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Ethnic Arab fighters with Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) committed dozens of war crimes against civilian residents of two communities in South Kordofan state while fighting government forces, according to a recent analysis by Human Rights Watch.
Satellite imagery and interviews with survivors documented the RSF’s onslaught against the communities of Habila and Fayu, both populated by non-Arabic ethnic Nuba people. The attacks in the first three months of 2024 killed at least 56 civilians. RSF fighters are also accused of raping women and looting and burning homes in both communities. Satellite images show that since the attack, both communities have been largely abandoned, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
“The Rapid Support Forces’ abuse of civilians in South Kordofan is emblematic of continuing atrocities across Sudan,” Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, HRW’s senior crisis and conflict researcher, said in a statement.
The HRW has called for the United Nations and the African Union to intervene in the conflict to protect civilians. The RSF attacks happened while the paramilitary group was fighting troops with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), a primarily Nuba militia, for control of South Kordofan.
The SPLM-N controls most of South Kordofan, which encompasses the Nuba mountains on the border with South Sudan. The SPLM-N has fought with both the SAF and the RSF since the war broke out in April 2023.
In October 2024, researchers spoke with about 70 people, including 40 survivors of Habila and Fayu, who were living in camps for displaced people in areas controlled by the SPLM-N. Based on those interviews, researchers were able to document 56 civilian deaths, including 11 women and one child. They also documented 79 women and girls who were raped by RSF fighters in a form of sexual slavery.
The RSF entered Habila on Dec. 31, 2023. A day later, fighters entered Fayu.
“When the RSF arrived, they told the men, ‘Get your weapons out for us!’” one Habila resident told HRW. “The men said they did not have guns. Then the RSF said, ‘Bring out your money.’ The men said they had no money. That’s when the RSF started shooting them.”
Video shot and posted to social media by RSF fighters in the nearby village of Tungul showed houses on fire sometime around February 12.
“The deliberate killings of civilians, rape and other forms of sexual violence, pillaging, and the deliberate destruction of civilian property are war crimes,” HRW researchers stated in their report.
The destruction in South Kordofan echoes attacks on rebels in the region by both the SAF and the RSF on behalf of then-dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2014. The RSF employed similar tactics of destroying entire villages to drive out the local population in a form of ethnic cleansing.
This time, the strategy drove more than 47,000 people from their homes in Habila County by April 2024, according to the International Organization for Migration. Residents who fled both Habila and Fayu said they returned days later to find little remaining of their communities.
“There was nothing,” a Fayu resident told HRW. “Everything was destroyed, looted completely. They took my bed, my bedsheets, our tractor with the trailer, our clothes, and all our property inside [our house] … even the door.”
