The Current - Sudan’s civil war escalates into ‘horrendous’ outcomes

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

The civil war in Sudan has been raging for more than 2 years now and the violence is only escalating. The paramilitary faction called the Rapid Support Forces pushed out the Sudanese army from most of Darfur, and have been accused of ongoing civilian massacres. It has become so bad, the results can be seen from space. Denise Brown is the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan who explains without intervention, the violence will continue unabated.

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Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. It's a massacre that can be seen from space. The killings of civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan are so extensive and violent that pools of blood can be seen in satellite images. An analysis of those images shows evidence of mass killings by a paramilitary faction called the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF. Nathaniel Raymond is with Yale University's Humanity. I've been doing this work with satellites for 15 years, and I've been a war crimes investigator

for over a quarter of a century. I have not seen the velocity and ferocity of the violence that we're witnessing in the past day and a half in any other setting I've investigated in my entire career. Sudan plunged into civil war in 2023 after a struggle for power broke out between its army and the RSF. At least 40,000 people have died. The UN says Sudan is one of the worst humanitarian crises of the century. This week, the RSF seized the city of El Fasher in North Darfur, trapping hundreds of thousands of people there.

Witnesses say RSF fighters went from home to home, beating, shooting, and killing people, including women and children. Yale's humanitarian research lab says this appears to be ethnic cleansing of indigenous non-Arab communities. Denise Brown is the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan. Denise, hello. Hi. What can you tell us about what is happening in Alf Asher right now?

The situation honestly continues to deteriorate, and it's hard to imagine that it could get any worse, but it has. And we started to receive reports about 36 hours ago, about a shocking attack on the one remaining hospital. We needed to verify. We have to verify all the information that we receive. It's very difficult because we're 50 kilometers away and their communications have been cut.

But the allegation reported of more than 460 people being killed in the last remaining hospital, 460 patients being killed and the medical personnel abducted. So the World Health Organization of the UN has verified that in their system and we are now reporting on this. And it comes on top of the already shocking allegations, and we have credible reports of summary executions of unarmed civilians, mostly men, but also unarmed civilians as they try and flee the city. So it's gone from horrendous to horrific, and the world really needs to pay attention to the slaughter of innocent civilians in Alf Asher. As we mentioned, the Yale Humanitarian Lab says the blood from these killings by the RSF and L. Fasher can be seen from space. What do you want people to take away from what that tells us about the scale of this violence?

It's hard to explain how this makes you feel, but it's horrific, it's shocking. And I've worked in many, many countries. And this one, I think, is one of the absolute worse. and we need to put it also in a legal framework. These are gross violations of international humanitarian law. So we need to monitor. We need to document so these stories aren't forgotten, don't get lost, and that there has to be justice for the people who are suffering, suffering this trauma at the hands of the RSF.

The world cannot turn a blind eye to what's happening in El Fasher. And yet, while this conflict has gone on the Civil War for two years now, it has not received a lot of time in the world's attention. So can you help us by explaining briefly who the RSF are and who they are targeting with these killings? Well, this is a war that began in April 2023, and one of the epicenters, because there's more than one epicenter, one of the epicenters of the violence is Darfur is Elfashir,

but there are others in the court of fans, namely Kandu. So we should not forget that. This is a war that has touched many, many parts of the country. And I've recently been in Khartoum, and the destruction there was overwhelming. And I'm coming from Ukraine, so I know what destruction looks like. So this is an all-out war. It's been going on for more than two years. And, of course, as in all of these contexts of violence and war, it's the people who get caught.

So the people who've been trapped in El Fasher for more than 500 days frightened without adequate access to food. All of our humanitarian convoys have been blocked, getting in. We are very concerned about ethnic targeting. These are reports that we start to receive. The BBC actually described efforts to build up an earthen wall around the city to trap residents and stop food from reaching people. I mean, 500 days we have not been allowed in.

