Concealed sieges: Sexual violence in Sudan’s war

Obtaining clear information about the sexual violations committed against women in Sudan’s current war was not easy. Many stories remain trapped beneath the rubble of Khartoum’s destroyed buildings, mingled with the bloodshed, after four-wheel-drive vehicles stormed in from Um Dafoug and the valleys of Darb al-Arbaeen, loaded with gear and men masked in their now-signature "kadmul” desert mask.

After nearly three years of brewing tensions, war broke out in Sudan on April 15, 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo “Hemedti.” The RSF aimed to seize key positions from the military, while the latter sought to drive them out of their strongholds. Violent battles tore through residential areas in the capital of Khartoum. For over 18 months, killing, kidnapping, looting, and occupying homes and hospitals have become daily realities for many Sudanese, both in the capital and beyond.

Sexual violence surfaced from the very first day of the war. The crisis gained wider attention in mid-June 2023, when CNN released a video with proof that an RSF soldier, identifiable by his uniform, was raping a girl on a rooftop in Khartoum while another soldier in the same uniform stood below. As displaced people reached neighboring countries and were able to report their experiences, field teams from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees documented violations against civilians, including sexual assaults. At least 53 women had been subjected to sexual violence since the war began, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported.

In parallel to the developments in Khartoum, Darfur and South Kordofan were engulfed in intense fighting, during which women were kidnapped and subjected to various forms of sexual violence based on their ethnic affiliations or the villages and areas they came from. This reignited bitter memories etched in the minds of the Sudanese, particularly vivid recollections of Darfur.

Amid feminist calls for action to protect women in Sudan, the unit on Combating Violence Against Women estimated that the confirmed cases of rape represent only about two percent of what has actually been committed.

Despite the challenges posed by displacement and a breakdown in communications, Mada Masr managed to interview 12 women, some of whom had experienced attempted rape while others had witnessed rape incidents. These interviews were conducted over phone calls, each lasting about fifteen minutes. The women declined to allow any recording of the conversations and, out of fear of being suspected and interrogated by military intelligence — which investigates those fleeing from RSF-controlled areas — several also refused face-to-face interviews. They were concerned about the stigma from relatives, neighbors, or host communities. Mada Masr also tried to contact survivors in neighboring countries that saw a significant influx of Sudanese after the war broke out. However, those contacted reported receiving death threats from the RSF if they spoke out or gave interviews about their experiences or what they had witnessed. For their safety, we did not meet with them, and we refrain from naming the city to which they have fled. In an effort to build a fuller picture of the situation, Mada Masr also reached out to sources within the RSF, residents of areas affected by the war, and workers from civil society organizations.

The information that Mada Masr has gathered, despite the numerous obstacles, challenge a prevailing belief that all women stand at the same distance from sexual violence amid the chaos of war, as if they are all equally exposed to the same degrees and forms of danger. However, while war represents the peak of a conflict’s violence, it is certainly not its starting point, but rather a later stage in a sequence that paved the way for its eruption. This sequence carried the components of war — their strengths and vulnerabilities — which have gradually formed over the years.

Women in Sudan, like women everywhere, are not detached from the histories of their country, communities, and everything they belong to by their very existence. Their tribal, ethnic, and class affiliations, along with their geographical locations, shape how they cope with the reality of sexual violence in the context of war and the events leading up to it. Over decades, women have occupied diverse positions within Sudan's fabric, all engaging with a ruling system that employs every available tool — legal, police, media, political, and institutional — to impose its vision of what the Sudanese woman should be. In doing so, "[many of them] have always lived on the margins, the margins of cities, the margins of the state, and the margins of life," according to feminist writer Roya Hassan.

