Since the coup d'état led by the Sudanese military, all eyes have been on Khartoum and the gigantic pro-democracy demonstrations that are shaking the Sudanese capital.

But another conflict has been talked about again in recent weeks: that of Darfur, which has seen a 17-year-long war opposing rebel groups to the Islamist dictatorship of Omar El-Bashir supported by Arab “janjaweed” militias.

Since October, a series of attacks on villages have left several hundred dead and injured in the Jebel Moun and Kreinik regions.

More than 83,000 people have been displaced as a result of the violence, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

A year after the departure of the peacekeepers of UNAMID, the joint mission of the UN and the African Union (AU), insecurity is regaining ground in this region as large as France located in the west of the country.

“Sense of impunity”

Darfur is regularly rocked by tribal conflicts sparked by territorial rivalries and disputes over access to water and resources.

However, the October 25 coup appears to have heightened instability in the region.

“The state, justice and police are absent subscribers.

There is a total security vacuum and weapons are proliferating ”, recently denounced the Western Darfur Doctors Union, which accuses the government of“ having taken no serious measures to stop the killings ”.

>> To see: Sudan: an impossible democracy?

“The situation has undoubtedly worsened with the coup d'état because the armed forces are concentrating on the capital but the security vacuum was already very present”, estimates researcher Jérôme Tubiana, co-author of a report for the Federation. International for Human Rights (FIDH), joined by France 24. The Darfur specialist recalls that in April in the region of El-Geneina, inter-community conflicts had already left more than a hundred dead and tens of thousands of displaced people.

If the coup d'état has not fundamentally changed the security situation in Darfur, it has, on the other hand, renewed “a feeling of impunity” among the Arab militiamen, some of whom have joined the Rapid Support Forces (FSR), considers Jérôme Tubiana.

“Among the increasingly powerful people in Khartoum since the revolution and the coup d'état is 'Hemedti', the leader of the FSR.

It can give them the feeling that they will never be punished no matter what they do ”.

General Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, alias “Hemedti”, commanded one of the Arab “janjaweed” militias during the war in Darfur.

These “demons on horseback”, sent by the power of Omar al-Bashir against the various ethnic groups in Darfur, are accused of ethnic cleansing and rape.

For these abuses, the International Criminal Court (ICC) demands that the dictator ousted in 2019 be tried for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

Degraded humanitarian situation

According to Jérôme Tubiana, this recent violence in Darfur also aims to sabotage the Juba peace accords signed in 2020 between several rebel groups and the transitional government.

“Some Arab communities want to keep control over the land they occupy and prevent displaced people from returning to cultivate it even temporarily,” explains the Darfur specialist.

Since last summer, they have systematically opposed the return of the displaced ”.

Sudan is home to some 3 million internally displaced people, over 80% of whom live in the five states of Darfur.

Particularly vulnerable populations that are increasingly difficult to reach for humanitarian organizations in this degraded security context.

Last week, an armed group looted nearly 2,000 tonnes of World Food Program (WFP) aid in El-Fasher in North Darfur state.

"These are people who cannot feed their families and we will not be able to help them in January because we do not have food in El-Fasher and we do not have any more material," lamented. on RFI Marianne Ward, Interim Program Director for Sudan.

According to the UN, the humanitarian situation is critical in Sudan since one inhabitant in three will need humanitarian aid in 2022, the rate "the highest for a decade" in the country.

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