This is humanitarian work that we are supposed to do. So blocking humanitarian assistance, and by that I'm talking about basic necessities, food. We know that right now, one kilo of rice cells for $150 U.S. dollars. So food, medical supplies. We've been trying to figure out how to get antibiotics into the hospital. The last remaining hospital had no antibiotics. people were being operated on with no antibiotics. So they arrive in neighboring Tawila, again, which is 50 kilometers down the road, dehydrated, malnourished, not just babies and children, but adults as well, and in some cases injured, and in all cases, totally traumatized.

You were in fact in Tawila at the health clinic there. What did you hear from the people you met? I spent a week in Tawila, which is the neighboring town from El Fasher. in the camp for displaced people, for which there are about 600,000 people there. And the day that I was there, a group of women had just arrived from El Fasher. It took them seven days, that's 50 kilometers, seven days, because they take small roads to avoid the checkpoints and avoid the militia who are on those roads. And the woman I spoke to, she had three of her children on the donkey, the baby on her back,

and she managed to get to Tsewila, because we've not been allowed to go further along that road to provide assistance, being blocked by RSF. She was malnourished, but her child was severely malnourished. This was a baby of less than a year old. So that Stabilization Center run by international NGOs with the support of UN was able to take that child in. And we have hundreds and thousands of cases like that, but that was just the woman that I met that morning, who had the courage and the determination to flee the violence, and she made it out. In 2023, in El-Genia, the capital of Westarf, where the RSF killed as many as 15,000 civilians.

How worried are you that something like this or worse is unfolding in Elfasha right now? I think the UN has been very clear about what's happening. We are getting these reports, working as fast as we can, to ensure that they are credible reports, and we're reporting on it. And our concerns have been shared not just this week. The Secretary General called for a ceasefire way back in July. We have trucks on standby. We knew what was going to happen. The High Commissioner for Human Rights has been warning about it.

This requires, again, the world to turn its attention to what's happening in Sudan. And the moment we are allowed to access these areas, I'm really afraid of what we're going to find. When you say we knew, we warned that this was going to. happen. I can only imagine how difficult that must be for you to now see this playing out. And it's very difficult because I was into Willa expressly to go into Alfacer, myself. We had a convoy that was prepared with basic supplies that every human being needs every single day. We've been negotiating that for weeks, months with the RSF, and they wouldn't budge. And we just require, all I require is a confirmation of safe pass.

that no one's going to shoot us as we go down the road or as we go into the city. And they wouldn't provide it. And given that we've lost 128 workers, mostly national, since April 2023, we absolutely have to have that guarantee. And it was for the protection of the civilians. So it tells us a lot about how the RSF seized the civilians in our fashire. There have been comparisons to the killings of the Rwandan genocide. Does the UN consider what's happening in Darfur to be a genocide?

That's a legal question, and the experts on genocide within the UN, within the African Union, are going to be looking at the data and making, making, you know, their assessments. That's not for me to do. All I can say is we have credible reports of summary executions and now of mass killings in the last remaining hospital, of humanitarian volunteers and some of our partners being killed, either in the intense fighting on the, weekend or through those summary executions. What happens next? We'll be up to the experts to decide. But frankly, we don't need to wait for that to know that we have a huge, huge problem in El Fasher. Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister, Anita Anand said in a statement on Tuesday that Canada is, quote, horrified by the attacks in El Fasher and condemns the reported mass killing of over 2,000 civilians. What would you like to see from the international community

to stop the violence? they need to find the way to stop the violence. It's not for me to tell them how to stop the violence, but what I can tell you is that these are gross violations of international humanitarian law, mass killings. We have been touched on the rape, gender-based violence, which we have said in the past is being used as a weapon of war, rape, sexual torture, sexual slavery.

More needs to be done. More needs to be done. to get this war to stop. And if the international community does not move, if more is not done, what do the coming weeks look like? You know, as I said at the outset, we've gone from a horrific situation to horrendous situation. There's no indications that it's stopping or slowing down as long as there will be civilians to target in Alfacer. I see no reason why that would change. Thank you for this conversation.

Thank you, too. Denise Brown is the United Nations resident and humanitarian coordinator in Sudan. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway.

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