to so much pressure, it is because it is strategic for the control of the country and its capture could be a turning point in the course of the war. After three years of fighting that have fragmented Sudan, the FSR paramilitaries have managed to impose themselves in the southwest, in the Darfur region. If they finally manage to capture El-Obeid, they will strengthen their control over western Sudan and will be able to project military power towards the east and center, which would threaten the capital, Khartoum, according to Solomon Dersso, director of the Amani Africa think tank, explaining to ARA. On the other hand, if the army manages to hold it – a scenario that, at present, seems unlikely – it could serve as a springboard to drive a reconquest of the lost territory.

Be that as it may, the military analyses do not reassure the Sudanese trapped in these lands, which before the conflict were proud and prosperous. Halima Mustafa, who dedicates herself to calming as best she can the spirits of her patients agitated by the constant drone attacks, describes cases of post-traumatic stress, insomnia, loss of appetite, and even hallucinations. “Many children have developed trauma-related symptoms, such as nocturnal enuresis, frequent nightmares, interrupted sleep, and difficulty concentrating,” she explains, lamenting that families feel overwhelmed because “they experience the same fear and anguish.”

The impotence, above all, stems from the international inaction in the face of the war in Sudan: “It is doing nothing to protect civilians or prevent the escalation of the conflict,” deplores the psychologist. Beyond the need to create a humanitarian corridor to evacuate the population and allow access for humanitarian aid, the Amnesty International researcher insists on the role of allied countries supplying the drones that end up killing civilians. “The EU must demand that the United Arab Emirates pressure the FSR to stop the attack and stop supplying the weaponry that fuels the conflict.”