A Genocidal Massacre is Looming in Darfur

El Fasher is the largest city in Sudan's Darfur region. It is also one of the few major cities in Darfur that has not fallen to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) during the civil war that broke out last year. However, an attack on El Fasher seems imminent. The RSF has surrounded the city and is laying siege to it. The United States, the United Nations, and key players around the world are urging against this impending attack, but it's unclear whether the RSF will be deterred.

There are deep concerns for the fate of at least 800,000 people trapped in El Fasher, given that the RSF is a genocidal militia. The RSF is the re-branded Janjaweed Militia, which carried out the Darfur genocide 20 years ago. Since the full-scale civil war in Sudan began in April 2023, the RSF has reprised many of its genocidal tactics, targeting non-Arab ethnicities in Darfur for annihilation.

My guest today is Mutasim Ali, Legal Advisor at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. The Wallenberg Centre recently published a report compiling evidence that genocide is ongoing in Darfur, with the RSF perpetrating it against non-Arab groups. We discuss at length how they came to this conclusion. Mutasim Ali is also from El Fasher, so we talk about the looming RSF assault on the city and what, if anything, can be done to prevent this attack.

Sudan represents the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. This episode is part of our ongoing series on the atrocities in Darfur and the civil war in Sudan, which is receiving scant media attention despite the sheer scale of this ongoing calamity.

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