(Eric) This past week saw a terrifying escalation of violence by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) inside Zamzam camp for internally displaced persons, as well as nearby areas and gatherings. Reports from the ground and from satellite surveillance provide incontrovertible evidence of these atrocity crimes. A human population that has grown to as many as 1 million people in recent months is at risk of annihilation. We cannot avoid using the word genocide, the deliberate, large-scale destruction of the lives of non-Arab Darfuris in the region.
Two important dispatches provide some of the key details
(Reuters, February 14, 2025)
This week, as it attempts to consolidate its territory, the RSF has staged multiple attacks on Zamzam residents, according to three people at the camp. Medical aid agency MSF has confirmed seven deaths from the violence, while residents say dozens may have been killed. Medics are unable to perform surgery inside Zamzam, and travel to al-Fashir’s Saudi hospital, a frequent RSF target, has become impossible, MSF said. Reuters verified a video showing RSF forces inside Zamzam earlier this week, stamping on a rival flag as a building burned in the background. Zamzam is located near al-Fashir, capital of North Darfur and the army’s last remaining foothold in the wider Darfur region.
Those who are wounded or burned in RSF attacks may well perish for lack of medical resources. We don’t know how many have already been killed, but reports from the camp speak of “dozens” and intimate it may be hundreds as of this writing. And this may be just the beginning.
Just as dangerous to the people of Zamzam is the continual depletion of foodstocks and other vital supplies, including medicines. All three of the RSF attacks on Zamzam last week targeted food as well as shelters, and the first attacks destroyed, through targeted arson, half of the only food market in Zamzam (see detailed aerial evidence of the scale provided by the Yale University HRL).
The acute shortage of food—Zamzam remains the epicenter of famine in Sudan—has brought the camp to the verge of rapid, mass starvation. The Middle East Eye puts the matter bluntly:
We do not need more evidence of genocidal intent: virtually all targeted residents of Zamzam come from the various non-Arab tribal groups, which collectively make up well over half the population of Darfur.
There are eerie echoes of the spring-summer 1994 genocide in Rwanda, during which between 500,000 and 1 million people—overwhelmingly Tutsis and “moderate” Hutus—were slaughtered:
The international community was well aware of what was building. In a publication marking the 20th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum put the matter with painful clarity:
On January 11, 1994, the commander of the UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda (the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, or UNAMIR) wrote a “most immediate” cable to his superiors in New York that has come to be known as the “genocide fax.” Citing inside information from “a top level trainer” for a pro-regime militia group known as the Interahamwe, General Roméo Dallaire warned of an “anti-Tutsi extermination” plot.
Three months after this warning, Interahamwe members took the lead in the 100-day genocide that resulted in the deaths of between 500,000 and one million Rwandans, predominantly Tutsis. The massacres took place against the backdrop of a war that pitted the Hutu-dominated regime against Tutsi-led insurgents who had invaded the country from neighboring Uganda.
The modern history of genocide, the ultimate atrocity crime, makes clear that all genocides are different: different locations, different modalities, different scales, different actors, different motives (although all seem to be marked by ethnic or racial hatred). It was the greatest genocide of the 20th century—the Holocaust undertaken by Hitler’s Germany—that marked the starkest evidence of this horrifying animus.
Today, Zamzam and El Fasher are the primary targets for genocidal destruction by the RSF (made up largely of militiamen from the Arab Rizeigat tribes of Darfur and Chad); amog those attacked there is heavy representation in both locations of the non-Arab Zaghawa, as well as a number of non-Arab tribal groups We have all the evidence we could possibly need. And yet there are no meaningful discussions by the international community on how to end the violence or how to create the means for providing the security needed critical humanitarian access. This is the same “community” that in 2005 pompously (and vacuously) committed itself to a doctrine of the “responsibility to protect”:
UN 2005 World Summit Outcome Document
Paragraphs on the Responsibility to Protect
138. Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability.