Over the same decades, the rise of the RSF and its nucleus, the Janjaweed, within Sudan’s economic, political, and social power structures has been part of a reality for women besieged in their lives on the margins. This ascent could only happen through the Janjaweed’s movement within the existing power networks. They had to first establish their dominance on the margins of Sudan, in Darfur, to position themselves as a counter-insurgency force employed by Bashir’s regime to maintain its own power. As they sought to rise from the margins, at the expense of those existing there, the Janjaweed employed tactics that the RSF continues to use in the current war, including sexual violence.

This report brings the margins to the center through attempting to understand the complexities of women’s realities by seeing them in their entirety: as beings whose intricate lives cannot be reduced to a single moment. Rather, they interact with present developments using coping strategies they developed in the past. In this pursuit, this report examines the contexts of some narratives that have come to us from the Khartoum and Gezira states about incidents of sexual violence between April 15 and December 2023. Although much remains untold, the contexts of these narratives reveal how pre-war realities shaped women's choices during the war and their ability to respond to the evolving violence.

All fingers point to the RSF

"In emergency, displacement, and asylum settings, women are exposed to all kinds of risks,” Suleima Ishaq, the director of the Unit on Combating Violence Against Women in Sudan, tells Mada Masr. While the majority of documented sexual violations so far have been committed by the RSF, there are some cases that involved the military, according to a report issued by Human Rights Watch in July 2024.

Although "sexual assaults are committed by all parties, the RSF systematically use sexual violence as a weapon of war,” Ishaq says. “If the war drags on, who will protect women from the RSF? This question needs an answer, especially given the lack of information in some areas, as well as the collapse of the healthcare system, which has resulted in the absence of accurate information or measures to document the recorded crimes," she adds.

After several attempts to contact the Committee to Combat Negative Phenomena within the RSF to inquire about the sexual crimes committed against women amid the war, Mada Masr received a message stating that the RSF are a victim of the "military’s media" and "the remnants of the former regime," categorically denying these allegations. The message also said that the committee is currently investigating a number of incidents that do not include any recorded cases of rape. However, sources within the RSF speaking to Mada Masr tell a different story as to why sexual assault has become rampant in RSF-controlled areas. 

After being institutionalized and restructured by Bashir’s presidential decree in 2013, the Janjaweed took on the official guise of the RSF, deployed — under a formal mandate this time — to suppress any form of protest against Sudan’s unequal distribution of wealth or power. Whether it was breaking up peaceful protests against subsidy cuts or committing widespread war crimes under the banner of "counter-insurgency" in Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile, the RSF remained a common denominator and a heavily deployed military force used by Bashir to secure his rule. The RSF also served to maintain regional and international relations, participating in proxy warfare in Yemen, and securing the Sudan-Libya border on behalf of the European Union with its direct support.

In April 2019, following Bashir’s ousting, the military council was formed, with the RSF included and Hemedti appointed as its vice president, later assuming the same role in the Transitional Sovereignty Council. The RSF was tasked with securing the Sudanese capital, and Hemedti called on thousands of fighters from border regions to reinforce Khartoum. “Following the massacre during the General Command sit-in dispersal, the RSF leadership was eager to polish its image for the cameras, capitalizing on civilians who appeared widely in the media," an RSF member assigned from the Sudanese General Intelligence Service says to Mada Masr. However, as recruitment surged — military sources tell Mada Masr that the RSF enlisted around 120,000 soldiers in just three years (2019-2022) — the forces lacked military discipline.

Before the war in Khartoum began, recruitment into the RSF was based on sending new recruits to fight in Yemen, the General Intelligence Service member assigned to the RSF says, adding that, for many young recruits, going to Yemen offered the prospect of improving their financial situations through the money they would earn for participating in the war.

However, when the war broke out in Khartoum and the military managed to repel heavy attacks on its units, the RSF found it necessary to call up more infantry soldiers, a former military source assigned to the RSF says to Mada Masr. These young men's social connections with the Rapid Support Forces leaders from the Rizeigat tribe served as a gateway for them to join, the source adds, with war becoming a means to acquire wealth by looting civilians' properties, money, and vehicles. Their military nature was shaped by the environment from which they came, the source says, with noticeable similarities between the violence committed against civilians in Darfur and what is currently happening in Khartoum, as the RSF continues to operate with an "invasion" and violation mindset.

