Orbits: El-Fasher a symbol of courage resilience and steadfastness

By; Muawad Mustafa Rashid

First, I would like to congratulate you all on the birth of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).
This year, we celebrate this while El-Fasher remains under siege. El-Fasher, with its religious and historical symbolism for the Sudanese people and the entire Islamic world, makeshift us stand before a city that knows no defeat.

Today, El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur State, represents a symbol of courage and resilience. An entire city is being subjected to systematic bombardment and a deadly siege. Unarmed civilians, including women and children, have been targeted and have suffered since May 2024 from an unjust, deadly siege imposed by the murderous terrorist militia. This leaves them with two bitter choices: either death under the militia’s siege or escape via dangerous routes that can lead to death. It is a journey of death amidst the ongoing, systematic bombardment, into the open and the dark unknown.

The women of El Fasher today face hunger, disease, and the death of children from malnutrition and siege with strength and steadfastness that has astonished the entire world, while the world merely watches and expresses concern.

Those who managed to escape on foot to the city of Tawila, west of El Fasher, arrived exhausted, dehydrated, and thirsty. They suffered violence, extortion, and theft along the way from militia gangs, recounting stories of unimaginable brutality.

The UNICEF Representative in Sudan
Sheldon Yate described the situation in El Fasher as a “looming catastrophe,” warning of harm to an entire generation of children. The World Food Programme also issued a statement warning the world of a humanitarian catastrophe caused by hunger and malnutrition due to the scarcity of life-saving food aid due to the inability to reach civilians under the brutal siege.

While the United Nations continues to appeal to the terrorist militia to open humanitarian corridors for the entry of humanitarian aid and medicine, the militia continues to ignore these calls.

Women and children in El Fasher have been living between death, hunger, and terror for more than fifteen months. Nearly 40% of children under the age of five suffer from severe malnutrition. The evil state continues to support the terrorist militia to continue killing women and children in El Fasher. Hospitals, shelters, and residential neighborhoods are being bombed day and night. This prompted international relief organizations to issue an urgent statement confirming that “the ongoing attacks, the denial of humanitarian aid, and the targeting of infrastructure represent a deliberate and systematic strategy to target civilians through starvation and terror.”

The United Nations says the situation is worsening by the day, in addition to the grave violations and war crimes committed by the terrorist militia in El Fasher and in the displacement camps, making the siege of El- Fasher one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

Based on the above, we call on the world to implement Security Council Resolution 2736, issued on June 13, 2024, which demands that the militia end its siege of El Fasher and withdraw its members who threaten the safety and security of civilians. It also demands that the militia adhere to international humanitarian law and punish its leaders for using “starvation of civilians” as a “weapon of war,” which constitutes an international crime. $  cz #ذ@ى@ذ