Sudan conflict: BBC hears of horror and hunger in massacre town El Geneina

No one lives within the ghostly outskirts of El Geneina anymore.

But its empty buildings nonetheless stand to inform their surprising tales, loudly and clearly.

Charred properties and outlets are peppered with bullet holes. Doors are wrecked. Metal shutters are smashed. Rusting Sudanese military tanks dot the streets. You can nonetheless scent the fires which blazed right here final 12 months.

“It was utterly chilling to drive through these smoked-out ruins and ghost towns,” mirrored the UN’s new reduction chief Tom Fletcher, whose go to to this hardscrabble capital of West Darfur marked the primary time a senior UN official was in a position to go to this territory since Sudan’s vicious warfare erupted 19 months in the past.

“Darfur has seen the worst of the worst,” is how Fletcher, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, described its calamity.

“It’s facing this crisis of protection, including an epidemic of sexual violence, as well as the spectre of famine.”

His brief however vital go to solely turned attainable after in depth negotiations with Sudan’s two fundamental rival forces – these headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), who heads the federal government recognised by the UN, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, often called Hemedti, who at the moment are in cost in most of Darfur.

UN officers consult with the RSF as “those in control of the area”.

It was RSF fighters, together with allied Arab militias, who ran amok in El Geneina final 12 months, primarily focusing on residents from the non-Arab Musalit group in what human rights teams, together with UN specialists, have described as ethnic cleaning and attainable warfare crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity. Human Rights Watch concluded it was a attainable genocide.

The Sudanese military has additionally come below sharp criticism. Arab civilians had been additionally reported to have perished on this turmoil, many from shelling by military tanks, or in blistering air raids.

Both the RSF and the SAF deny accusations of warfare crimes and level accusing fingers at their rivals.

Few journalists have made it to El Geneina to see its plight, together with the aftermath of what had been two massacres over a interval of a number of months final 12 months, which the UN says killed as much as 15,000 folks.

The frenzy of violence, rape and looting is considered one of many worst atrocities in Sudan’s brutal conflagration, which has created the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

We travelled from the Chadian border city of Adre, with the UN delegation, on a journey of lower than an hour on a rippling dust monitor enveloped in mud, which slices by the desolate semi-desert plateau dotted with half-built or deserted clay-brick buildings.

A small variety of hulking lorries filled with the help of the UN’s World Food Programme, in addition to rickety Sudanese carts pushed by horses or donkeys, travel throughout a border marked by not a lot various wood posts and ropes.

But on the opposite aspect of the frontier, throughout the no-man’s land in a dry sloping wadi and alongside our bleak route, gun-toting RSF fighters in camouflage uniforms patrol this a part of Sudan. Some are simply younger boys who flash cheeky grins.

But, earlier than we left Adre, understanding how onerous it might be to collect testimonies inside, we frolicked within the sprawling casual camp run by the UN and Chadian authorities near the border. An unlimited throng, primarily girls of all ages, some cradling kids, fill the huge subject. It’s a brief settlement of startling proportions.

Everyone we spoke with was from El Geneina. And all of them carried their tales with them as they escaped acute starvation and the horrors visited upon their properties.

“When we fled, our young brothers were killed,” piped up a confident 14-year-old Sudanese lady in a rose pink scarf, who spoke calmly and quietly about terrifying occasions.

“Some of them were still breastfeeding, too young to walk. Our elders escaping with us were killed too.”

I requested her how she managed to outlive.

“We had to hide by day and resume our journey in the middle of the night. If you move during the day, they will kill you. But even moving at night is still so dangerous.”

Her household lastly made the onerous selection to go away their homeland. Her mom was along with her however she didn’t know the place her father was.

“Kids were separated from their fathers and husbands,” shouted an aged girl whose darkish eyes blazed with anger.

“They indiscriminately killed everyone – women, boys, babies, everyone.”

“We used to get food from our farms,” chimed in another woman as their stories tumbled over each other.

“But when the war began, we couldn’t farm and the animals ate our crops, so we were left with nothing. “

In El Geneina, our first stop is a modest health centre in the Al-Riyadh displacement camp, where Sudanese women in brightly coloured veils sit in chairs along the wall, or huddle on bamboo mats on the floor.

A delegation of mainly elderly men, some with crutches, sit closer to the front under the shade of the corrugated metal roof and wide-boughed trees which frame an open wall.

It feels like a different El Geneina. There’s no visible presence of armed RSF men in a leafy neighbourhood lined with humble mud houses. Young boys turn cartwheels, women in vivid head-to-toe veils walk purposively past, and donkey carts ferrying water drums trot along dusty dirt roads.

“We have suffered a lot,” underlines a group elder, a white-turbaned instructor who’s the primary to handle the visiting UN workforce of their signature blue vests. He speaks exactly and punctiliously.

“It’s true that when the war started some people supported SAF, and some supported RSF. But as displaced people we are neutral and in need of every kind of assistance.”

This camp was first established in 2003, a reminder that Darfur’s agony erupted two decades ago when the infamous Arab militia known as the Janjaweed sowed terror among non-Arab communities and was also accused of multiple war crimes. It gave rise to the RSF.

The teacher listed a catalogue of basic needs – from food for malnourished women and children, to schools and clean water. He also explained that most women are now in charge of their families.

Some of the young women, only their eyes visible, film the meeting on their phones, perhaps wanting some record of this rare meeting.

Fletcher addressed them directly.

“You must often feel that no one is listening and that no one understands what you have endured, more than anyone else in the population, and maybe more than anyone else in the world.” They respond with vigorous clapping.

The UN’s next stop, behind closed doors, is even more forthright when Fletcher and his colleagues sit in front of a gathering of Sudanese and international NGOs based in Darfur who are struggling to respond to this enormous catastrophe.

Unlike the UN, they haven’t waited for permissions from General Burhan’s government to operate here; approval for the UN’s international staff to be based here was recently revoked.

Twenty NGOs, working without reliable internet or electricity or even phones, and struggling to obtain more Sudanese visas for staff, say they’re trying to help 99.9% of the population in need. Their message was clear – the UN system was failing them.

“More needs to be done,” Tariq Riebl who heads the Sudan operations of the Norwegian Refugee Council, tells us after the meeting. But he says his worst fear “is that no one cares, that they’re only paying attention to other crises such as Ukraine and Gaza.”

“This is one of the worst conflicts we’ve seen in recent memory, in terms of the violence that’s been committed, and people fleeing,” he emphasises.

“And there are also very few actual famines anymore, but this one is one.”

So far, the global Famine Review Committee (FRC) has declared it in one part of the Zamzam displacement camp housing about half a million people in North Darfur; more than a dozen other areas are said to be on the brink.

“The UN can’t just charge across the border anywhere we would like to,” insists Fletcher.

“But this week we’ve got more flights coming in to regional airports, more hubs opening inside Sudan, and we’re getting more people on the ground as well.”

During his week-long visit to Sudan and its neighbours, he met representatives of both the SAF and the RSF to push for more access across lines and across borders.

He started his new job vowing “to end impunity and indifference”.

“It would be rash to say I can end impunity alone,” he remarks diplomatically about a conflict in which rival regional powers have been arming and assisting the warring parties.

The United Arab Emirates is accused of backing the RSF, and countries including Egypt, Iran, and Russia are known to be supporting the SAF. Others are also weighing in, including Saudi Arabia and regional organisations including the Arab Union, with all sides saying they’re working for peace, not war.

When it comes to indifference, after Fletcher’s first visit many more Sudanese and aid workers will be watching closely, hoping he can make a difference in this “hardest disaster on this planet”.