“Some military police soldiers realized that as the war continued, more troops would be brought into Khartoum State, which in turn means that amateurs would enter the battlefield. These are not trained forces that are able to receive clear and specific military instructions,” an RSF military police soldier who served in various areas in Khartoum State tells Mada Masr. “Initially, military orders were issued to [RSF] soldiers not to target civilians or anything connected to residents. There is only one target — the military, and nothing else,” the source says. However, after being hit by military airstrikes, the RSF failed to capture military positions, and their forces were scattered. There was no longer a central command to manage the small details or oversee the soldiers’ daily conduct, according to the source. These factors led to the spread of looting and theft among the soldiers, with the forces shifting to occupying homes as a military tactic. They were neither condemned nor stopped by their leadership, the source says.

From this point, things began to spiral out of control. “The orders were clear [for us] as military police: violations had to be cut back and completely prevented,” the soldier says. “But with the increase of amateurs and mobilized fighters, we could no longer confront them, as they are coming for spoils and money. So, we gave up on trying to stop them and limited ourselves to minor roles, assisting citizens in some areas where we were stationed.”

The soldier confirms that various cases of rape had occurred, with most of the victims being domestic workers or refugees from neighboring countries. When asked about the number of cases, he said it was not as massive as portrayed in the media, describing it as a small, countable number, although he did not disclose the figures. The source also says that they had identified neighborhoods in Khartoum State where rape cases have occurred.

The city’s margins in the prelude to war

For decades, as the RSF gained increasing power and influence in Sudan's governance, women’s lives were impacted by the militarization of cities, economic policies that undermine their communities, and a national system that reinforced the legacy of colonialism. This system imposed an Arab-Islamic identity that dominated Sudan’s center, favoring it by monopolizing resources. Meanwhile, it also imposed an African identity but pushed it to the margins, and what it got from the central administration was only efforts to eradicate its "insurgency.” Tensions continued to weave together the reality of the capital’s three cities with their margins. Although Khartoum itself was untouched by the previous wars across the rest of Sudan, it was a reflection of war’s ramifications, as it served as a major destination for the displaced.

Before the outbreak of the war, the RSF established a military presence on Siteen Street, a main street that runs southward, intersecting with Madani Street and connecting eastern Khartoum to the Southern Belt. The Southern Belt, once an agricultural belt on the southern outskirts of Khartoum, has over the years become a refuge for people internally displaced by previous conflicts in Darfur, Kordofan, and the Blue Nile region. Many refugees from South Sudan and farmers from various regions who lost their lands also settled there. Various areas in the Southern Belt have suffered from systematic marginalization and neglect. Because many of its residents belong to non-"Arab" ethnicities, it became the target of attacks and disdain by some figures of the Bashir regime, who referred to it as the "black belt."

Layla al-Taher, who sells tea on Siteen Street, lived in Azhari, within the Southern belt. Layla is one of tens of thousands of women who earn a living selling tea and food in Sudan — tea ladies, as they are known. This profession emerged as one of the main sources of income for many women who lost their husbands to war and became their families’ primary breadwinners. Most were displaced to Khartoum, but the city did not offer them job opportunities. Over time, younger women joined the ranks of tea ladies in search of income.

Tea ladies were not spared harassment from local authorities. Campaigns, officially referred to as "market organization" but popularly known as "kasha,” targeted these women, confiscating their work tools, detaining them, and imposing fines for working without permits. On top of this, tea ladies have faced moral stigmatization, stemming from suspicions that they are either sex workers and/or deal in alcohol or drugs.

