The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) rebel militia is practicing a policy of starvation in Darfur

By Dr. Mukhtar Bilal Abdelsalam

While global attention is completely focused on the war in the Middle East, triggered by a joint Israeli-American attack on Iran, followed by Iranian retaliatory strikes against US bases in some Gulf countries, the situation in Sudan is developing in a completely different direction. The Sudanese armed forces and their allies have retaken control of towns such as Tina in North Darfur and Barah in North Kordofan, breaking the siege of Darfur, where the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are committing serious human rights violations.

Recently, the British newspaper The Guardian published an article by Kamil Ahmed, International Development Correspondent, and Alex Clark, revealing new forms of abuse perpetrated by the RSF. The report concludes that these forces are implementing a long-term starvation strategy in Sudan to achieve their objectives in the ongoing conflict, resulting in the deaths and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their villages and home regions.

According to the report, the RSF targeted the village of “Ammar Jadid” in Darfur seven times between March and June 2024. New evidence indicates that these attacks were deliberately aimed at destroying the region’s food reserves, leading experts to characterize them as a “war crime” intended to starve the civilian population.

The report specifies that farming communities in the region were systematically targeted between March and June 2024 as part of a plan, according to experts, to disrupt the local food supply chain before the siege of the nearby town of El Fasher. This siege began in late April 2024 and lasted 18 months, ending in October 2025. A strategy that, according to The Guardian, proved successful.

Tom Dannenbaum, a law professor at Stanford University and a leading expert on the use of starvation as a weapon of war, argues that the destruction of villages, agricultural equipment, and infrastructure constitutes irrefutable evidence of a “starvation strategy” against a population already vulnerable to food insecurity due to the conflict. Furthermore, legal experts, in a new analysis published on March 10, maintain that there is strong evidence that the RSF committed a war crime by depriving the inhabitants of North Darfur of the means of food production. They demand that the findings of the Humanitarian Research Laboratory be admitted as evidence in international courts.

Researchers at the Humanitarian Research Laboratory used remote fire detection sensors and satellite imagery to monitor attacks on 41 villages. They observed a 20 to 40 percent increase in fires during the study period.

During the 18-month siege of El Fasher, the RSF prevented the delivery of food, water, and medicine to the city. They also erected an earthen barrier at least 31 kilometers long to impede civilian escape. The RSF also imposed prolonged sieges on densely populated towns like El Geneina and El Fasher before finally capturing them militarily.

This analysis raises a crucial question: Is this the behavior of those who aspire to rule? How can one claim to lead a people while exterminating, displacing, and starving them?

One might also ask why this militia has not yet been designated a “terrorist group”. What level of human rights violation is the international community waiting for before taking appropriate action?

Last February, the Sudanese army announced the lifting of the siege of Kadugli, which had prevented humanitarian aid trucks from reaching the city. Today, it is liberating Barah and Tina. The Sudanese army remains the guarantor of peace in Sudan, and international silence will not prevent it from achieving its ambitious goals: the restoration of peace and the re-establishment of its sovereignty over the entire territory.

References:

The guardian, ‘Extraordinary cruelty’: images show long term ‘starvation strategy’ in Sudan, 10 March 2026.