Darfur — Geography Is Redefining the War

By: Rashan Oshi

The War of Dignity in Khartoum, Al-Jazirah, Sennar and Kordofan is not the same as the War of Dignity in Darfur.
There, in the region of Darfur — whose terrain reads like something out of myth — the war takes a different shape. It goes beyond the binary of state versus rebellion and transcends the conventional formula of a power struggle; it becomes a project to re-produce both geography and identity.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), fighting as proxies for the UAE–Israel axis, are not only after control of mineral resources. They seek to fix a new demographic reality that undermines the modern nation-state and redraws the social map on the basis of strength and domination rather than on a social contract.
For the pastoral communities that range across the plains from Chad through the Central African Republic and Libya, Darfur represents a promised land — an open expanse to be reclaimed by force or lost forever. For the region’s historic groups — the Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit — it is the last living habitat for their identity and collective memory. Herein lies the heart of the conflict: it is a war of settlement and demographic change, not merely a war for the seat of power or the presidential palace in Khartoum.
The social fabric has failed to absorb the chaos of pastoralism; for the second time in two decades, farmers are being expelled from their lands and waves of new populations are being brought in to settle the heart of the region — a systematic population replacement based on force, not coexistence.
This is social engineering by armed force, intended to erase memory and redraw the features of place to suit external interests and the ambitions of local proxies.
The fall of Al-Fashir and the attempts by the Al-Dagalo clan to establish a parallel entity should not be read as merely a military event. They mark a strategic shift in the structure of the regional conflict and sound an alarm calling for reinforced national cohesion and a revival of the spirit of a central state that stands above ethnicity and regionalism.
Darfur is not a periphery; it is the deep heart of Sudan — part of its cultural and spiritual fabric. Without Darfur, the very meaning of Sudan as a unified, plural state unravels. Preserving Darfur’s unity is therefore tantamount to preserving Sudan itself.
Therefore, Commander Minni Arko Minawi must remain a vital political and field actor in this fraught moment — a key symbol of legitimate authority within the region. Dr Gibril Ibrahim, Commander Salah Rasas and Commander Tambour must also take leading roles on the military and political stages so that Darfur remains part of the national, not the regional, order.
At the same time, leadership in Port Sudan should grant the Darfur leaders in the Juba Agreement a clear mandate to manage external relations, so they can press Western states through diplomatic channels to halt the demographic change project and the settlement war.
The scenes of mass killing, displacement and exile are sufficient to indict the conscience of the West — which still chooses its victims according to calculations of interest, not standards of morality.
What is happening in Darfur cannot be countered by statements and political lamentations alone. It requires the establishment of a united national front that views the conflict through the lens of national security, not party disputes or narrow calculations.
My brother, Commander Minni Arko Minawi: we must rise above small sensitivities. We should provide you with full political and media cover — not because you are infallible, but because the historical moment demands solidarity that transcends individual egos.
The blood of the martyrs who fell in Al-Fashir — both among the joint forces and civilians — is today redefining the meaning of dignity and inscribing with their blood the map of a new Sudan; a Sudan that is not drawn on a table but carved on the rock of history.

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