Due to the location of her residence and the nature of her work, Layla became the target of continuous accusations and criminalization. On one hand, the neighborhood where she lived was always targeted by police security campaigns. On the other hand, women in her line of work were pursued not only by local authorities but also by community security police, who saw preventing some of them from working as a “means of preserving the capital’s civilized appearance.”

Selling tea, Layla had regular interactions with all formal units, whether military soldiers, police officers, or the Sudanese police’s central reserve forces, known as the Abu Taira forces. Her Nuba tribal background shared with military soldiers facilitated communication with them, as they spoke the same language. As for the police, Layla says, "We are in constant enmity, but in the end, they are customers. When they come to us in uniform, we don’t treat them badly."

Layla began to interact with RSF soldiers while they were stationed on Siteen Street, as she sold them tea. She says that, initially, they were generous, often leaving her tips. However, over time, they started to harass her, especially when she worked late at night, using racist slurs and asking her for sex. Layla refused, but she could not stand up to them due to their influence, which forced her to relocate her work area.

Compared to other areas in Khartoum, tea ladies on Siteen Street had relatively better incomes. Yet, before Ramadan, and amid successive inflation waves that struck Sudan before the war, Layla was forced to move.

Once a “destination for evening strollers in Khartoum,” the street has transformed into what Narman, another tea seller, describes as a “military barrack.” Narman and Layla share not only their profession in the same area but also hail from the same area of Sudan.

"Before 2018, we were used to dealing with all forms of military attire. They were all visitors wanting free tea and coffee,” Narman tells Mada Masr. “But with the outbreak of protests, riot police often stationed themselves on Siteen Street and it was constantly closed off, leading to its gradual transformation."

The day that marked the Sudanese revolution’s victory became a turning point for Siteen Street. After Bashir’s fall, new visitors from outside Khartoum arrived, identifiable by their distinct uniforms and language. They paid for what they bought and committed to their usual spots near their cars, Narman says. Initially, "we preferred the RSF soldiers over other troops, because they spent a lot of money," she says.

Yet, these new arrivals soon became heavy guests. With Hemedti’s rise in the public scene, "the RSF soldiers’ faces transformed from boys to older men of diverse features and dialects. Still, some of them were from Darfur’s Arab tribes. They ordered the youth to move and did not hesitate to intimidate those who appeared impoverished, repeatedly saying 'the slaves have no master here,' referring to those with dark skin and Nuba individuals. They criticized the presence of women on the street, yet they did not refrain from soliciting sex from us,” Narman tells Mada Masr, “and they often ordered us to stop selling tea."

The RSF stood guard to disperse all demonstrations on Siteen Street in the period leading up to the National Initiative agreement between Hamdok and Burhan on November 21, 2021. After the agreement was signed, "their deployment along the street completely changed its character. They set up checkpoints and barriers, restricting our work in certain parts of it. Then we learned that Abdel Rahim Dagalo, [Hemedti's brother and RSF deputy commander], had a house near the street," Narman says.

Just a few months before the outbreak of war, in early 2023, RSF intelligence operatives began to patrol Siteen Street during the day, especially at the intersections. They were on the lookout for certain individuals, particularly those who appeared impoverished and belonged to certain ethnicities. RSF soldiers ordered tea ladies on Siteen Street to stop selling tea and clear the street by 7 pm. However, Narman continued to sell tea and coffee until Siteen Street was overtaken by war.

The war broke out in Khartoum in mid-Ramadan, a season when the earnings of tea ladies, who rely on day-to-day income, typically decline, according to Awadiya Koko, head of the Women Food and Tea Sellers Cooperative, speaking to Sky News Arabia. However, with the onset of the war, tea ladies lost their workplaces — the streets. Some remained in Khartoum, in RSF-controlled areas, and continued working despite the dangers. With rising transport costs to leave Khartoum, and while the majority of its residents were displaced, 20 to 30 percent of the population remained in the state, according to estimates by the head of the Médecins Sans Frontières mission in Sudan in March. Some tea women were displaced to areas later affected by the war, while others moved to regions beyond the reach of civil society organizations and international relief agencies. There are currently no estimates available of the number of tea women who have been subjected to sexual assault since the war began.

