Hundreds of towns and villages burned

Hundreds of towns and villages across Sudan have been burned to the ground, and the fires were likely man-made, according to satellite images and open source reporting – the result of a brutal civil war raging in that country from North-East Africa for more than a year.

Fierce fighting between the forces of two rival generals has ravaged much of the country, thousands of people have been massacred and 10 million people have been driven from their homes, creating the world's largest displacement crisis, according to the United Nations migration agency.

And as the fighting has spread, homes and humanitarian camps have been torched by intentionally set fires, experts and analysts say.

“When we see reports of fighting coinciding with outbreaks of fire, that indicates that fire could be used as a weapon of war,” Mark Snoeck, an open source investigator, told NBC News on Monday.

More than 50 settlements burned repeatedly, suggesting “intent” and possible forced displacement, added Snoeck, who with colleagues tracked the fires by satellite at the Center for Information Resilience (CIR), a non-profit organization dedicated to exposing rights violations. and war crimes.

Relying in part on heat-detection satellites developed by NASA to monitor wildfires around the world, Snoeck and the team of researchers from CIR's Sudan Witness project documented more than 235 fires that broke out in towns and villages across the country since the start of the year. war in April 2023.

By combining this with open source reporting (cross-checking social media content, maps and other publicly available data), they are able to determine the extent of destruction across the country, which is at crossroads of sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. is home to both African and Arab populations, with Arabic being the most widely spoken language.

The CIR discovered a large part of the violence is taking place in Darfur, the westernmost region of Sudan. The latest data shows the fires are closing in on El Fasher, the capital of Sudan's North Darfur state and home to 1.5 million people, many of whom have fled other besieged parts of the country. It is also the last major city in Darfur where the army has a presence, and it has become the focus of the last fighting between the war's combatants.

Struggle for power

The region has become a flashpoint in the war that broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese army, controlled by the country's commander-in-chief and de facto ruler, General Abdel Fattah Burhan, and his former deputy, General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, a former camel trader widely known as Hemedti – who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The two men were leaders of a counter-insurgency against an uprising in Sudan's Darfur region, a conflict that in 2005 saw dictator Omar al-Bashir become the world's first sitting leader to be indicted by the Criminal Court international for suspicion of genocide. They were then part of the military establishment that helped overthrow Al-Bashir in 2019 after widespread popular unrest.

Two years later, they agreed to govern together in an alliance that saw the military take power in a coup after the collapse of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok's government, backed by West, in 2021.

But the alliance between the two military leaders fractured spectacularly over how to handle the transition to civilian government, and with neither seeming willing to cede power to the other, war broke out.

Since then, at least 15,000 people have been killed, according to a U.N. report in April that said about 18 million people face acute hunger.

Separately, the International Organization for Migration said this week that 10 million people had been displaced in Sudan, although it noted that this figure included 2.83 million who were driven from their homes by multiple local conflicts before the start of the current war. More than 2 million others have been driven abroad, mainly to neighboring Chad, South Sudan and Egypt, the IOM said.

Combined, the number of refugees and internally displaced people means that more than a quarter of Sudan's 47 million people have been driven from their homes.

The battle for El Fasher

The latest CIR data shows that the fires are getting closer to El Fasher.

Snoeck says the fires around El Fasher coincided with an offensive aimed at encircling the town by Dagalo's RSF and allied militias.

A video posted on a pro-RSF Telegram channel geolocated by the CIR and reviewed by NBC News, shows houses on fire in an area southeast of El Fasher. Filmed between April 28 and 29, it shows armed men in RSF uniforms celebrating in front of the destruction.

Inside the city, “there is no food in the markets, no access to health care, no access to nutrition centers,” said Dr. Gillian Burkhardt, an obstetrician- American gynecologist who spent two months in a hospital in El Fasher. at the end of April, in collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the international humanitarian organization also known as Doctors Without Borders.

Her husband, Paul Clarke, an MSF logistics team leader who left El Fasher last month, said it was extremely difficult to get humanitarian supplies to the town.

Because there are no operational airports, Clarke said, semi-trailers full of prepared meals from neighboring Chad take a month to reach the city. ocean”, in relation to global needs.

MSF said last week that all activities at the city's southern hospital had been suspended after RSF soldiers looted the facility and stole an ambulance.

Janjaweed Roots

The RSF succeeded the Janjaweed, an Arab militia supported by the Sudanese government that the UN accused of carrying out ethnic cleansing in Darfur between 2003 and 2005.

Its top leaders still face charges decades later at the International Criminal Court for genocide and war crimes against rebel groups in Darfur who fought against what they said was government oppression against the non-Arab population and, later, of ethnic cleansing against black Africans. villagers.

The “DNA” of the Darfur conflict 20 years ago is still present in the fighting today, according to Omer Ismail, who was acting foreign minister in Sudan's transitional government before the coup military.

But he warned that “this war is more fierce.”

“The atrocities committed in this war are unlike anything Sudan has experienced before,” said Ismail, who now works as a researcher at the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab in the university's school of public health.

His comments came after a lab report released earlier this month concluded that the RSF had “systematically destroyed civilian homes” in areas that are home to a significant population of Zaghawa, an ethnic minority in Darfur.

The report states that “this represents the first specific evidence of alleged ethnically motivated targeting inside El Fasher by RSF.”

Reports released this year by the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan and Human Rights Watch also accused RSF soldiers and allied militias of targeting the minority Masalit community during the year's fighting. last in West Darfur. The reports contained evidence of systematic executions and widespread sexual violence.

Ismail, 65, born in El Fasher, said members of his own family have been displaced from the town because of the recent fighting.

If ethnically motivated clashes occur, he added, “unfortunately a lot of people will die, because there are a lot of civilians in El Fasher and the surrounding villages.”

While most analysts and observers believe that the RSF bears the greatest responsibility for the targeting and killing of ethnic minorities in Darfur, the army has nonetheless faced criticism.

In a statement after a UN Security Council meeting on Sudan last month, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield accused Sudan's armed forces of systematically obstructing “vital aid, starving millions of innocent civilians caught in the middle of this war.”

International response

International efforts to end the fighting in Sudan have been very limited.

The United States has urged both sides to engage in ceasefire talks and has placed many people and companies supporting both sides under sanctions.

On Thursday, the Security Council adopted a resolution demanding a cessation of hostilities from all parties and calling on the RSF to end the siege of El Fasher.

International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan announced in a video message on Tuesday that he was launching a new campaign to collect evidence of atrocities currently being committed in Darfur.

“I am extremely concerned about allegations of widespread international crimes being committed in and around El Fasher as I speak,” he said without specifying who he was investigating.

The Sudanese government, military and RSF did not respond to requests for comment from NBC News.

As fighting continues to rage across the country, including in the capital Khartoum, the fighting shows no signs of slowing down.

Ismail nevertheless had hope for his home country.

“I am sure Sudan will come out of this,” he said. “I just hope that these dark days will be short, that this war will end soon and that the world will help us.”