(OVERVIEW) Our November 4 account of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seizure of El Fasher (October 26, 2025) is the necessary preface to this update. For events have continued to evolve out of that catastrophic military event in ways that pose the gravest of threats to many hundreds of thousands of civilians in North Darfur, the Kordofan states (to the east), and to the general stability of Sudan.
The vast humanitarian crisis already engulfing Darfur has spread with terrifying speed, and there is no sign of a military let-up by the RSF, creating an instability that leaves those fleeing El Fasher without a clear sense of the direction in which they should head. Tawila, 60 kilometers to the west of El Fasher, has been a primary destination, as it was last April when the RSF stormed Zamzam IDP camp, forcing hundreds of thousands displaced persons to flee, even as thousands were killed in the camp or later died as they fled without food or water.
All those who are on the ground in North Darfur and even eastern Chad expect further military attacks by the RSF, although there is considerable uncertainty. There is great fear that the assault will be on Tawila and its humanitarian capacity. More than 750,000 people have either previously or recently fled to this administrative locality in North Darfur, with highly varied humanitarian resources. Tawila would be an easy target, as it is essentially defenseless. And given the bloodthirsty vengefulness of the RSF—in full display following the seizure of El Fasher—ethnic hatred (along with yhr opportunity to loot relief supplies) may alone be sufficient to precipitate an attack, which would again force many hundreds of thousands of people to flee, most toward the Darfur/Chad border.
[For a brief, if already partially dated demographic overview, see here.]
Indeed, Gaffar reports that Team Zamzam is already recording the arrival of several hundred families per day in their new location of Tina/Tiné (the town crosses the border, one side in Sudan, the other in Chad). Resources deployed by the international community—both international relief groups and UN agencies—are woefully inadequate. This is a major catastrophe unfolding before the eyes of an inert world.
Team Zamzam presently has operations in both Tina and Tiné, with food distribution the primary focus (see below). But increasingly those who flee no longer feel safe anywhere in Darfur and are choosing to cross the border into Chad, thereby becoming refugees. For ominously, the other clear possibility for RSF military action is the region of North Darfur known as “Dar Zaghawa” (“homeland [Dar] of the Zaghawa”). The animosity between the Arab militia members of the RSF and the Zaghawa runs extremely high, and the predominance of a Zaghawa population in Zamzam camp was one reason it was attacked last April.
Map of Dar Zaghawa
There is strong evidence to support this idea. The RSF has already launched drone attacks on two key towns in Dar Zaghawa: Kornoi and Um Baru (see maps above). The RSF has, terrifyingly, also launched a drone attack on Tina/Tiné, forcing the temporary evacuation of the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) team working there. In a post of November 6, MSF reported:
“Kornoi, Tine and Um Baru areas in North Darfur have experienced a sharp rise in drone attacks in recent days, causing many people to flee to Chad. In a horrifying attack a drone struck Kornoi Hospital on 3 November, killing and injuring several patients, including children and two pregnant women. MSF teams in Tine, Chad, have received 50 patients injured in drone strikes in this area of Sudan since 24 October 2025.
“MSF teams were also forced to withdraw temporarily because of these strikes. Teams are working to return to support healthcare facilities and help to ensure healthcare access, but repeated drone strikes make this challenging. ‘MSF is deeply concerned about the impact of drone strikes on civilians and humanitarian access and horrified that a hospital was hit.’
“MSF Kornoi, Tine, and Um Baru areas in North Darfur have experienced a sharp rise in drone attacks in recent days, causing many people to flee to Chad. In a horrifying attack a drone struck Kornoi Hospital on 3 November, killing and injuring several patients, including children and two pregnant women.
“MSF teams in Tine, Chad, have received 50 patients injured in drone strikes in this area of Sudan since 24 October 2025.
“MSF teams were also forced to withdraw temporarily because of these strikes. Teams are working to return to support healthcare facilities and help to ensure healthcare access, but repeated drone strikes make this challenging.
—Dago Inagbe, MSF Coordinator for North Darfur
This is the environment in and near Tina/Tiné in which Team Zamzam continues to operate courageously and resolutely. A full-scale RSF offensive in dar Zaghawa would not only have devastating consequences for the local communities, but contribute significantly to the ever-growing flood of human beings seeking security and relief aid, especially food (again, see below for images and reporting from Team Zamzam).
The United Arab Emirates (UAE)
The RSF—a genocidal militia force at this point, with no political or even ideological commitments—continues to serve the ambitions of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Africa, and in the international gold trade in particular. We have satellite imagery of countless UAE cargo planes taking various routes from Emirati airports for destinations that make possible the transfer of light and heavy military equipment to the RSF—via Chad, via Libya, even via South Sudan as military equipment is smuggled from the east coast of Africa.
In addition to thousands of machine-gun-mounted vehicles, the UAE has provided advanced, long-range Chinese howitzers to the RSF (key in the long siege of El Fasher); the has been a huge increase in the number of drones and advanced electronic equipment to the RSF; armored personnel carriers; heavy and light machine guns; sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons; unending supplies of ammunition, communications gear, and logistics. UAE money is used to pay RSF officers’ salaries, to bribe those who might interdict weapons shipments, even to provide an extremely elaborate social media and public relations campaign out of Dubai.
For its part—despite the many tens of thousands who have died, or soon will—the Emirati leadership denies all this, following the policy of shameless lying set by the strongman leader of the Emirates, Mohamed bin Zayed. And this stonewalling denial is working: to date, despite a raft of international condemnations of the RSF and expressions of outrage over the genocidal slaughter in El Fasher, no country or group of countries has called out the UAE.