The elite of Kafouri and their domestic workers

Kafouri, a neighborhood in the city of Bahri — one of the cities that make up the capital — is considered one of Kharotum’s most upscale areas. Its prestige has grown since the early 2000s, with luxurious buildings and villas overlooking the Nile, housing families of authority figures, senior state employees, prominent businessmen, and other affluent individuals. As the RSF’s presence in Khartoum surged, especially in the 2010s, some of its leaders began settling in Kafouri. Their numbers — both as residents in Kafouri in particular and as soldiers deployed in Khartoum in general — increased following the enactment of the RSF law in January 2017, establishing it as an autonomous force under the Sudanese Armed Forces.

Although Kafouri is situated on the outskirts of the capital, distancing itself from the congestion and noise of the city center, domestic workers who live in the homes of the neighborhood’s elite are at the core of the city’s daily life. 

The 2000s brought a temporary economic boom to Sudan, driven by oil investments, which then heightened the demand for domestic labor among affluent Sudanese families. Ethiopian laborers, many of whom had moved to Sudan due to famine or war in their country or as a transit point, became a primary source of labor to meet the rising demand for paid domestic workers in Khartoum. 

However, at the core of this cross-border movement, the majority of Ethiopians in Sudan remain undocumented. In search of job opportunities, those wishing to travel coordinate with brokers, who use their networks in border villages in Ethiopia and Sudan to facilitate migration. A broker in Khartoum might assist Ethiopian women migrants in finding work, but it is also the brokers themselves who negotiate the women’s wages with employers. If the migrant has paid all her transit costs, her relationship with the broker ends at this point. If not, she remains indebted to the broker, who collects either a portion or all of her monthly salary. In many cases, once employed, she may be restricted from leaving the employer's house without permission.

At the beginning of the war on April 15, RSF forces stormed homes in some areas of Kafouri to use them as hideouts, according to Ali al-Siddig, a Kafouri resident who kept in contact with some domestic workers in the neighborhood after fleeing. As the armed forces attempted to expel the RSF from their positions, Kafouri became a battleground between military aircraft and RSF ground-based anti-aircraft defenses.

Over time, Siddig says to Mada Masr, and as the bombardment continued, RSF soldiers fully occupied the homes. This violated military orders issued by their leadership at the start of the war, which instructed them not to harm civilians or their property. 

However, after adopting home occupation as a military tactic, the soldiers faced no disapproval or intervention from their leaders, according to the military police soldier in the RSF.

In this context, Kafouri residents heard of incidents of sexual assaults on domestic workers in Kafouri’s Block 3. During intermittent ceasefires between the armed forces and the RSF in the fourth week of April, residents were able to negotiate with some RSF officers to allow them to evacuate their families from the neighborhood without harm. Siddig adds that by the end of April, only Ethiopian domestic workers remained in the homes.

Dalal* was one of these workers. She stayed in Khartoum, hoping the war wouldn't last long. Dalal used to receive her salary annually, at the start of her vacation, when she would return to Ethiopia, a member of the family she worked for who lived in Block 6 of Kafouri, tells Mada Masr. This time, however, returning to Ethiopia was not a safe option. Tensions between the Amhara militias and the central government in Ethiopia had been rising since April 2023, eventually escalating into war. Dalal decided to stay in Khartoum, the family member says, and some of her relatives joined her in Kafouri. As the fighting intensified in the neighborhood, the family Dalal worked for left it, leaving her and her relatives behind. Later, the family learned that RSF soldiers had kidnapped Dalal and returned her after a while. During her captivity, Dalal was forced to carry out household chores in the home of an RSF field commander, while his personal guards sexually assaulted her. Over time, the household tasks stopped, but the sexual abuse by the guards continued.

