El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, has been under siege for more than 500 days. What was once a remote stronghold caught between armed groups has become the epicentre of one of the gravest humanitarian disasters of our time. For over a year civilians have been trapped without food, medicine or hope. But in the last 30 days a seismic shift occurred: the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized full control of the city’s last remaining military base, collapsing the line between military stalemate and outright massacre. The siege has turned into extermination.
The capture of El-Fasher marks not only a military defeat for the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) but a strategic triumph for the RSF, which now controls the entire Darfur region. The consequence is entire supply corridors, humanitarian access and civilian safe zones have been obliterated. The UN now reports over 2,000 civilians executed, hospitals bombed, mass kidnappings and sexual violence have spiked. Countries that once called Darfur “the world’s problem” are now forced to confront the question: can they still claim ignorance?
Geopolitics in the shadows
Some analysts say this conflict is less about Sudanese politics and more about who controls the Red Sea corridor linking the Suez Canal, Bab-el-Mandeb and the oil and arms routes of North Africa and the Middle East. The RSF’s new territorial command gives it leverage over this maritime axis. External states including the UAE, Iran and Turkey are alleged to have provided arms, funding or logistics in exchange for influence over Darfur’s resources and routes. The RSF takeover of El-Fasher thus reverberates far beyond Sudan’s borders: it’s about regional power, extraction and access.
What else is shifting? Egypt, once a distant observer, is now actively engaging in diplomacy, concerned about flows of refugees and weapons across its western frontier. Libya’s fractious militias may gain a corridor through Darfur into central Africa. And as the West redirects its attention toward Ukraine, Taiwan, and the Indo-Pacific, Sudan falls deeper into strategic limbo where neither humanitarian urgency nor geopolitical calculation seems sufficient to halt catastrophe.
New reality for civilians
Inside El-Fasher the trapped population of 260,000 (half children) now faces starvation concurrent with mass killings. Humanitarian agencies report acute malnutrition, starvation deaths, kids dying in their mothers’ arms, entire families disappearing in the night. The communications blackout and blocked roads mean most of the world still sees only fragments. This makes the RSF’s “victory” less a conquest and more a tragedy hidden in plain sight.
Why it matters for the global south
Sudan is not exceptional, it is exemplifying a wider pattern. Fragile states where institutions were hollowed out by sanctions, where external powers underestimated local elites, are now collapsing into zones of impunity. The lesson for India, Africa, Latin America or Southeast Asia is stark: humanitarian neglect and geopolitical games create spaces for violence. If we fail to learn from Darfur, we are inviting our own futures of extraction and exclusion.
What must change
- The world must recognise the fall of El-Fasher as a defining moment not another “siege”.
- A humanitarian corridor must be established instantly; no more just talk.
- War-crimes investigators must be given access and supported to collect, preserve evidence now, before the files vanish.
- Countries sanctioning, arming or providing safe-havens for perpetrators must be held to account.
- Sudan’s survivors deserve more than sympathy, they demand justice, reconstruction and a voice.
The capture of El-Fasher is not just the fall of a city; it is the moral test of our global system. A world that allows such carnage to proceed unchallenged must question its claim to international order. Sudan’s story is ours too, a warning that power without accountability, strategic corridors without humanitarian corridors, will always feed the machine of mass death.
In the end, Sudan will remember not only those who killed, but those who watched. History will remember not only the city’s fall, but whether we stood for it or let it be forgotten.
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