The grim truth is that if this is to change, then U.S. policy must change, and while Secretary of State Marco Rubio seemed to be on the verge of doing so, he stopped short. For the U.S. relationship with the UAE is one that successive American administrations have valued to the point of ignoring its direct role in facilitating massive atrocity crimes—and Donald Trump seems the most eager to expand U.S. relations.
During his May 2025 trip to the UAE, dreaming of claiming part of Emirati wealth, Trump declared:
“I have absolutely no doubt that the relationship will only get bigger and better,” Trump said in a meeting with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. AP reported on May 15, 2025:
“It’s an honor to be here,” the president said. “And the last four days have been really amazing.”
“You are considered a truly great warrior, and you’ve been through the wars. You’re a great warrior, a very strong man, a brilliant man, a man of vision like few others—like few others—and highly respected. When they know you, there’s tremendous respect.”
“And you’re a magnificent man, and it’s an honor to be with you.”
[For Trump’s complete remarks about Mohamed bin Zayed, orchestrator of RSF mayhem, see here.]
Will Trump somehow be dissuaded from this delusion? Given how little he seems to understand of the world—and Africa in particular—it is difficult to see how this might occur.
Genocidal destruction in Darfur, this ethnic hatred and cruelty—so painfully familiar from Rwanda 1994—will not end until the RSF is brought to heel…and that will not happen so long as Donald Trump refuses to use the enormous leverage the U.S. has to pressure the UAE to end its support for these presently unconstrained génocidaires.
Project Zamzam Confronting the Challenges
Team Zamzam now finds itself on the grim front line of a battle to provide assistance to many hundreds of thousands of people in desperate need and extraordinarily vulnerable—to violence, to hunger, to disease, to dehydration, to exposure. While people in North Darfur have fled in many directions, a huge number are moving toward Chad and the cross-border town of Tina/Tina. Team Zamzam, as noted above, is reporting several hundred families per day are arriving in the area, desperate for food and security.
[An overview of Team Zamzam’s most recent work from the coordinating counselor, including figures for food, numbers fed, and ongoing needs, may be found here.]
CATASTROPHE
On November 11, 2025 the International Organization for Migration—the leading voice in speaking of this ongoing catastrophe—gave our starkest warning to date:
International Organization for Migration (IOM) | Geneva/Port Sudan, 11 November 2025
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) Director General Amy Pope warns that extreme insecurity and appalling human rights violations, including mass killings and ethnic and sexual violence in El Fasher, North Darfur, have triggered a dramatic surge in displacement and further worsened the humanitarian crisis.
“The crisis in El Fasher is the direct result of nearly 18 months of siege that has severed families from food, water, and medical care,” said DG Pope, as she began a five-day visit to the war-torn country. “Our teams are responding, but insecurity and depleted supplies mean we are only reaching a fraction of those in need. Without safe access and urgent funding, humanitarian operations risk grinding to a halt at the very moment communities need support the most.”
In the past two weeks, heavy shelling and ground assaults in and around El Fasher have displaced nearly 90,000 people, forcing families to flee through unsafe routes with almost no access to food, water, or medical assistance. Tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped inside the city, surviving in famine-like conditions as hospitals, markets, and water systems collapse.
There are increasing reports of alarming protection risks, including arbitrary detention, looting, physical assault, and gender-based violence. Tawila, which prior to the escalation hosted over 650,000 internally displaced persons, is now receiving dozens of seriously wounded Sudanese from El Fasher.
Despite the rising need, humanitarian operations are now on the brink of collapse. Warehouses are nearly empty, aid convoys face significant insecurity, and access restrictions continue to prevent the delivery of sufficient aid. IOM is urgently appealing for increased funding and immediate, sustained and safe humanitarian access to avert an even greater catastrophe.
***IN RESPONSE***
Team Zamzam has been extraordinarily hard at work on both sides of Tina/Tiné, although work will increasingly follow a population—desperate for security—that is increasingly crossing into Chad.
It is difficult to fathom the scale of need for food. Although the UN belatedly declared famine in Sudan (focused on El Fasher and Zamzam IDP camp) in August 2024, this came many months after we had ample evidence that famine had arrived or was impending. For years, the RSF and their Arab militia allies had badly disrupted food production in North Darfur. As a consequence, the mission of the Team focused increasingly on providing food for those suffering from malnutrition, especially children.
Nothing has improved over the past three years: food production is badly compromised every growing season; humanitarian access is more constricted that ever; and the cumulative effect of such sustained malnourishment is taking more and more lives (even if many will be in the form of what epidemiologists call “deferred mortality”). Sexual violence—both before and after the fall of El Fasher—has become even more brutal and rampant, and Team Zamzam continues to respond to the needs of girls and women traumatized by this violence, a response now guided by over five years of sustained experience.
But food is what is most urgently needed. A terrifying figure from Tawila was provided over a week ago: 100% of children under 5 arriving in the area were either acutely malnourished or—dangerously—severely malnourished…100%.
In its current report, Team Zamzam highlights these figures:
The total number of people who have benefited from this breakfast program during September through mid-October (newer data will be available soon):
3,821 families (11,344 individuals, more than half of them children under 18.
In addition to this, a package of food was distributed to help the poorest families. The package consisted of rice, red lentils, sugar and powdered milk for children.
The number of beneficiaries of this package is 192 households comprising 2,015 people.
Quantity and type of food distributed:
44 sacks of rice @ 25kg = 1,100kg total
19 sacks of red lentils @ 25kg = 475kg
9 sacks of sugar @ 50kg = 450kg
6 sacks of powder milk @ 25kg = 150kg
Please help this desperate population and support the efforts of Team Zamzam:
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 served by Team Zamzam easier for donors.
Photographs of Team Zamzam in Action
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