Kindness amid the killing as families find refuge from Sudanese militias

After fleeing the bloody civil conflict that has displaced 14 million, refugees from North Darfur are receiving aid from a network of dedicated volunteers.

- Lindsey Hilsum

The women from El Fasher stood in the soup kitchen and wept. Every day brings more bad news from their relatives back home, even as they recover from their 620-mile trek from Darfur to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

"We need someone to rescue our families," said Masaid Ahmed Azrag, drawing a pink headscarf across her face to wipe her tears. "There's no food or medicine - they're dying of hunger. Little children are living off animal feed. The next day, they're found dead."

Since May last year, El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, has been besieged by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). The two militaries ruled Sudan together after staging a coup against the civilian government in 2021. Two years later, the RSF attacked SAF installations.

Overnight, allies became enemies and the war began. The victims are the people of Sudan. No one knows how many have been killed in massacres or died from malnutrition and disease, as neither party allows data collection or humanitarian access.

The UN says more than 14 million have been displaced and about 25 million - half the population - need relief aid.

Romana Adan Maaki, a black yashmak covering her nose and mouth, described the conditions that had made the women - about 30 members of the same extended family including children - bribe the RSF fighters to let them leave.

"In the morning, you couldn't go out because the shelling was intense. And if it wasn't the shelling, it was the mafia in the streets," she said. "If you have daughters, they rape them. If you have sons, they beat them and claim they're soldiers."

RSF fighters, who are primarily from Arab tribes, routinely call non-Arabs "slaves". They are the successor force to the Janjaweed - "devils on horseback" - who committed genocide against African people in Darfur in the early 2000s.