Genocide began in Darfur in 2003, although ethnically targeted discrimination and violence had preceded this for years. And contrary to the facile generalizations of those who would have the genocide end in 2005—or shortly thereafter—it has never ended; indeed, with former regime leader Omar al-Bashir’s appointment of Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemedti”) as head of the Rapid Support Forces in 2013, genocidal destruction again accelerated. See:
Compromising with Evil: An archival history of greater Sudan, 2007 – 2012 (October 2012 in eBook format, www.CompromisingWithEvil.org) (review commentary at http://sudanreeves.org/2013/08/30/compromising-with-evil-an-archival-history-of-sudan-2007-2012-commentary/)
“Changing the Demography”: Violent Expropriation and Destruction of Farmlands in Darfur, November 2014 – November 2015 | December 2015—includes framing analysis, extensive data spreadsheet covering all reported incidents of violence against farmers and farmland in Darfur, as well as a detailed mapping of these data onto three maps encompassing all of Darfur (monograph translated into Arabic) | http://wp.me/p45rOG-1P4
Continuing Mass Rape of Girls in Darfur: The most heinous crime generates no international outrage | January 2016 | Eric Reeves, author | Maya Baca, research and editing—includes framing analysis, extensive data spreadsheet for 2014 and 2015, as well as detailed mapping of these data onto three maps encompassing all of Darfur (monograph translated into Arabic) | http://wp.me/p45rOG-1QG
Genocidal Violence in Darfur, Sudan: A Continuing Archival History, 2013 – 2019 (September 2019 in eBook format), http://sudanreeves.org/2019/09/15/violence-in-darfur-sudan-a-continuing-archival-history-2013-2019/, with a new postscript (December 2022) | https://wp.me/p45rOG-2Cs
See also the large archival record of genocidal violence in Darfur subsequent to 2005:
https://sudanreeves.org/category/briefs-and-advocacy-post-machakos-06/
https://sudanreeves.org/category/briefs-and-advocacy-post-machakos-07/
https://sudanreeves.org/category/briefs-and-advocacy-post-machakos-08/
https://sudanreeves.org/category/briefs-and-advocacy-post-machakos-09/
https://sudanreeves.org/category/briefs-and-advocacy-post-machakos-10/
https://sudanreeves.org/category/briefs-and-advocacy-post-machakos-11/
https://sudanreeves.org/category/briefs-and-advocacy-post-machakos-12/
Notably, the RSF are able to continue their genocidal assaults throughout Darfur by virtue of military, logistical, and financial assistance from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a fact extensively documented by a wide range of researchers and with an abundance of evidence on the ground. Some of the most sophisticated weapons in the RSF arsenal, and which have been used extensively against both El Fasher and Zamzam, are advanced artillery pieces and equally advanced, high-explosive “suicide” drones from the UAE, fired directly into both the camp and city (usually from the RSF-controlled city of Nyala in South Darfur).
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But the egregious failure of the international community—now of twenty-two years—will not stop the small but dedicated efforts of Team Zamzam to help as many people as possible in the camp and its environs survive genocidal assault…survive perhaps until humanitarian relief arrives, which in the longer run will entail military expulsion or destruction of the RSF.
To this end, the counselors of Team Zamzam will continue their work assisting those most in need throughout Zamzam, as security and supplies permit. But the destruction of half the camp’s only food market—already poorly stocked—was a catastrophe. And the subsequent flight of most food traders means that food—available for purchase only with increasingly scarce cash, and at increasingly exorbitant prices—will see prices skyrocket even further. And starving infants throughout the camp will die at an increasing rate as acutely malnourished lactating mothers increasingly lose the ability to produce milk.
In addition, medicines within the camp are no longer available, so that infections, wounds, burns, and disease will increase mortality dramatically as well.
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For its part, the international community needs to give urgent attention to the possibility of high-altitude air-drops of food and medicine. The primary immediate food need is for Plumpy’Nut, a ready-to-eat food that used as a treatment for emergency malnutrition cases, especially for nursing infants. It supports rapid weight gain derived from broad nutrient intake which can alleviate impending illness or death in a starving child). Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières, which is the only major international humanitarian presence in Zamzam, has (or soon will) run out of Plumpy-Nut, imperiling countless thousands of infant lives.
Humanitarian air drops face a host of political problems, as well as cost issues. But these must be overcome or the “responsibility to protect”—once so celebrated as an international achievement—will become in the context of Sudan little more than a grim joke.
These starving infants in Darfur enjoy no “protection”:
But we are not powerless, and Team Zamzam can do more, even in such dire circumstances. With our help, the women of Team Zamzam can purchase food, even now; they can provide psychosocial counseling; and they can offer examples of commitment and courage that will bolster camp morale, which has been so badly shaken by recent RSF assaults.
It is now possible to make a tax-deductible contribution to our project, using a portal on the website of a 501/c/3 organization operating in Sudan. Operation Broken Silence, working primarily on health and education issues in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan, has created a special site for tax-deductible contributions to our project, and we hope this makes contributing to the health and well-being of the people of Zamzam easier for donors.
Those wishing to assist in funding the work of Team Zamzam may also send a check directly to Eric (Eric Reeves, 31 Franklin St., Northampton, MA 01060).
OR
Purchase one of his woodturnings: https://www.ericreeves-woodturner.com/collections/all
100% of the purchase price of every woodturning directly supports the project in Zamzam.