Sudan: New Details of Alleged Ethnic Cleansing Emerge in West Darfur

    Sudan: New Details of Alleged Ethnic Cleansing Emerge in West Darfur
    Image copyright: Dan Kitwood/Staff/Getty images News via Getty Images

    The Facts

    • Thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced in attacks by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias as part of a wider ethnic cleansing campaign in Sudan's West Darfur, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released on Thursday.

    • Following the outbreak of the Sudanese Civil War between the Sudanese military and the RSF, an Arab-led paramilitary force, in April 2023, HRW collated 221 witness statements documenting the alleged campaign of ethnic cleansing conducted by RSF forces against Sudan’s non-Arab Masalit tribe of El Geneina in an ethnically diverse region.


    The Spin

    Pro-establishment narrative

    This is a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions, with reports that more massacres could be coming. UN officials and diplomats from a number of countries are doing all they can to deescalate the situation, urging all parties to respect the sanctity of human life and international humanitarian law.

    Establishment-critical narrative

    It's undisputed that the situation in Sudan is calamitous and needs urgent attention. However, rather than getting better, the situation appears to be getting worse, and appears to be exacerbated by the fact that diplomats haven't come up with a cogent strategy and are fighting among themselves about how to go about solving the problem.

    Nerd narrative

    There's a 50% chance that South Sudan will no longer be classified as being in a state of civil war by July 2028, according to the Metaculus prediction community.


    Establishment split

    CRITICAL

    PRO

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