{"id":52871,"date":"2025-08-14T23:36:25","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T20:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=52871"},"modified":"2025-08-14T23:36:25","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T20:36:25","slug":"el-fasher-a-story-of-resilience-amid-siege-and-hunger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/14\/el-fasher-a-story-of-resilience-amid-siege-and-hunger\/","title":{"rendered":"El-Fasher: A Story of Resilience Amid Siege and Hunger"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Othman Mirghani<\/strong><\/p>\n

The world\u2019s attention is fixed on Gaza \u2014 and its tragedy undoubtedly deserves the full weight of international focus. But in another corner of our wounded world, the city of El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur in western Sudan, endures the agony of siege and starvation under scant attention from the global community.<\/p>\n

Throughout history, siege has been among the cruelest weapons of conflict \u2014 cutting cities off from the outside world, starving their inhabitants, and bombarding them in an effort to break their will before breaking their defenses. Against such cruelty, history has recorded the names of cities that stood firm, making patience a weapon of endurance.<\/p>\n

Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) perhaps remains the most famous \u2014 surviving 872 days of siege, hunger, and cold during World War II without falling to Nazi forces. But Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, actually holds the grim record for the longest siege in modern warfare \u2014 1,425 days of bombardment, sniper fire, and deprivation, with electricity and water supplies constantly cut. Alongside these examples, both ancient and modern history is rich with stories of cities that resisted sieges for varying lengths of time \u2014 far too many to recount here.<\/p>\n

El-Fasher, after more than a year of unrelenting suffering, now joins this list. Despite siege and hunger, it has repelled 227 attacks by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the latest on Monday, when the city was assaulted from three fronts by large numbers of troops and vehicles. Once again, the army and joint forces fought fiercely and drove the attackers back.<\/p>\n

In defeat, the RSF turned its fury on civilians \u2014 raiding the Abu Shouk camp for displaced people on the city\u2019s outskirts and massacring 40 residents, wounding 19 others. The aim was to empty the camp through terror and starvation \u2014 or outright killing \u2014 as had happened at Zamzam camp, which RSF forces repeatedly attacked before overrunning it, amid reports of mass atrocities. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker T\u00fcrk, described the killings as a \u201cstark reminder of the high price of the international community\u2019s silence.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the United Nations, more than 70% of El-Fasher\u2019s population has faced food insecurity for months due to the siege. The RSF blocks aid deliveries, even though the Sudanese government had responded to a call from UN Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres and agreed to open the Adr\u00e9 crossing on the Chadian border for humanitarian relief \u2014 despite knowing it was also being used to smuggle weapons.<\/p>\n

The RSF and its backers have thrown their full weight into the battle for El-Fasher, bringing in mercenaries from Colombia and elsewhere, as if the city\u2019s fall would decisively alter the course of the war in their favor. But this assumption shows a failure to learn the war\u2019s hard lessons.<\/p>\n

Khartoum was occupied for nearly two years. Wad Madani, capital of Al-Jazirah State, fell. RSF forces expanded to control around 70% of Sudan\u2019s territory, believing they were close to toppling the state entirely. Yet they awoke from that dream to a nightmare of successive defeats, their control shrinking to Darfur and parts of Kordofan, where they now fight to halt the army\u2019s advance toward their strongholds and its stated goal of reclaiming every inch of Sudanese land.<\/p>\n

Knowing they cannot return to Khartoum, Wad Madani, or other areas they once held or aspired to seize, the RSF\u2019s seemingly suicidal insistence on capturing El-Fasher \u2014 despite their mounting losses \u2014 may reflect pressure from their backers to complete the takeover of Darfur as part of a plan to partition Sudan, after their initial plot to seize the entire country in a sudden coup failed. This thinking also underpins the RSF\u2019s formation of a so-called \u201cparallel government\u201d \u2014 a move that has met with a wave of international condemnation, outright rejection, and firm declarations that it will not be recognized.<\/p>\n

With each passing day that El-Fasher holds out, the RSF loses more equipment and fighters \u2014 some fleeing to other areas, others surrendering to the army \u2014 amid growing discontent in their ranks. This strengthens the army\u2019s hand, not just in breaking the siege of El-Fasher, but in reclaiming the nation\u2019s full territory.<\/p>\n

El-Fasher\u2019s resilience is writing a new chapter in the long history of cities and peoples who have withstood siege. Just as history has preserved the names of other cities, so too will it remember El-Fasher \u2014 defiant against siege, steadfast in the face of hunger, and proof that the spirit of patience and determination does not break easily.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Othman Mirghani The world\u2019s attention is fixed on Gaza \u2014 and its tragedy undoubtedly deserves the full weight of international focus. But in another corner of our wounded world, the city of El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur in western Sudan, endures the agony of siege and starvation under scant attention from the global …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52871"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52872,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52871\/revisions\/52872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}