By Dr. Abdelnasser Solum Hamed

 

“As El Fasher suffocates under siege, the world offers only silence. This is what atrocity looks like in 2025.”

 

“My youngest child cries not from fear—but from hunger,” says Fatima Ibrahim, a mother of four sheltering in a school basement in El Fasher. “There’s no food. No water. No help. We are not dying quietly—we are being erased.”

 

 

El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, is collapsing under a deliberate and devastating siege. Since May 10th, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias have encircled the city, launching daily bombardments that have transformed streets into graveyards and homes into ruins. Over 800,000 civilians are trapped. Markets are empty.

 

Medical facilities are destroyed. Mass graves multiply in courtyards and schoolyards.

 

 

Once the last city in Darfur under the control of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), El Fasher now stands alone—a bastion of resistance facing a methodical campaign of destruction. Satellite imagery and field reports confirm at least 38 targeted strikes on civilian areas in just two weeks. At least 327 civilians have been killed since mid-May, according to local medics and monitoring groups. These are not the tragic consequences of urban warfare—they are signatures of intent.

 

 

“We’ve stopped counting the dead. Now we just dig,” said a nurse in the city’s last functioning trauma clinic.

 

 

Hospitals have run out of supplies. Water points are targeted. UN food stocks have been looted or burned. Aerial drones hover above homes, waiting for movement. Those who survive hunger face snipers. Those who survive snipers face disease.

 

 

Despite repeated briefings from humanitarian agencies and satellite-verified evidence, key international actors—including members of the UN Security Council—have remained inert. No humanitarian airlifts have reached the city. No emergency resolutions have been passed. Regional powers with known leverage over the RSF, such as the UAE, have yet to call for restraint.

 

 

“In El Fasher, children bury their parents with their hands. In Geneva and New York, meetings end with polite deferrals.”

 

 

The stakes are far greater than one city. If El Fasher falls, the RSF will control all major urban centers in Darfur, giving a militia accused of systemic war crimes effective control over an entire region. This would not only embolden paramilitary power in Sudan but could also trigger a new wave of ethnic cleansing, mass displacement toward Chad, and de facto fragmentation of the Sudanese state into warlord fiefdoms.

 

 

The fall of El Fasher would effectively signal the end of SAF presence in Darfur and open the door for RSF-backed federal disintegration—paving the way for rival proto-states, unaccountable militias, and a regional power vacuum stretching across central Africa.

 

 

El Fasher is not just a battlefield. It is a symbol. Like Grozny in 1999 or Aleppo in 2016, it may one day stand as a monument to modern siege warfare—and the failure of the international system to prevent mass atrocity in plain sight.

 

 

There is still time. Humanitarian corridors must be established immediately. No-strike zones must be enforced over schools, clinics, and markets. Sanctions must target RSF leaders and their external enablers. War crimes must be documented and prosecuted, regardless of political discomfort.

 

 

Let it not be said that El Fasher cried out and the world answered with silence.

 

That civilians died in daylight and justice never came.

 

That Sudan bled while the global order looked away.

 

Dr. Abdelnasser Solum Hamed is a Sudanese researcher and expert in crisis and armed conflict management. He currently serves as Director of the East Africa and Sudan Program at FOX Research (Sweden), and previously held the post of Commissioner at the Sudan Human Rights Commission (2016–2019). His work focuses on documenting atrocities and promoting accountability in Sudan’s war zones.

 

Program Director for East Africa and Sudan – FOX Research (Sweden)