Zamzam: The Final Catastrophe
Eric Reeves and Gaffar Mohammud Saeneen, Co-chairs | Project Zamzam (in “exile”)
April 15, 2024
Between Thursday evening (April 10) and Monday morning (April 14), the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—using overwhelming military resources—destroyed Zamzam camp for internally displaced civilians. Between arson, shelling, and automatic gun-fire, the RSF has cleared the camp of most of its more than 500,000 residents, killing many, including nine humanitarian aid workers—medical personnel—from Relief International. The camp population has in the main fled in two directions: to El Fasher (capital of North Darfur), fifteen kilometers to the northeast and the Tawila area to the west in the direction of Jebel Marra.
Since the RSF controls most of the road from Zamzam to Tawila roughly 50 kilometers, many have been forced to flee off-road through the bush. Already weakened by lack of food and water, many—perhaps most—will die. The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab has been tracking (by means of satellite imagery and sensors) the progress of the destruction; already they are seeing civilians lying in the bush, many quite likely dead. Communication is extremely weak, but some telecommunications have been possible, if not generally available to those in flight (StarLink was suspiciously shut down at the time the assault began).
While El Fasher remains inaccessible because of insecurity in most of the Darfur region—the city is enduring constant RSF assaults and shelling—the Tawila area is the site of relief efforts by Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). While the fate of only one of the counselors of Team Zamzam is known (she survived and is in El Fasher), it is highly likely that some of them will make it to the Tawila area; and my effort—in partnership with my colleague of five years, Gaffar Mohammud Saeneen—will be to reconstitute a “Team Zamzam in Exile.” For these women bring with them an extraordinary knowledge of the camp’s population and will be able to conduct highly effective surveys of the people who do manage to reach the Tawila area. They are particularly skilled in responding to those girls and women traumatized by sexual violence, a population that has been steadily rising during the course of the current two-year war.
I will—as I have for over 15 years—continue to post virtually daily updates on the situation in Darfur and Sudan via Twitter (@SudanReeves) and Linked In. As occasion warrants, I will also provide more regular (twice monthly) and briefer updates on the work of “Team Zamzam in Exile” and Darfur generally (if you wish to opt out of receiving any future updates, please let me know).
The Military/Political Situation in Sudan and Darfur: A Brief Overview
The full-on assault by the Rapid Support Forces against an essentially undefended Zamzam has a context that needs to be understood, as both as a military and political event. The world has done far too little to end war in Sudan—or to halt the actions of external actors who prolong the conflict. Here the blame must be laid squarely at the door of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and its strongman Mohamed bin Zayed. Over eight months ago The Guardian (UK), July 25, 2024 provided overwhelming evidence of this (having seen a 41-page report to the UN). One example:
The document…sent to the UN security council and seen by the Guardian, contains images of Emirati passports allegedly found in Sudan and linked to soldiers of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the African nation’s notorious paramilitary.
More recently, The Guardian provided an analysis of a leaked UN report that provides even more devastating evidence of UAE support for the RSF and thus complicity in genocide:
“Leaked UN experts report raises fresh concerns over UAE’s role in Sudan war,” April 15, 2025
A leaked confidential UN report raised fresh questions over the UAE’s role in the devastating conflict. The UAE has been accused of secretly supplying weapons to Sudanese paramilitaries via neighbouring Chad, a charge it has steadfastly denied.
However an internal report – marked highly confidential and seen by the Guardian – detected “multiple” flights from the UAE in which transport planes made apparently deliberate attempts to avoid detection as they flew into bases in Chad where arms smuggling across the border into Sudan has been monitored.
There were and have been countless examples and pieces of evidence linking the UAE to the RSF for well over a year; this has included the transfer of advanced weapons, small arms, ammunition, logistics and transport—and the cash required to purchase food and supplies, and to bribe border control officials at the Libya/Darfur border and the Chad/Darfur border. Our most complete account appeared last July:
The war between the RSF, led by Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemedti”), and the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, is a war between two forces led by men guilty of massive war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Biden administration rightly found that Hemedti and the RSF were also guilty of genocide in their continuing assault on the non-Arab populations of Darfur and other regions.
Both Hemedti and al-Burhan were leaders of the October 2021 coup that toppled a very weak civilian government, ending the goal of the popular uprising that had begun in early 2019, but which foundered on an inability to bring the two militaries (the SAF and RSF) under civilian control. And all too predictably, the two men subsequently fell out over power-sharing and integration of their two forces. Their war began in April 2023, and quickly metastasized throughout Sudan, including Darfur.
In late spring of 2023 a bloody, brutal, finally genocidal RSF assault on the non-Arab Masalit people in El Geneina, capital of West Darfur, brought the city fully under the militia’s control. In the process, the RSF killed thousands and displaced many tens of thousands of people into eastern Chad, which was ill-equipped to handle such an influx. Subsequently three more of the five state capitals in Darfur fell to the RSF. Only El Fasher, the largest city in Darfur and capital of North Darfur, remains in the hands for the SAF, substantially aided by the Joint Forces (former rebel groups in an earlier phase of the Darfur genocide) and by a “citizens’ militia.” El Fasher, 15 kilometers to the northeast of Zamzam, has now been under relentless, barbaric assault for almost a year—and still the opponents of the RSF remain strong and resolute, even after months of the militia’s besieging.
