Seventeen months into a grueling civil war, Sudan’s army has initiated a major offensive in Khartoum, focusing on areas controlled by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), its main rival.
While the RSF took control of much of the capital early in the conflict, the military holds sway over Omdurman, the city across the Nile.
However, despite the ongoing violence, civilians still cross between the two sides. One such crossing leads to a market on the outskirts of Omdurman, where women from RSF-occupied Dar es Salaam travel for food. Their husbands remain at home, avoiding RSF fighters who reportedly subject men to violence, theft, or detentions for ransom.
Taking on the risks, the women explained their determination to feed their children, enduring the hardships of the journey for survival. “We need food,” one of them said, voicing the struggles they face daily. When asked if they feared for their safety, particularly regarding sexual violence, the group grew quiet before one woman passionately asked, “Where is the world? Why don’t you help us?”
Reports from civilians crossing between territories reveal a chaotic situation marked by looting, lawlessness, and brutality, all in a conflict that has forced over 10.5 million people to flee their homes. Although sexual violence has become a grim hallmark of this conflict, a recent UN fact-finding mission highlighted that most of these atrocities are attributed to the RSF and its allied militias.
One survivor recounted how RSF soldiers attempted to assault her daughters, with the woman offering herself instead to protect her children. Her story, like many others, paints a disturbing picture of the RSF’s actions despite their claims of enforcing measures to prevent such abuses. The accounts of widespread sexual violence highlight the ongoing human rights violations that have come to define the war in Sudan.
“We endure this hardship because we want to feed our children. We’re hungry, we need food,” said one.
I asked the women if they felt safer than the men in this war-torn environment. What about the threat of sexual violence?
The collective response fell into a sudden silence.
Then, one voice broke through.
“Where is the world? Why don’t you help us?” she said, her words coming out in torrents as tears ran down her cheeks.
“There are so many women here who’ve been violated, but they don’t talk about it. What difference would it make anyway?”
“Some girls, the RSF make them lie in the streets at night,” she went on. “If they come back late from this market, the RSF keeps them for five or six days.”
While she spoke, her mother sat beside her, head resting in her hand, quietly weeping. The sight moved other women around them to tears as well.
“You in your world, if your child went out, would you leave her?” she demanded. “Wouldn’t you go look for her? But tell us, what can we do? Nothing is in our hands, no one cares for us. Where is the world? Why don’t you help us!”
The crossing point was a window into a world of desperation and despair.
Travellers described being subjected to lawlessness, looting and brutality in a conflict that the UN says has forced more than 10.5 million people to flee their homes.
But it is sexual violence that has become a defining characteristic of the protracted conflict, which started as a power struggle between the army and the RSF but has since drawn in local armed groups and fighters from neighbouring countries.
The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, has said rape is being used as “a weapon of war”.
A recent UN fact-finding mission documented several cases of rape and rape threats from members of the army, but found that large-scale sexual violence was committed by the RSF and its allied militias, and amounted to violations of international law.
One woman the BBC spoke to blamed the RSF for raping her.
We met her in the market at the crossing, aptly named Souk al-Har – the Heat Market.
Since the war began the market has expanded across the barren land on a desert road out of Omdurman, attracting the poorest of the poor with its low prices.
Miriam, not her real name, had fled her home in Dar es Salaam to take refuge with her brother.
She now works in a tea stall. But early in the war, she said, two armed men entered her house and tried to rape her daughters – one 17 years old and the other 10.
“I told the girls to stay behind me and I said to the RSF: ‘If you want to rape anyone it has to be me,’” she said.
“They hit me and ordered me to take off my clothes. Before I took them off, I told my girls to leave. They took the other children and jumped over the fence. Then one of the men laid on me.”
their bodies, and their elder brother locked in one of the rooms.
ChatGPT said:
ChatGPT
The RSF has informed international investigators that it has implemented all essential measures to avert sexual violence and other forms of human rights violations.
Despite these claims, reports of sexual assaults are extensive and consistent, indicating a significant and enduring impact on the victims.
In a shaded area beneath a row of trees, Fatima, a pseudonym for her real name, shared that she had arrived in Omdurman to give birth to twins and intended to remain in the area.
She mentioned that one of her neighbors, a 15-year-old girl, also became pregnant after she and her 17-year-old sister were raped by four soldiers from the RSF.
Fatima recounted how screams pierced the night, prompting locals to investigate, but the armed men threatened them, insisting they return to their homes or face death.
The following morning, the community discovered both girls showing visible signs of abuse, while their elder brother was found locked awa
“During the war, since the RSF arrived, immediately we started hearing of rapes, until we saw it right in front of us in our neighbours,” Fatima said. “Initially we had doubts [about the reports] but we know that it’s the RSF who raped the girls.”
The other women are gathering to begin the trek back home to areas controlled by the RSF – they are too poor, they say, to start a new life like Miriam has done by leaving Dar es Salaam.
For as long as this war goes on, they have no choice but to return to its horrors.