According to Siddig, Dalal was not the only one who experienced this. Other Ethiopian domestic workers were also raped, and some were forced into sexual servitude.

Negotiation paths for “protection”

As the war continued and expanded, many were forced to flee to parts of Sudan that had not yet been engulfed by the conflict. A large number of displaced people moved from western Sudan and Khartoum toward Gezira State in central Sudan. Gezira’s history made it a likely destination for the displaced, as the British occupation established the largest cotton farming project there and developed a network of roads and transport to facilitate movement to and from it. While these roads provided an escape route for those traveling between the cities and villages of Darfur, Kordofan, and Gezira, they also became sites for many sexual violence incidents against displaced women, according to Hala al-Karib, the regional director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA), which has published 30 reports on the conditions of women and human rights in Sudan since the beginning of the war.

Speaking to Mada Masr, Karib says that on travel routes, women coming from the cities of Khartoum, Bahri, and Wad Madani, as well as from central Sudan and the Nuba Mountains, were sometimes forced to exit the vehicles they were in and were subsequently assaulted. In some cases, rapes occurred within public transportation, often in full view of other travelers.

However, in cases reported to Mada Masr from Khartoum, some women were able to avoid this fate while on the move.

Since May 2023, the Fatihab area in western Omdurman has been under siege by the RSF. There, Shaimaa Adam lived in the Quarters neighborhood, the largest in Fatihab. Speaking to Mada Masr, Adam says that before she and her family left the neighborhood, she managed to deliver emergency contraceptive pills to some workers near her home. While she was carrying out this task, she learned that two women had been raped twice by RSF soldiers, with the second incident accompanied by the occupation and looting of their homes. After hearing about the sexual assaults on domestic workers and tea ladies in the neighborhood, Adam says her family decided to leave for northern Omdurman. Her brothers negotiated with some RSF soldiers to pay a sum of money in exchange for their safe exit. The family was able to leave unharmed.

While paying a sum of money served as a negotiation tool for protection, family origins also played a role in other instances. In the Safia neighborhood in northern Bahri, after water and electricity were cut off and thefts occurred in the area, Hanaa’s* family decided to leave on May 4, 2023, along with some of her female relatives who were students. As they traveled along Maouna road, which connects northern and southern Bahri, Hanaa says that their vehicle was stopped at an RSF checkpoints. The family was ordered out of the car and the men were separated from the women. While the men were interrogated, some soldiers attempted to take her female relatives to another location. The family men pleaded with the soldiers and informed them of their family’s origin. After consulting among themselves, the soldiers apologized and an RSF soldier escorted the family until they reached an area close to the military-controlled zones.

"[In Sudan], the further down you are in the social hierarchy, the more violence you face," a young man from the Rizeigat tribe says, speaking to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity. "For example, there is enmity between the Mahariya clan, to which Hemedti belongs, and the Mahamid clan, of Moussa Hilal. However, a 'Mahari' would not be raped by a 'Mahamid' or vice versa. But this doesn’t apply to African tribes, like the Fur and Masalit.” The Fur and Masalit tribes, along with the Mahariya and Mahamid clans of the Rizeigat tribe, live in the Darfur region. These three tribes, their clans, and other tribes are connected by historical conflicts and sometimes alliances. In the early 2000s, the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa tribes formed the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), which opposed central rule in Sudan and advocated for a federal system as a better way to manage the country’s resources amid its cultural, ethnic, and religious diversity. The Mahariya and Mahamid clans of the Rizeigat tribe formed the leadership of the Janjaweed, the RSF’s nucleus. The Janjaweed was Bashir’s main arm in fighting rebel movements in Darfur, including the SLM, between 2003 and 2006 in what is known as the Darfur genocide, marked by widespread looting, property seizure, and the killing and rape of people of non-“Arab” descent in Darfur. However, tensions between Hilal and Bashir's government started to surface in 2013 and culminated in 2014, when Hilal refused to integrate his forces into the RSF. The conflict led to his arrest in 2017 after clashes between his forces and the RSF.

