UPDATE ON ZAMZAM IDP CAMP, SIX WEEKS AFTER THE RSF ONSLAUGHT
May 23, 2025
(Eric) This account attempts to render what Gaffar has been able to learn about the fate of the twenty members of Team Zamzam who were displaced during the barbaric assault on Zamzam by the Rapid Support Forces, beginning April 11 and continuing even today in the form of a ruthless looting of the dwellings of the more than 600,000 people for who camp was home. The population remaining in Zamzam—tens of thousands of people, Gaffar’s sources tell him—comprises the weakest of the residents caught up in the violence: the elderly, the disabled, and too often children who have been lost in the chaos.
Like the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of residents newly displaced by RSF violence, the counselors of Team Zamzam fled with three major destinations in mind: the nearby El Fasher (capital of North Darfur, but under merciless siege by the RSF); the Tawila area to the west of Zamzam, east of the Jebel Marra massif (and under the control of the rebel faction held by the much despised Abdel Wahid al-Nur); and Tina, further west on the Darfur/Chad border. Adequate humanitarian relief is available in none of these locations; merely surviving is a challenge.
All the counselors have been paid their salaries for April and May, and funds have been distributed for their June salaries. They will be again in July if there is prospect of their return to Zamzam. What food there is in any location is extremely expensive, and most of the counselors have family members they are trying to assist. The counselors who moved on to Tina faced the extortionate demands of twelve different checkpoints along the way to the border. (It is unclear why humanitarian assistance to the Tina area has not been more substantial given the growing size of the population there; Gaffar suspects that Chadian politics—perhaps influenced by the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—are responsible).
In a hopeful sign, Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced yesterday that a UN World Food Program convoy is headed toward El Fasher. The RSF, however, may yet again obstruct this critical aid.
The MSF announcement continued:
MSF welcomes this important step after people have endured months of starvation as fighting escalated and RSF laid siege to the area. It’s crucial that the convoy is now allowed to reach its destination safely.
People in El Fasher, including many who fled Zamzam after the RSF offensive on the camp, have been cut off for too long. The siege and violence have made it virtually impossible to bring in food, medicines, and other essential supplies. Water is reportedly increasingly scarce.
MSF reiterates its call for civilians to be spared and for humanitarian organisations to be given access to deliver aid, including by air if necessary. The humanitarian situation in and around El Fasher, already a catastrophic one, is worsening by the day. Our teams remain committed to provide assistance where it’s needed the most and currently scaling up medical services in #Tawila and other locations across Darfur.
This is not, of course, news, except for the WFP convoy—and we learn only that it has departed and that MSF believes “It’s crucial that the convoy [be] allowed to reach its destination safely.” It is indeed “crucial,” but this does not ensure RSF willingness to allow the convoy actually to enter El Fasher; there are too many reasons to believe the RSF will obstruct the convoy in one way or another. Moreover, many convoys are needed to address the acute malnutrition, indeed starvation, that is so prevalent in this part of Darfur. This need is made more urgent by the ominous threat posed by the impending seasonal rains (sometime in June through the end of September). Many roads become impassable as they cross dry riverbeds (wadis) that fill with torrential streams of rainwater.
While the rains will address the growing water crisis (if rainwater is safely “harvested”), it brings a growing threat of disease and threatens sanitation facilities, where they exist. People have already been weakened by months of enduring famine conditions; they will be much less able to resist water-borne and other diseases. Food must be delivered now, at much greater scale, and on an urgently expedited basis.
The Return to Zamzam
With great confidence, Gaffar insists that when security is adequate, the great majority of Zamzam’s residents will return to the camp, the only home that about half the population has ever known. And of those who long ago live lived in a rural village in Darfur, a very great number are simply unable to return to their homes: thousands of villages have been burned to the ground over the past twenty-two years; wells have been badly poisoned with corpses, animal and human; mature fruit trees have been cut down; farm animals have been looted; and agricultural tools have been stolen or destroyed. And the more remote any surviving village might be, the greater the challenges of adequate security.
If Zamzam is to resume its previous status as something like a satellite city to El Fasher, much will need to be done—and this can only begin with security of a sort that is nowhere in sight [See below Gaffar’s assessment of the military situation in North Darfur and West Kordofan: this is where fighting between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) will be decisive for the future if El Fasher and Zamzam (it should be noted that the latter are powerfully supported by the “Joint Forces” (JF), made up of fighters from several of Darfur’s former rebel groups).]
The first task of the counselors of Team Zamzam, if they survive and are able to return, will be to restore a sense of community and encourage the kind of solidarity that has long distinguished the people of Zamzam. They have faced privation, violence, and neglect with remarkable courage and communal solidarity. Re-establishing this will be the critical first task, the one that will encourage other returns.
Repairing homes and other buildings will require collective effort, and must be generously supported by the humanitarian organizations that in recent years have been largely absent in many critical areas (food, water, shelter, and sanitation are at the top of the list). Again, the heavy seasonal rains are imminent: as much in the way of humanitarian supplies must be pre-positioned as far forward as possible within the next month.
The other main task of the counselors will be to provide advice, local knowledge, and guidance in the distribution of whatever humanitarian assistance arrives. General equity in distribution and recognition of particular needs must be carefully balanced, and there are no more trusted individuals in the camp than the counselors of Team Zamzam.
