A chilling video, taken by Islamist militants, which made its way onto my social media feed at the weekend, showed a family – an African mother and her small children – being taunted in Sudan.
Terrified, quivering, they begged the militants not to kill them. But they did. Every member of the family, including the little children clinging onto their mother for protection, was executed in cold blood.
News of more mass atrocities committed by the United Arab Emirates-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has slowly started circulating in some corners of the media, as the Islamic State called for Jihad in Sudan in recent days. In a newsletter published by Al Naba last week (the publication of IS) the global jihadist organisation issued a second chilling call to arms in Sudan, as it encouraged foreign fighters to migrate to the country.
Hundreds were killed in the Darfur Hospital massacre at the end of October. It was the last functioning hospital in the wartorn Sudanese city of El-Fasher. Doctors had been forced to perform operations by torchlight in the most impossible of conditions, and it had become the last refuge for the sick and injured in the city, as fighting intensified around the people.
That all ended when the city fell to the Sudanese paramilitary group (the RSF) last month. The doctors, praised as heroes for their efforts, were among those kidnapped as reports emerged that hundreds had been killed in a massacre at the hospital.
The World Health Organisation said: “On 28 October, six health workers, four doctors, a nurse and a pharmacist, were abducted. On the same day, more than 460 patients and their companions were reportedly shot and killed at the hospital.”
Prior to the recent attack, the WHO had verified 185 attacks on health care in Sudan, with 1204 deaths and 416 injuries of health workers and patients since the conflict began in April 2023.
The scale of the atrocities sweeping Sudan is quite literally visible from space, with satellite images taken after the fall of El Fasher revealing pools of blood so vast they are visible, along with clusters of dead bodies.
The Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) recently did an analysis using satellite imagery, and it found that clusters of objects were “consistent with the size of human bodies” and “reddish ground discolouration” was thought to be either blood or disturbed soil. It added that it had also found evidence of “door-to-door clearance operations”.
It also said: “El Fasher appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of… indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution.”
There seems to be a struggle to get people interested in the awful humanitarian situation, which saw 460 people massacred inside a maternity hospital in recent days. The lack of interest comes despite the fact the United Nations is openly warning of the risk of genocide in the city of El Fasher, which has long been a symbolic and stratefic stronghold.
The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, confirmed last week that his office is receiving “multiple, alarming reports” of summary executions and ethnically motivated killings. He further warned that starvation is being used as a weapon, civilians are being targeted, and there is a high risk of sexual violence against women and girls.
Türk said that multiple distressing videos received by UN Human Rights show dozens of unarmed men being shot or lying dead, surrounded by RSF fighters who accuse them of being SAF fighters.
The report references the summary execution of five men who were attempting to bring food supplies into the city which has been under siege for 18 months, cutting off food, water and medical supplies to hundreds of thousands of people both in El-Fasher and Kadugli. Another video purported to show a child soldier murdering a grown man, while another supposedly captured RSF fighters executing civilians shortly after cruelly pretending to set them free.
While there are no viral campaigns, the Sudanese conflict is jarring.
At least 150,000 people have been killed, and ten million have been displaced. Famine has now spread to two more areas in Sudan, with the situation described as a man-made emergency on Monday. The announcement by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – the leading UN-backed international authority on hunger crises – which signals that thousands more are edging closer to starvation is only the sixth time famine has been declared since the IPC’s establishment in 2004. The most recent announcement related to parts of Gaza earlier this year.
“This is a man-made emergency, and the steps needed to prevent further catastrophe are clear,” the IPC’s Famine Review Committee (FRC), the independent body that verifies famine findings said, adding: “Only a ceasefire and unimpeded humanitarian access can prevent further deterioration and save lives.”
The evidence of mass killings is undeniable, yet the world has barely blinked. Why?
It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the speed and intensity of global activism related to other dire situations – whether it be civilians being killed in Gaza, or the death toll in the Ukraine-Russia war – has not been matched when it comes to what we are seeing in Sudan.
Where are the viral slogans, or the marches on our city streets against this savagery? Information on the conflict from the mainstream media is patchy at best. We are finding out daily that Islam is incompatible with the Christian west, but we are terrified to admit it.
The Islamic State itself, in its call for Jihad – a holy or unholy war – argued that: “The tragedy of Sudan does not obligate the Muslims of the world to act because it is an internal Sudanese matter.”
“Nationalism compels the people of each region or country to attend to their own problems and issues […] while attending to the issues of another country is considered interference in its affairs and a violation of its sovereignty,” the statement from the terror group stated.
In the editorial, IS also argued that Muslims should disavow nationalism and turn towards Islam, leaning on the Ummah [worldwide Islamic community].
“The Libyan Muslim cares about the plight of the Muslims of Sudan just as the Chechen Muslim cares about the plight of the Muslims of Syria, and the Nigerian Muslim grieves for the wounds of his Iraqi Muslim brother […] this is the Islam we know,” the newsletter said.
“It is incumbent upon the Muslims, especially the Islamic youth in Egypt and Libya, to strive for liberation from the shackles of their homelands and to take serious action to support their brothers in Sudan,” the editorial added.
“They [fighters from Egypt and Libya] must exploit this turbulent and open environment to pave the way for a prolonged jihad. […] Sudan is a fertile ground, if it ignites, it will have a profound impact on the entire region.”
How are we not waking up to a threat which is outlined so openly? We hear a lot of talk about ‘anti-Muslim hate crimes’ – the internet is saturated with that kind of rhetoric.
Just this past weekend in the UK, more than three dozen Labour and Independent MPs penned a letter to the housing secretary urging the British government to adopt a definition of Islamophobia. But where are the voices of Muslims denouncing the heinous evil being done in the name of Islam in Sudan and elsewhere?
People are willing to kill to spread an ideology, and you can take the Islamic State’s word for it. That is what is happening in Sudan. The insistence on ignoring the Jihad problem, spurred on by our Western idealism, is only making it much worse.