Why El Fasher?

Dr Inas Mohamed Ahmed
The brutal terrorist militia continues to target El Fasher with a relentless stream of attacks. Systematic, sustained bombardment is still claiming the lives of innocent civilians, and the question remains:
Why does the terrorist militia insist on continuing its assaults on El Fasher? Why has it imposed a cruel and deadly siege lasting nearly sixteen months?
Why has the murderous militia ignored calls from international and regional organisations to lift the siege or allow safe corridors for humanitarian aid? Why has it disregarded UN Security Council resolutions?
The answer may lie in El Fasher’s importance as a city with a distinctive geographical location, positioned at an international crossroads between Chad, Egypt, and Libya. This makes it easier for military and logistical supplies, as well as mercenaries from eastern Libya, to reach militia positions. Such logistical support boosts the militia’s morale, thereby prolonging the war, death, and the draining of the entire Sudanese nation.
Targeting El Fasher poses a threat to Northern State, River Nile State, Greater Kordofan, and Eastern Sudan. That is why the militia clings to its assaults on the city—yet each time, it suffers crushing defeats at the hands of the Armed Forces, joint forces, and mobilised tribal fighters, by God’s grace and their steadfast determination.
On another level, the states that have aided, supported, and armed the terrorist militia in its war against the Sudanese people now demand a “price” for the money, mercenaries, and weapons they have provided. Their eyes are on El Fasher and Darfur, with its wealth of minerals and natural resources.
Meanwhile, the militia’s indiscriminate and intensive shelling of El Fasher is intended to target civilians—killing them or forcing them out—to ease its control of the city and expand the territory under its grip. Its aim is to “establish” a regional base for its so-called “virtual government,” using this to compensate for its humiliating battlefield defeats and to pressure for negotiations with the Sudanese government, thereby regaining a political role. Did the terrorist militia not even use the term “establishment” in its recent drone attacks on the capital, Khartoum? Why, indeed? Those drones—Chinese-made (FH-95)—were purchased for the terrorist militia by the so-called “statelet of evil.”
Internationally, militia control of El Fasher would transform Darfur into a hub for mercenaries, undermining the security and stability of the region, spreading chaos and armed conflict to many neighbouring states already struggling with fragile political conditions, and threatening their very systems of governance.
Only days ago, Sudan’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations filed an official complaint, backed with new documents and evidence, detailing the UAE’s involvement in recruiting mercenaries. Between 350 and 380 mercenaries, most of them retired Colombian soldiers, were recruited to support the militia in carrying out terrorist operations in Sudan. They were flown from the UAE to Bosaso in Somalia, then on to Benghazi in Libya, before entering Sudan via Chad to join the rebel forces. Now do you see why the militia is so determined to take El Fasher?
Ambassador Al-Harith Idris, in his address to the Security Council, explained that the first group of Colombian mercenaries—172 men—arrived in El Fasher in November 2024, followed by successive contingents. Among the evidence, he noted, were detailed training manuals prepared by the mercenaries for the militia, covering urban warfare, open-field combat tactics, and the use of heavy weaponry.
These mercenaries are directly involved in the siege of El Fasher and the bombardment of its civilians. They have recruited and trained children under the age of 12 to fight, and have used munitions containing white phosphorus—a substance banned in civilian areas due to its devastating effects—contrary to Protocol III (on incendiary weapons) of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, concluded in Geneva on 10 October 1980 and in force since December 1983.
Child soldier recruitment is an international crime, violating the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict (25 May 2000). The use of white phosphorus against civilians is an international crime. The financing and deployment of mercenaries to violate another state’s sovereignty is an international crime. Besieging civilians and using starvation as a weapon of war is an international crime under Additional Protocol II to the 1977 Geneva Conventions, which prohibits starvation as a method of warfare.
Yet in all this, the silence of the world over what the UAE is doing against the Sudanese people is itself a crime against humanity. The UAE’s actions are the primary reason this war is being prolonged, for the destruction of Sudan’s vital infrastructure, and for the humanitarian catastrophe in El Fasher—whether by starvation or bombardment. They are the reason children in El Fasher are dying of acute malnutrition. They are the reason the militia is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Sudanese people. They are the reason for the bleeding of Sudan’s national economy, the displacement and refuge of millions, and the theft and looting of their wealth and possessions.
But all of this will never break the will of a people who have taught nations the meaning of resilience and steadfastness. The Armed Forces, joint forces, and mobilised fighters, backed by their great people with an unshakeable will to live, will prevail. Justice will return to its rightful owners—even if only after a while, God willing.
O Lord, deal with the terrorist militia and those who aided, supported, and stood by it, for they are not beyond Your reach.

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