Sudan Nashra: ICC convicts 2003 Darfur war criminal | Food crisis worsens after floods amid inaction by Idris govt | RSF, military face accusations of chemical weapons use | PM on trip to Eritrea shows ‘goodwill’

As the war increasingly threatens to converge in Darfur, a region already devastated by decades of violence, a long-delayed measure of justice reached those who endured the atrocities committed there more than 20 years ago. The International Criminal Court issued a landmark conviction against Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushayb for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur in 2003.

It marks the ICC’s first conviction related to the Darfur genocide, and its first for gender-based persecution. A survivor of Kushayb’s attacks told Mada Masr they hoped for justice for all the victims of violence in Darfur, then and now.

Coinciding with this belated step toward accountability, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted to extend the mandate of the independent fact-finding mission on Sudan for another year — though shorter than the two-year term sought by the mission and civil society groups. The two reports published by the mission found both the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the military responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

With both sides already implicated in grave violations, evidence of chemical weapons use in the ongoing war surfaced this week. In Fasher, civilian, medical and military sources told Mada Masr that RSF drones dropped cylinders releasing unidentified gases that caused respiratory problems and convulsions. Days later, France 24’s investigative unit reported finding evidence that the military had used chlorine as a weapon in two incidents in 2024.

As civilians in Darfur grapple with worsening hunger and near-daily bombardment, both sides are moving under pressure. The RSF is seeking to relieve pressure on its forces in North Darfur by shifting the increasing attacks on the Kordofan front, where it launched drone attacks on Obeid this week. Meanwhile, the military has stepped up airdrops in the besieged city of Fasher in an attempt to fend off pressure to accept a political settlement it views as unfavorable to its objectives.

Sudan also faces a deepening food crisis, compounded by the floods that swept through major agricultural regions in late September. "Farmlands and crops have been wiped out, farmers told Mada Masr. Agriculture is barely surviving the war as the government increasingly focuses on courting foreign political and financial support, disregarding one of the country's most strategic sectors amid worsening food insecurity."

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Fact-finding mission’s mandate extended, Janjaweed leader in Darfur’s 2003 war convicted

The UN Human Rights Council voted to extend the mandate of the independent fact-finding mission on Sudan for another year, despite the Sudanese government’s objection.

The decision followed calls from civil society groups for a two-year renewal. Over 96 organizations jointly urged the UNHRC prior to its 60th session to extend the mission’s work amid continued, grave human rights violations and persistent impunity.

The resolution was adopted with support from 24 member states, while 11 — including Sudan — voted against it and 12 abstained.

The UNHRC first established the fact-finding mission in October 2023 to respond to the human rights and humanitarian crises triggered by the war. One of its central objectives is to identify the individuals and entities responsible for violations, abuses of human rights or violations of international humanitarian law in order to ensure accountability and provide specific recommendations on measures to guarantee victims’ access to justice.

In its latest report, issued in September, the mission found that both the military and the RSF have committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, with most “amounting to war crimes.”

A previous report issued in 2024 similarly held both sides responsible for indiscriminate attacks, torture, restrictions on media and communications, and obstruction of aid, as well as widespread sexual violence, looting and ethnically targeted killings perpetrated by the RSF and its allied militias.

Amid ongoing atrocities, the mission and international human rights groups continued to urge the UNHRC to extend the mission’s mandate to ensure accountability. Sudan’s own National Commission of Investigation only investigates purported violations committed by the RSF and thus lacks independence and credibility, given the military’s implication in violations.

Amid demands to end impunity in Sudan’s current war, a long-awaited measure of justice came on Monday, as the ICC delivered a landmark conviction against Ali Kushayb for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur in 2003 — the first-ever ICC conviction related to atrocities in the region.

Kushayb, a former leader of the Janjaweed militia, was found guilty of leading attacks in West Darfur between 2003 and 2004, involving murder, rape, torture, ethnic persecution and looting in several villages. The Janjaweed militia was part of Khartoum’s campaign to crush the rebellion in Darfur in the early 2000s. 

He is one of five Sudanese political and military leaders indicted by the ICC between 2007 and 2012, alongside ousted President Omar al-Bashir, the dissolved National Congress Party leader Ahmed Haroun, former Defense Minister Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein and former Justice and Equality Movement leader Abdallah Banda. All face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur.

After evading arrest for more than 12 years, Kushayb surrendered to the ICC in 2020, shortly after the fall of Bashir.

In its 355-page ruling, the ICC concluded that Kushayb “ordered, supported and participated in widespread and systematic terror attacks that led to mass killings and forced displacement.” Sentencing will be issued at a later date.