"What the RSF are doing in Khartoum and Gezira [in the current war] is a blind imitation of what happened in Darfur by those who joined the RSF," the Rizeigat youth says, acknowledging the hostile attitude toward men and women with features or skin color classified as non-“Arab” or those from areas where non-“Arab” ethnicities and tribes are concentrated. “This is what the Darfur war brought about,” he adds. “However, [the difference is that] the conflict in Darfur is historical. There is widespread hostility among the Arab components there, and there have been long-standing hostilities between Arab and African components for decades."

The RSF are aware of Sudan’s tribal power map and operate accordingly. Therefore, they may avoid clashing with certain tribal formations, according to Mona Mahgoub*, a worker in a civil society organization in Sennar State, speaking to Mada Masr. While this may provide a degree of protection for women from some clans and tribes, she says, women on the margins are left far more vulnerable to rape and sexual assaults. Often, they are also exploited for caregiving tasks, whether it is domestic work in RSF-occupied homes or cleaning duties and nursing care for the RSF-affiliated injured.

Before the RSF entered Gezira on December 18, 2023, some religious leaders from the state met with Abu Agla Keikal, Gezira’s highest-ranking RSF leader. They demanded that, should his forces enter the strategic state, he safeguard the "honor" and property of the residents. However, with the sudden withdrawal of the armed forces’ First Infantry Division from Wad Madani, the state’s capital, the RSF’s entry came without resistance. Their arrival was marked by assaults on civilians, including multiple instances of rape. After collecting testimonies from individuals newly displaced from Gezira State and western Sennar and cross-referencing them with others already collected within Gezira and western Sennar and verified social media accounts, SIHA issued a detailed report on the events in Gezira State. And, according to the latest count provided by the initiative’s director in July 2024, out of the 250 sexual assaults documented by SIHA, 75 occurred in Gezira alone.

Mada Masr managed to document some methods the people of Gezira used to respond to the RSF’s actions. These ranged from strongly worded public statements to attempts to reach out to leaders of tribes to which some of the soldiers are affiliated, as well as arranging marriages between women from Gezira villages and RSF soldiers. 

Less than a week after the RSF took control of Gezira, the Kawahla tribe issued a strongly worded statement warning Keikal against dragging the tribe into a war with the RSF. The Kawahla, one of Sudan’s largest tribes of “Arab” origins, have a significant presence throughout Gezira, though they are predominantly concentrated in its eastern region. In their statement, they demanded that Keikal take firm measures against his soldiers’ misconduct to protect property and "honor."

Among the incidents mentioned in the statement was the RSF’s incursion into villages south of Gezira, where they intimidated citizens and looted property and vehicles. In addition to the Kawahla's statement, the Ansar Affairs Authority also condemned the RSF’s failure to adhere to agreements made with local committees to avoid attacking their areas. Sudan’s local governance system, one of the oldest and most entrenched, relies on tribal leaders — the local community’s notables, mayors, and elders — to manage regions and administrative units according to customs and traditions.

The RSF are well aware of the social dynamics and customs that govern Sudanese society, the chief of Gezira’s eastern regions tells Mada Masr. His understanding of these dynamics led him to inquire about the origins of the [soldiers who arrived in eastern Gezira] to determine their tribal affiliations, he says. "Through our connections, we found out where they are from and who their mayor is and we contacted him,” he says. “[Their mayor] warned them against stirring up any trouble with us, telling them they need to deal with us [cautiously] and provide protection from any criminal or rogue elements."

In some remote villages of Gezira, far from major cities, local leaders arranged marriages between village women and RSF soldiers as a precaution against rape in their areas, according to a notable in one of Gezira’s villages speaking to Mada Masr.

