In Sudan’s western region of Darfur, a place long synonymous with conflict, fears of another civil war are mounting.
Civilians have begun to arm themselves, residents and humanitarian organizations say, as they organize their own defense forces to protect themselves from attacks by rival tribes and the dreaded paramilitaries known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The RSF is currently embroiled in a violent power struggle with its former ally, the Sudanese military, resulting in a security vacuum that armed tribesmen are now exploiting.
“The security situation in Khartoum poses a major threat to the people of Darfur because there is no one around to control it. [Arab] militias,” says Ahmed Gouja, a local journalist and human rights monitor.
The developments have made locals and international observers tense. Some said they believe the current violence could turn into targeted communal violence, particularly in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state, which has seen fighting between Arab and non-Arab tribes for the past year.
Since Tuesday, residents of non-Arab tribes have said Arab tribes have been attacking non-Arabs, burning government shelters and camps for internally displaced persons to the ground.
The residents shared photos of the attacks, which Al Jazeera has been unable to verify.
Local government offices, central markets, hospitals, banks and warehouses of international humanitarian organizations have also been set on fire, looted or both while at least 96 persons are reportedly killed in the violence.
The local police, largely made up of non-Arabs, are overstaffed and poorly equipped, calling on members of their communities to arm and defend themselves.
Many have heeded the call by raiding the local police station in search of weapons, residents told Al Jazeera.
“If you don’t have a chance to run, you have to look for guns,” said Gouja.
‘Terrible precedents’
Since protests toppled Sudan’s former authoritarian leader, Omar al-Bashir, in 2019, El Geneina has regularly witnessed outbreaks of violence.
The Arab Rizeigat tribe in particular is at odds with the non-Arab Masalit as both compete for dwindling land and water resources.
The former has often retaliated with collective punishment against the Masalit to settle personal differences, residents and human rights organizations said.
In 2019, the murder of a Rizeigat man in the Krinding refugee camp, home to members of the Masalit tribe, sparked an attack by Arab fighters.
Survivors said a local commander in the RSF supplied the violence, which killed 72 people.
Less than two years later, Rizeigat gunmen again attacked camps for displaced Masalit people, killing at least 138 people, according to local medics.
A third major attack took place in the nearby town of Krenik in April 2022, killing at least 168 Masalit and displacing thousands.
With all eyes on the fighting between the RSF and the army in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, Rizeigat militias are moving to seize land and resources in Darfur, local and international observers warned.
“[Violence] certainly incorporates an ethnic dimension [El] Geneina, which is not surprising,” says Mathilde Vu of the Norwegian Refugee Council. “We have terrible precedents.”
“People don’t get caught [the] crossfire. They will be targeted,” she said.
Violence in Darfur could be exploited by the RSF and the military as both try to consolidate control over the entire country.
Even before the war, both sides had ramped up recruitment in Darfur, according to a recent report report on Sudan by a United Nations panel of experts.
Gouja said the RSF still arms — or sells — weapons to Arab tribes, but most people can buy their own weapons, which are smuggled in from Chad, the Central African Republic and Libya.
“There are open and widespread markets [where you] just need money [to buy weapons]’ he told Al Jazeera.
Bedour Zakaria, who lives in an internally displaced persons camp and documents human rights violations for a local observer, stressed that tensions between many Arab and non-Arab tribes date back to the brutal violence that ravaged the region two decades ago.
In 2003, al-Bashir and the army armed and recruited Arab nomads and pastoralists to fight mainly non-Arab armed groups, who rose up against the state, accusing it of neglect and exploitation.
An estimated 300,000 people died in that conflict, which lasted nearly 20 years.
Human rights groups accused both sides of committing war crimes, but according to Human Rights Watch, Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, were disproportionately responsible for leading mass slaughter and using rape as a weapon of war.
In 2013, many of those Arab militias were renamed the RSF, a force that continued to attack civilians, particularly non-Arabs, with impunity.
Now there is a fear that these communities are trying to settle scores.
“A lot of [non-Arabs] are ready to support the military [in this war] to take revenge on the RSF,” Zakaria told Al Jazeera.
Self defense?
In Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, civilians are also rushing to take up arms.
After heavy fighting between the army and RSF, many communities in the south of the city fear the latter will loot or take possession of their homes.
That has forced them to request weapons from the military, which has willingly distributed them.
“There is a lot of lawlessness and attacks, such as fires and looting,” said Mohamad Osman, a Sudan researcher for Human Rights Watch.
“One of the problems in dealing with the situation in Darfur is that there is no [international] monitoring [mechanism]and now that the UN and diplomats have been evacuated, things will become even more difficult [monitor the situation],” he said. “It aligns with the need for a ground monitoring agency that is safe.”
Nyala residents say the fighting there, unlike El Geneina, has not taken on an ethnic character, but that could soon change.
Mohamad el-Fatih Yousef, a journalist from Nyala for the local online news source Darfur24, said non-Arab tribes in the city had been bombed and killed by the army and Arab militias in 2003.
Two decades later, he believes the military is trying to outsource the fighting to some non-Arab communities seeking revenge against the RSF and their alleged supporters.
“In the days of al-Bashir, the army and the Arab tribes killed [non-Arabs] and drove them out,” Yousef said. “Now the army can take sides [non-Arab] tribes to target Arab.”