This is so despite the targeted artillery and mortar destruction of all health facilities and the humanitarian blockade imposed by the RSF, which includes both Abu Shouk IDP camp on the northern edge of the city and Zamzam 15 kilometers to the southwest. Indeed, the very strength of their resistance has reduced morale among the RSF to the point where, increasingly, their violence has been directed toward “soft” civilian targets, including Zamzam, which has long been defenseless against a full-on, mobile RSF assault with heavy machine-guns. This is what we saw over the past weekend, in videos by fleeing civilians and in the “trophy videos” that are increasingly common after RSF “victories” (I posted on Twitter screen grabs from several of the videos that the RSF militiamen have themselves posted on social media).
In the aftermath of RSF destruction
Zamzam was comprehensively looted and all humanitarian personnel were murdered, as were countless others. The looting was for self-enrichment but also designed to make it impossible for Zamzam to be reconstructed. The BBC reported yesterday (April 14):
“Those who were working in the community kitchen have been killed, and the doctors who were part of the initiative to reopen the hospital were also killed,” Mustafa, 34, said in a WhatsApp audio message.
The overwhelmingly non-Arab population of Zamzam—from many African tribes and all regions of Darfur—was forced to flee without food or water, both of which had been in increasingly short supply for many months. For when the UN finally declared famine in Sudan (August 2024) it was thoroughly belated: clear evidence of famine had been apparent for almost two years, nowhere more conspicuously than in Zamzam, which the UN found to be the epicenter of the famine.
It is these people—badly weakened by famine—who have been forced into the bush or onto roads controlled by the RSF.
The Future of “Project Zamzam in Exile”?
The presence of Norwegian Refugee Council and Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the Tawila area provides an opportunity for those counselors of Team Zamzam who make it this far (Gaffar has information on the status of only one counselors as of mid-day April 15: alive and in El Fasher). They are, at this point highly skilled and knowledgeable humanitarians and could be of great assistance to the many tens of thousands of Zamzam residents fleeing toward Tawila. Our project will continue to provide their salaries and thus a means of sustaining themselves and their families, if they are successful in reaching the Tawila area.
Tawila also offers a measure of physical protection: Sudan Liberation Army leader Abdel Wahid al-Nur has retained a strong military presence in the largely impregnable Jebel (mountain) Marra. His fighters are battle-hardened and more than willing to take on the RSF. Reports as of today have SLA fighters attempting to provide safe corridors roughly half the distance to Zamzam. There is very little detail available about numbers: deaths, arrivals, capacities of existing humanitarian sources. With the shutdown of StarLink (now apparently restored), it became extremely difficult to coordinate and collate data and information. We must hope that such are soon collected. But even before the attack on Zamzam UNICEF estimated that 825,000 children on North Darfur are at acute risk from violence, famine, disease, and lack of water:
Since early 2025, intense shelling and airstrikes in the Zamzam camp for internally displaced people (IDPs), have resulted in 16 per cent of all verified child casualties in Al Fasher.
“An estimated 825,000 children are trapped in a growing catastrophe in and around Al Fasher,” said UNICEF Representative for Sudan, Sheldon Yett. “With these numbers reflecting only verified incidents, it is likely the true toll is far higher, with children in a daily struggle to survive. Death is a constant threat for children, whether due to the fighting around them or the collapse of the vital services they rely on to survive.”
The past five years have seen many changes in Team Zamzam—in capacity, in number of counselors, in the focus of project resources. The move to “exile” in the Tawila area is certainly the most consequential, and its practicability, I must confess, is not clear.
But donors to the project should know that funds will be distributed by the Team counselors as seems most appropriate with available resources—and of course will reach them with absolutely no overhead costs on our part.
I hope to hear soon details concerning the whereabouts of Team Zamzam counselors and their health following the assault, and thus begin serious planning for the future. If for some reason it proves impracticable to re-constitute Team Zamzam, all remaining funds will be donated to Norwegian Refugee Council for their work in the Tawila area and Darfur generally.
FUNDRAISING NOTE
Zamzam IDP camp has been destroyed, hundreds of thousands of its residents have fled, either toward El Fasher (15 kilometers to the northeast) and the Tawila area 50 kilometers to the west. They have been forced to leave without food, water, or possessions in most cases. They are in desperate condition and many tens of thousands will die from thirst, exposure, or lack of food.
The skilled women Team Zamzam—many with five years of experience as humanitarians in Zamzam—would be of enormous use in the Tawila area, which is protected by one of the original Darfuri rebel groups of 2003—Abdel Wahid el-Nur’s Sudan Liberation Army (SLA). We have not been able to ascertain where the counselors fled, or indeed whether they are alive. The death toll from the destruction of Zamzam will reach into four, perhaps five figures; in the coming months we may be sure that tens of thousands will die. But more than that it is impossible to say at present.
But the distribution of what humanitarian supplies Team Zamzam might obtainin Tawila is desperately needed. And at the very least our project will continue to provide salaries to surviving members of Team Zamzam in Tawila, and possibly in El Fasher….to continue whatever aid work is available to them.
This is the hour of greatest need for these desperate people, and Team Zamzam stands at the ready. Project funds have been drawn quite low with the accelerated purchase of food for those starving in Zamzam, so at present we are able to fund only the counselors’ salaries, although we hope to do more in the Tawila area. (Money can still be transferred through the Web-based banking system in Sudan known as “Bankak,” which we have been doing for several years.)
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
All proceeds from all woodturning sales go directly to sustaining our work for the people of Zamzam