Darfur Governor Minni Minnawi says RSF killed 27,000 Sudanese in el-Fasher

The governor of Darfur, Minni Arkou Minnawi, has told Middle East Eye that 27,000 Sudanese were killed in just three days as paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) went on a killing spree after seizing el-Fasher late last month.

This figure is considerably higher than previous estimates of the scale of slaughter that followed the sudden withdrawal of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) from the capital of North Darfur state at the end of October.

Previously, officials and humanitarian workers had put the death toll at more than 2,500 people.

However, in the days and weeks following the fall of el-Fasher, which had been under siege for more than 550 days, there has been a cascade of reports of widespread massacres and aid workers have raised the alarm at how few civilians have fled the city.

Survivors described to MEE summary executions, sexual violence and other abuses.

On Wednesday, UN aid chief Tom Fletcher, who concluded a weeklong visit to Darfur, called el-Fasher an “absolute horror show” and a “crime scene”. 

Minnawi was speaking to reporters from his temporary headquarters in Port Sudan, where SAF commanders and the Sudanese government have been largely based since fighting erupted in the capital Khartoum over two years ago.

The governor, who is himself from North Darfur and a member of the Zaghawa community that has been targeted by the RSF, would not be drawn on the cost to his family beyond saying that “many of them were eliminated”.

Sudanese warnings 'belittled'

Ever since the war in Sudan broke out in April 2023 over plans to fold the RSF into the regular military, the Rapid Support Forces has been accused of war crimes and atrocities, including mass killings and sexual violence.

The United States and several human rights groups have accused the paramilitaries of committing genocide against the Masalit community in West Darfur earlier in the conflict.

'If we are to negotiate we have to negotiate with the Emirates and not Hemedti'

- Minni Minnawi, Darfur governor

Despite warnings that similar horror was imminent in el-Fasher, whose 260,000 inhabitants were starved under siege for 18 months, the paramilitaries were able to storm the city on 26 October, using advanced weaponry supplied by their patron, the United Arab Emirates.

El-Fasher was the last city in the vast western region of Darfur to remain in the hands of the SAF and the Joint Forces, former Darfuri rebels aligned with the Sudanese military.

Minnawi was critical of the international community for failing to prevent the massacres.

“We warned the international community, including the United Nations Security Council, many times that if taken, Darfur will become a genocide,” he told MEE and other journalists in a meeting facilitated by the Al Arabiya production company.

Minnawi said that urgent Sudanese warnings were “belittled”.

Britain, as the “penholder” for the Sudan issue at the United Nations Security Council, has come in for particular scrutiny.

Shayna Lewis of the US-based human rights organisation Preventing and Ending Mass Atrocities (Paema) has said the UK has been “complicit in the ongoing genocide of the people of Darfur” because it placed a low priority on preventing atrocities in the region. 

Meanwhile, the UN has been told that British military equipment has been seen in RSF hands in Sudan, raising questions about UK arms sales to the UAE.

Minnawi pointed his finger at the United Arab Emirates for supporting the RSF by providing “sophisticated arms like drones”.

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US intelligence agencies have reportedly tracked a rise in Emirati supply of advanced Chinese drones and other weapons systems to the RSF in the weeks leading up to el-Fasher’s fall.

Despite mounting evidence, the UAE denies it supports the RSF.

It is also a member of the Quad, a group of states tasked with addressing the Sudanese conflict, a mediator status that the Sudanese army denounced as it sees Abu Dhabi as a belligerent.

Diplomatic sources previously told MEE that the UAE refused to address the situation in el-Fasher during peace talks in Washington hours before the city’s defences collapsed.

Minnawi said the UAE is “manipulating the international community diplomatically” and its denials that it supports the RSF were “lip service”.

“They are hiding their criminality,” he said.

Speaking hours before US President Donald Trump’s surprise pledge “to bring an immediate halt to what is happening in Sudan” Minnawi spoke about prospects of peace. 

“If we are to negotiate, we have to negotiate with the Emirates and not Hemedti,” he said, using a common name for RSF leader Mohamed Hamdam Daglo, who he called a “puppet” of the UAE.

Another genocide

Minnawi has been a well-known figure in Sudan for two decades.

He rose to prominence as a leader in one of the Darfuri rebel factions that 20 years ago fought against the government of former autocrat Omar al-Bashir over marginalisation and discrimination of Black Sudanese.

During that conflict, Minnawi’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement battled the Janjaweed - state-backed, mostly Arab militias that waged genocide in Darfur and were eventually regularised to become the RSF.

'Stopping the Emirates is the vital element to stop the war'

- Minni Minnawi, Darfur governor

He said that the RSF was again committing genocide, using the mantra: “either be Arab or be killed.”

Hemedti was a top Janjaweed commander, and Minnawi noted that other leaders of the militias and the RSF “are the same characters”.

“Only they have developed and become more powerful,” he said, noting that many of the RSF’s fighters came from “overseas and different parts of Africa".

According to various reports, the RSF ranks contain Colombian mercenaries supplied by the UAE and fighters from Chad and South Sudan.

Asked what action the international community must take to stop the war, which has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 13 million others, he replied that “stopping the Emirates is the vital element to stop the war”.