A survivor from Kutum in North Darfur, who witnessed attacks led by Kushayb, told Mada Masr that the ruling marks an important, though late, step toward justice and expressed hope that all those responsible for atrocities in Darfur — including those committing crimes today — will face trial.

A relative of one of the victims who attended the trial described the verdict as historic — not only for Kushayb’s case, but for what it represents: a series of advances for justice in the case of Darfur’s victims and the ICC’s first ruling on the 2003 Darfur genocide.

According to Mohamed Salah, a lawyer with Emergency Lawyers, the case is also significant as it represents the first ICC conviction resulting from a UN Security Council referral, which he said underscores the effectiveness of UN referral mechanisms. Additionally, it is the ICC’s first-ever conviction for gender-based persecution.

Following the verdict, the court will begin proceedings to determine Kushayb’s sentence, with the ruling subject to appeal. A subsequent phase will address reparations for victims.

The ICC Prosecutor’s Office reaffirmed its commitment to pursuing outstanding arrest warrants for other suspects accused of similar crimes in Darfur, foremost among them are Bashir, Haroun and Hussein.

After Bashir’s ouster in 2019, both former and current ICC prosecutors visited Sudan, but their negotiations with the then-transitional government failed to secure the surrender of the wanted men.

Hussein is now under house arrest after being transferred from prison in July due to his deteriorating health, while Haroun had broken out of Kober prison after the RSF captured it in April 2023. Banda, meanwhile, is fighting alongside armed movements against the RSF in North Darfur, where his troops are positioned along both sides of the Sudan-Libya border.

Bashir remains the last prominent political and military figure from his regime to be imprisoned.

While Khartoum has not officially commented on Kushayb’s conviction, a source in the Justice Ministry told Mada Masr that the government has not yet reviewed the ruling’s details. The source declined to comment on the possible handover of the other defendants to the court, saying that the Sudanese judiciary would have priority in prosecuting them. 

Civilian political forces — including the Sumud alliance, whose head, Abdalla Hamdok, led the transitional government that failed to hand over the wanted figures during its tenure — have called for the swift transfer of the suspects to the court, according to a source in Sumud’s executive office.

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Eyewitnesses, medical sources, military suspect use of chemical gas in RSF attacks on Fasher

Footage of an exploding cylinder launched by the RSF on Fasher. October 5. Source unknown.

Civilian and medical sources in Fasher told Mada Masr that several people suffered from respiratory problems and convulsions in the aftermath of the RSF’s drone strikes on Sunday.

That day, the city came under heavy artillery shelling and drone strikes, with residents in the targeted areas reporting smelling unidentified odors that caused them breathing difficulties. 

According to Salah al-Nour, a resident of the city, the RSF launched intermittent artillery attacks on southern and western neighborhoods throughout the evening, followed by drone strikes that dropped substances not previously seen in their assaults.

Military sources from the Sixth Infantry Division within the city told Mada Masr that anti-aircraft units shot down three drones carrying cylinders used by the RSF in the attacks that targeted both the division’s camp and surrounding neighborhoods. One of the sources said that the division has opened an investigation to identify the materials released and has sent samples to North Darfur’s Health Ministry for analysis. The use of such substances, the source said, marks “a new level in the RSF’s crimes against civilians.”

Ali al-Dali, a volunteer physician with the Fasher Medical Chamber — a coordination body that manages medical needs on the field — described to Mada Masr cases of convulsions and vomiting among residents from neighborhoods near the military’s division on Sunday evening and Monday morning. The group received patients suffering from breathing difficulties, he said, adding that companions of the patients said the symptoms appeared after they fled areas hit by Sunday’s bombardment.

Salah Eddin Mohamedein, a resident of the Nasr neighborhood in eastern Fasher, said the drone attack made no explosion sounds as usual. During bombardment, Mohamedein said civilians began having difficulty breathing. Some of the elderly suffered after smelling an unusual odor. “We suspected that the RSF fired missiles carrying gas,” he said. 

In the Dagagay neighborhood in the city’s northeast, resident Sumaya Awad said she saw canisters resembling fire extinguishers scattered near her home. “I went out to collect firewood from Wadi Hallouf with my daughters,” she recounted. “We saw black cylinders with white threads coming out of them, like fishing nets. I told my daughters, ‘these must be things the RSF dropped on us.’ We were afraid they might explode or release gas.”

More concerns about the use of chemical weapons in the ongoing war were raised this week in a new report by the investigative unit of France 24, in which evidence was found that the military used chlorine gas as a weapon in two attacks in northern Khartoum in September 2024. The United States said earlier this year that it had determined that Sudan’s government used chemical weapons in 2024, though no evidence was published at the time.