This was driven by a desire among the families’ men to "protect their women from the RSF, who commit violations in villages and seek to humiliate the men," he says. While these marriages have provided some level of protection to women in these villages, the notable says, some women refused these unions. For them, such marriages would implicate them with soldiers who couldn’t stay in the village for more than a few days, the notable says, and at the same time, they wouldn’t be able to accompany the soldiers to Khartoum or other areas they attacked.

Seventeen-year-old Saadiyya, who lived in a village in eastern Gezira with her family and seven siblings, was one of the women who were subjected to these forced marriages, Tahani al-Reeh, a relative of Saadiyya, tells Mada Masr.

Despite being aware that the RSF was besieging neighboring villages and their knowledge of the raids, looting, and sexual assaults, the residents of Saadiyya’s village were unable to escape. The harvest season had yet to arrive, leaving most without the cash needed to move. When the RSF laid siege to Saadiyya’s village, the elders and some notable figures in the village negotiated with the field commanders of the besieging forces. In exchange for handing over their money, gold, and vehicles, they were able to keep their weapons and the RSF would not enter the village, Tahani says.

After the agreement was finalized, Abu Agla Keikel, the RSF commander in Gezira State, arrived in the village from Wad Madani. In a speech to the villagers, Keikel praised them for “setting an example in cooperation” and proposed a kinship alliance. During the week he granted the village chief to respond to his proposal, the community divided between those opposed and those in favor but under specific conditions. Supporters believed that forming this kinship would offer them protection and a chance to reclaim what had been looted. “The village chief did not force his opinion at the time. He simply said that those in favor of Keikel’s proposal would be the ones who would offer their daughters for marriage,” Tahani adds.

As the week came to an end, RSF field commanders came to the village to finalize the marriage. By that point, some supporters expressed hesitation, prompting the village chief to order immediate acceptance and warn that failure to comply could lead to disastrous consequences. The choice then fell on Saadiyya, Tahani says.

"While preparing for her wedding, Saadiya felt neither happy nor sad. She repeated only one phrase: 'Everything is destined, and I accept God's will,'" Tahani recalls. The wedding, along with the following morning’s congratulatory visits, shifted the villagers' stance toward the RSF. The celebration extended beyond the ceremony, as soldiers brought livestock and trucks loaded with food to the village. After the groom presented Saadiyya’s father with money and gold, he pledged to be a “great support for the villagers.”

Saadiyya traveled to Wad Madani with her husband, but his cousins soon brought her back to her village. After her husband was killed in combat on the southern Gezira front, none of his cousins were willing to marry her, believing she brought bad luck. So, she was sent back to the village.

“Three weeks after her return,” Tahani continues, “RSF soldiers stormed the village, seizing everything they had previously brought, including the gold Saadiyya’s husband gave to her father. We learned from the raiding forces that they weren’t from Abu Agla Keikal’s group, who had married into our community, but rather from Commander Galha’s faction, which controlled the eastern and northern parts of Gezira. They also told us that we had to pay a price for their protection.”

An endless nightmare

"The situation in Sudan is like an endless nightmare," Karib, SIHA’s regional director, says. "We are now receiving more cases of sexual violence from the city of Singa and rural Sennar.” Karib says that while the RSF uses civilians as tools in their war against the military, the latter fails to carry out its role in protecting civilians.

Amid this ongoing situation, women, their families, and their communities all live under constant threat. "Rape has been part of the RSF’s strategy in the war. They deliberately rape women in front of their families and communities and within their homes, leaving them with no place to seek refuge,” Sudanese journalist and blogger Iman Kamal Eddin tells Mada Masr.

“The RSF are the worst version of a patriarchal system." Women are bearing the brunt of this war, facing killings, displacement, and loss of the head of the family, Kamal Eddin says. “During one of my trips, I met a doctor who was selling her gold earrings to feed her children. She is a doctor. Imagine how it is for a tea lady or a domestic worker.”

 

*pseudonyms