Sexual violence has been rampant in Darfur in recent months, and girls and women traumatized by brutal assaults must continue to be attended to, the task for which our project in Zamzam was originally designed.
There will of course be a great many other problems that will arise if Zamzam is to be rebuilt and re-animated by the solidarity that has seen it through such difficult times. Team Zamzam has again and again proved itself more than ready for any challenges.
It is our job to make sure that as much humanitarian assistance as possible is provided.
The perilous flight toward Tawila taken by many tens of thousands of Zamzam’s residents:
Military and Security Realities
The goal of the Sudan Armed Forces and the Joint Forces will be to open the key road from El Obeid (recently wrested from the RSF, which had laid siege to this important city for two years) through El Nahud and Um Kadahdah (presently under RSF control) and then continuing on to break the RSF’s long siege of El Fasher (see maps below). Joint forces are also pressing southward from the Malha area north of the RSF’s key logistical hub, Mellit some 70 kilometers to the north of El Fasher.
If El Fasher can be liberated, and secure humanitarian access achieved, the situation could change rapidly and returns to Zamzam could return soon after. The RSF has no tactical or strategic interest in controlling Zamzam: the camp has simply represented an opportunity for looting and a vengeful violence, typically with an ethnic animus. Defeat of the RSF outside El Fasher would not only free Zamzam of any RSF presence, but in Gaffar’s judgment could well presage further losses and may even precipitate the disintegration of the RSF, whose soldiers have always been motivated only by the prospect of easy money and the power to control portions of Sudanese national wealth. A tremendous number of RSF fighters are not from anywhere in Sudan, but rather countries to the west: Chad, Niger, CAR, Mali, and South Sudan.
[Here it must be stressed that the SAF has itself been guilty of many war crimes, crimes against humanity, and has a leadership that lusts to retain Sudan’s wealth through the imposition of a military regime very similar to that of the deposed Omar al-Bashir.]
Gaffar pays extremely close attention to reports of fighting to the east of El Fasher and has an excellent cohort of reliable sources; his assessment as I have attempted to represent it here is supplemented by several credible dispatches from the front line in West Kordofan and along the road from El Obeid to El Fasher:
- Sudan Tribune | May 18, 2025 (AL-MALIHA) – The Governor of Darfur Region, Minni Arko Minawi, announced on Sunday that the Army and allied Joint Force took control of the strategic Wadi al-Atrun area, located in the border triangle between Sudan, Libya and Chad. Last March, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) made significant advances in the Great Desert area by taking control of Al-Maliha locality in North Darfur State.
The SAF renewed attacks against the RSF in central Sudan along a key highway linking central and western Sudan and made gains in northern Sudan. These operations are part of a broader effort by the SAF to set conditions to advance into RSF-controlled western Sudan.
• Africa File, May 22, 2025: SAF Advances Across Sudan Despite RSF Drone Strikes | May 22, 2025 – ISW Press
The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have made incremental progress against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in several areas of Sudan since mid-May despite RSF counterattacks and the RSF’s drone campaign against Port Sudan. The SAF renewed attacks against the RSF in central Sudan along a key highway linking central and western Sudan and made gains in northern Sudan. These operations are part of a broader effort by the SAF to set conditions to advance into RSF-controlled western Sudan.
• Sudan Tribune May 11, 2025 (EL OBEID) – Sudan’s army said on Sunday its forces and allies had recaptured the town of Al-Khuwayyi in West Kordofan state after fierce clashes with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The RSF had announced on May 3 that it had taken Al-Khuwayyi, located about 110 km (68 miles) west of El Obeid, a day after its fighters seized El Nahud, a major town in West Kordofan
• Sudan Tribune. 23 February 2025, “On 23 February 2025, the Sudanese army fully lifts the siege of El-Obeid” “Sudanese army ends RSF’s two-year siege of El Obeid”.
• Radio Dabanga, Sudan timeline January – March 2025: Power shifts as army wins major battle grounds in destructive war, May 20, 2025
• Radio Dabanga, “Khartoum ‘completely liberated’ from RSF, says Sudan army” May 21, 2025 | OMDURMAN / UM RAMTA / UM LABANA / EL BUTANA
Widely reported by news organizations, this has particularly significance for SAF ability to fight toward Darfur.
• Middle East Eye, May 16, 2025: overview:
After more than two years of brutal conflict, Sudan’s civil war appears to have entered a bone-breaking phase, marked by intensified attacks and a hardening of rival power structures. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are now fighting not only for territory, but for political legitimacy, as both sides escalate military operations across the country
Fighting has surged in key strongholds, especially in Darfur and Kordofan, where the RSF is pressing ahead with plans to form a parallel government. Both sides are deploying drones, air raids, intelligence units, and special forces in increasingly aggressive operations, particularly in Nyala—capital of South Darfur and a strategic RSF centre—and Port Sudan, the current seat of the SAF-aligned administration.
The SAF has launched sustained airstrikes on military installations in Nyala in recent days, with a focus on the city’s international airport.
[RSF drones, supplied by the United Arab Emirates, have regularly targeted both El Fasher and Zamzam from the air base in Nyala—ER]