The investigation unit reviewed images of the September attacks in and near the Jaili Oil Refinery, which had been held at the time by the RSF, and five experts confirmed they were “consistent with aerial drops of chlorine barrels.” According to France 24, “only the Sudanese army possesses the aircraft needed for such bombardment.” One of the barrels was traced back to a Sudanese company importing and providing supplies to the military. 

After Sunday’s attack, the RSF renewed their assault on Fasher the following morning from three directions — south, north and northwest — in a large-scale offensive involving heavy shelling and suicide drone strikes. Ahmed Hussein, spokesperson for the military-allied joint force, told Mada Masr that their units, alongside the military, have inflicted heavy losses in personnel and equipment on the RSF during the attack, though clashes continued even as RSF fighters retreated outside the city.

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After breaking aerial siege, airdrop operations continue in Fasher

After breaking the five-month aerial siege on Fasher last week, the military carried out two airdrop operations to deliver aid into the city. 

According to five eyewitnesses in Fasher, the military conducted a large-scale airdrop on Monday morning to its Sixth Infantry Division, followed by another one around 3 pm.

The military reopened Fasher’s airspace, which had been closed off by the RSF since April 2025 by advanced jamming and aerial surveillance systems. An extensive aerial campaign targeting RSF positions housing those systems cleared the way for renewed aid deliveries into the city, starting with military supplies to the division last week.

Allowing relief into Fasher has become a critical issue for Khartoum amid mounting international pressure following the release of the US-led Quad proposal — a year-long plan to establish an independent transitional government that begins with a three-month humanitarian truce. Khartoum views the proposal as an attempt to strip it of exclusive legitimacy.

A source in the Foreign Ministry told Mada Masr that Sudanese Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief and head of the country’s Transitional Sovereignty Council (TSC) Abdel Fattah al-Burhan is attempting to facilitate airdrops to ease the humanitarian crisis — and the pressure on his government and military to engage with the proposal — without ceding control of Fasher, which continues to be the most pivotal military and diplomatic pivot point in the war.

The airdrops also come as the military’s Sixth Infantry Division is reeling from supply shortages that, according to military sources, enabled the RSF to push deeper into Fasher’s neighborhoods and tighten their grip around nearly the entire perimeter of the city.

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Obeid under RSF drone attack

The capital of North Kordofan, Obeid, came under RSF drone attacks on Sunday that targeted civilian neighborhoods and infrastructure, including the Daman Hospital and surrounding residential areas, using both strategic and suicide drones.

In mid-September, a senior military officer told Mada Masr that air defense systems have been installed to shield the city and the command centers coordinating operations across western Sudan. Despite these measures, the military has continued to face repeated RSF airstrikes.

The RSF is seeking to ease pressure in Darfur by shifting the focus of its operations toward the decisive Kordofan battlefield. The move is also intended to open new supply routes and disperse the military’s fronts, a military source told Mada Masr.

The military, on the other hand, is attempting to consolidate its presence in Kordofan to cut off the last supply lines and positions linking the RSF’s troops in central Sudan with those in Darfur, in an effort to gradually dismantle the paramilitary group’s combat and administrative project outside the military’s sphere of influence in the west, according to the source.

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Floods’ aftermath deepens crisis in already devastated agricultural sector

While Prime Minister Kamel Idris insists there is no famine in Sudan and his government hushes down the devastating damage to what remains of the farmlands, farmers, experts and officials paint a different picture of a country reeling under an unprecedented food security crisis

The crisis was compounded in late September, when seasonal floods, intensified by upstream water released from Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, swept through six states. The sudden surge destroyed hundreds of homes and farms while disrupting the delivery of aid to affected communities across southern Khartoum and the Sennar, Blue Nile and River Nile states. But to avoid entangling itself in a diplomatic standoff with Ethiopia, the government downplayed the crisis.

The impact on irrigated agriculture has been particularly severe. Floodwaters submerged vast stretches of farmland and destroyed what remained of the fragile infrastructure, preventing displaced farmers from returning to their lands or resuming cultivation.

Farmers in Sennar State told Mada Masr that the floods wiped out banana, lemon and mango crops in areas along the Blue Nile. In the neighboring Gezira State, Mubarak Abdel Rahman Yaqoub, director of the Wad al-Haddad Administrative Unit, said that more than 2,000 feddans across 176 farms in southern Gezira — producing vegetables, mangoes, citrus fruits and bananas — have been damaged.

The floods struck a sector already in ruins, showing little to no recovery in the agricultural regions reclaimed by the military over the past year.

The lack of well-studied plans or a clear vision within Idris’s government has disrupted efforts to revive both irrigated and rainfed agriculture — particularly in the Gezira, Sennar and Blue Nile states, a ministerial source in Gezira’s secretariat told Mada Masr. The federal government, the source said, has shown complete inaction regarding preparations for the current agricultural season. No directives or measures have been introduced to address the existing problems or plan for the next season.

