What’s going on in West Darfur
Clashes erupted Friday in Darfur, despite the announcement of an extension of the truce between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces. On Friday evening, the preliminary committee of the Sudanese Doctors’ Union said fighting in the town of El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state, had claimed nearly 100 lives on Monday and Tuesday. The Darfur Bar Association reported that fighters equipped with “machine guns, RPGs and anti-aircraft missiles appeared in El Geneina, firing shells at houses”. The Medical Syndicate said in a statement that there were “widespread looting and burning operations which affected markets, government and health facilities, the headquarters of voluntary and international organizations and banks in El Genina”. The bloody events continue in the city, leaving dozens dead and injured. The UN has spoken of “distribution of weapons to civilians in Darfur”. The UN, which suspended its activities in Sudan after the death of five of its employees in the first days of the fighting, warned that 50,000 children suffering from “severe malnutrition” were deprived of all food aid in Darfur.
The return of widespread armed action in the Darfur region is raising concerns about renewed tribal conflict in the region, which has yet to recover from the repercussions of the civil war that broke out in 2003.
Looting and Looting
In turn, the Preliminary Committee of the Sudanese Medical Association confirmed, in a statement, the news of the burning of shelters in the city of El Geneina, the looting of the university hospital of the city and the occurrence widespread looting and burning that affected markets, government facilities and the headquarters of voluntary and international organizations and banks. In a statement, the West Darfur State Doctors’ Union described the humanitarian situation as “catastrophic and collapsing” and said that El Geneina had become “a ghost town and ruins after the acts pillage mentioned in the statement of the Preliminary Committee”.
Formation of a local protection force
The governor of Darfur region, the leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement, Minni Arko Minawi, spoke about forming a force to protect the people of Darfur, especially in war and overcrowded areas. Minawi added, in press releases, that the leaders of the armed movements had decided to move a joint military force to separate the belligerents, in cooperation with local authorities. To prevent the expansion of security chaos, remember that the core of these forces is in El Fasher. The North Darfur government is considering a proposal to impose a 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. curfew in El Fasher. As for South Darfur State, it experienced relative calm after clashes between the army and the Rapid Support Forces in Nyala, and intense movements of police forces were observed, indicating that the life began to spill into the joints of densely populated neighborhoods. city.
Quality of interventions
Omar Mustafa Sherkian, representative of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, explained: “The entry of armed movements depends on the type of intervention of these movements: will they intervene to stand, for example, alongside the Masalit people in West Darfur, El Geneina in particular, or will they work as neutral peacekeeping forces, or will they ally themselves with the “rapid support forcesâ€. He added that the composition of the joint forces in Darfur could also pose a security problem, as they are made up of elements from the Sudanese army, the Rapid Support Forces and the armed movements, as I believe, although I don’t have statistics about them, and training percentages.
Darfur is strategically important
Darfur is a border region with 4 countries, to the west Chad and Libya, and to the south the Central African Republic and South Sudan. It consists of 5 states: North Darfur with its capital El Fasher, South Darfur with its capital Nyala, West Darfur with its capital El Geneina, East Darfur with its capital El Daein and Central Darfur with its capital Zalingei. The region inhabits a large number of settled and mobile tribes, some of whom are Arabs and others Africans, and the region enjoys an abundance of livestock, minerals and petroleum. The region tasted the bitterness of the internal war in 2003, when the conflict broke out between the army and its allies on the one hand, and the armed movements on the other, during which an estimated 300,000 people fell and millions have been displaced.
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