The government’s preoccupation with rallying external support — be it financial or political — has come at the expense of critical agricultural projects, the ministerial source said, warning that this disregard will soon lead to the total collapse of these projects.

Speaking after his return from the UN General Assembly in New York earlier this month, Idris said that Sudan “has definitively moved beyond the stage of talking about famine,” dismissing such reports as “not reflective of the reality on the ground.”

“There are besieged areas, such as the city of Fasher, which requires the international community and major countries to shoulder their humanitarian responsibilities and work to lift this siege immediately,” Idris added, casting the crisis as limited to specific areas and placing responsibility on the international community rather than his government. 

But the reality on the ground shows a sector in near-total collapse, with farmers displaced, infrastructure destroyed and cultivated areas shrinking as production costs soar — with a knock-on effect on the prices of food. 

Agricultural expert Hamed Abdel Latif Osman told Mada Masr that the war has dealt a severe blow to Sudan’s farming regions — including Gezira, Sennar, White Nile, Kordofan and Darfur — where production has largely ground to a halt. The result, he said, has been the collapse of food security and the displacement of millions of farmers.

In Gezira, fighting forced farmers to abandon their lands, reducing cultivated areas and eroding agricultural expertise, according to Abdel Latif. Crop storage facilities and agricultural equipment were destroyed, while machinery was looted and research centers damaged, he said. 

Vital projects, including the Gezira Scheme — the world’s largest irrigation project and one of Africa’s largest agricultural projects — have fallen out of the agricultural cycle, according to Abdel Latif. 

Ibrahim Mustafa, director of the Gezira Scheme, told Mada Masr that the project has suffered more than 95 percent damage due to direct destruction, looting of machinery and equipment and the disruption of irrigation channels. The result has been massive crop failure and land abandonment, with similar effects seen in other major irrigation projects in Rahad and Suki in Sennar State.

According to the office of Agriculture and Irrigation Minister Esmat Gureishy, military operations have nearly destroyed or disabled agricultural manufacturing and supply chains, making it exceedingly difficult to secure raw material. Production and shipping costs have soared — with fuel prices rising by more than 150 percent — and consequently food prices have surged by over 400 percent in some regions, driving an economic contraction that could consume up to 40 percent of household income, according to officials in the office.

Losses across the sector are estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Abdel Latif said. Agricultural exports have nearly ceased and the collapse of production has created a severe food gap.

The crisis is most visible in areas that have become epicenters of famine and disaster. An official at the Federal Governance Ministry told Mada Masr that catastrophic levels of acute hunger have been recorded in the Zamzam displacement camp in North Darfur, as well as in West and South Kordofan, and the Gezira and Khartoum states. In these regions, fighting drove nearly 60 percent of Sudan’s arable land out of production, the official said. This includes large portions of North Kordofan’s rainfed sector, on which the country depends for staple grains, such as sorghum and millet.

When contacted by Mada Masr, Idris’s office acknowledged the war’s catastrophic impact on the agricultural sector, saying efforts are underway to develop a rescue plan and enter into partnerships with regional and international agricultural companies to develop the sector.

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Idris in Asmara as “message of goodwill”

 

Prime Minister Kamel Idris and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki on a walk in Asmara. October 9. Courtesy of @ghandour on X.

Idris arrived in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, on Thursday, heading a government delegation on his first visit to the East African nation since assuming office in May.

During the visit, Idris expressed his appreciation for “Eritrea’s supportive positions toward Sudan,” praising President Isaias Afwerki’s efforts to back Sudan amid its current challenges. Afwerki, in turn, reaffirmed his country’s full support for Sudan’s stability and unity.

A media source in Asmara described the move as being more of a message of goodwill than a state visit, noting that strategic and military relations remain within the TSC’s purview. The source told Mada Masr that Idris’s visit aims to signal his government’s appreciation of Eritrea’s stance, particularly following the prime minister’s September trips to Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in September, Idris discussed Ethiopia-Eritrea strains with Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh, according to a source accompanying Sudan’s delegation. With Sudan’s ties to Eritrea deepening — including naval deployments to Port Sudan and the hosting of Sudanese aircraft after the unprecedented RSF drone attack on the city — Idris promised to raise mediation between the two East African countries with Burhan.

Foreign Minister Mohie Eddin Salem, who is part of Idris’s delegation in Asmara, also met his Eritrean counterpart in New York to discuss closer bilateral coordination and Red Sea security as well as the reopening of Eritrea’s embassy in Khartoum. Salem invited the Eritrean foreign minister to visit Sudan.