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The Print
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Print
Can Syria's tiny Druze minority survive West Asia's new storms? There's little hope
Little imagination is needed to understand what's driving the violence in Syria. Following the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad's dystopic regime, more than 1,000 members of his Alevi community were slaughtered in their coastal redoubts by government forces and Islamist militia. In one case, journalist Maggie Michael reported , a young man's heart was cut out of his body. His name was listed among 60 dead that included his cousins and neighbours, and six children. Even as Druze tribesmen poured in to reinforce their clan, in the summer of 1925, a French column led by General Roger Michaud was ambushed before the gates of Sweida and routed. A French officer committed suicide, historian Philip Khoury records . The first shots emerged from the bowels of the great volcanic mountain of Tell Qeni. They were likely aimed with more hope than military focus at the French Nieuport-Delage NiD.29 C.1 fighter plane, which had been surveilling Druze positions on Jabal al-Druze – the great mountain redoubt of the Druze community. The great rebellion had begun, even if the pilots hadn't noticed it. Two days later, the Druze leader Sultan al-Atrash occupied the region's second town, Salkhad, and slaughtered a column of 166 French colonial troops, laying siege to the capital at Sweida. For much of their history, the Druze have fought mainly to be left alone in their mountain redoubts—allying with Israel, or Syria, or whichever power might safeguard their interests. In 2018, more than 200 Druze were killed in concentrated attacks by Islamic State suicide bombers, as retaliation for their cooperation with the regime against the jihadists. Led by Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, Druze forces have been savagely expelling Bedouin tribes from the region, following a kidnapping of a trader on the road to Damascus. There have been arguments over incendiary religious messages spread over social media. The bigger story is this, however: The collapse of the state in Syria has opened the way for genocidal ethnic-religious warfare—and the Druze want to make sure they are not on the losing end. The fighting has been intense. Entire neighbourhoods have been gutted, journalists Santiago Montag and Hussam Hammoud have reported, while Sweida's main hospital was overrun by gunmen who slaughtered its patients. And yet, the fighting is showing no signs of ending. There is a saying that the Druze like telling about themselves. As historian William Miles writes: 'When a fortune comes their way, a Christian would build a huge mansion, a Muslim would go to Mecca on pilgrimage, and a Druze? A Druze would simply buy more weapons.' Lights in the landscape Even though Indians are used to seeing West Asia as one uninterrupted wash of Islam, the reality is more complex: Like all other parts of the world, liminal communities, perched on the edge of the hegemonic faiths, light up the landscape. The Druze do not self-describe as Muslims, though their theology shares elements of Islam. The community believes in Tawhid – the unity of the divine and the human – sees time as unfolding in eternal cycles, and believes that the soul of a Druze who has died immediately reincarnates in the body of another. Loosely linked to the Ismaili offshoot of the Shia sect, the Druze have their holy text, the Rasail al-Hikma, or Epistles of Wisdom, although the Quran is also part of their theological framework. Tight ethnic and religious bonds hold the community together. The demographer Nissim Dana records that, even in relatively liberal Israel, there were just 145 cases of conversion recorded from 1952 to 2009, mainly to enable marriage to non-Druze spouses. The community is reputed to number some 1 million people, overwhelmingly concentrated in Syria, but with pockets in Lebanon and Israel. For generations, the Druze proved willing to take extraordinary risks to protect their fragile autonomy. Late in 1895, for example, Syria's Ottoman government was presented with an opportunity to punish the Druze, after quarrels broke out with their Muslim neighbours. Together with Kurds, Bedouins, and Circassians, Ottoman troops burned down the Druze village of Majdal Shams. Though the Ottoman soldiers outnumbered the Druze two-and-a-half to one, historian Shakeeb Salih writes, they were unable to subdue the uprising. An arrangement involving amnesties and cash compensation was eventually arrived at. The inexorable forces of the market, though, brought about significant changes in the outlook of the Druze by 1925. According to Salih, the merchants and moneylenders of Damascus became frequent visitors to Jabal al-Druze and Hawran, where they financed the cultivation of crops such as gram and cereals. For their part, Druze elites began to winter in Damascus, imbibing its culture and integrating into its political milieu. Following the 1925 revolt, Khoury writes, the Druze case became a template for other nationalist movements breaking out across the Middle East, eventually leading to the independence of Syria and Lebanon. Also read: Afghanistan is starving—and its farmers are fighting to save the poppy The power game Like many post-colonial states, the scholar Joshua Landis writes, independent Syria tried to stamp its authority on the Druze brutally from 1946. The four-year rule of Adib Shishakli, from December 1949 to February 1954, resulted in the crushing of Druze local leadership. 'A new form of Druze communal consciousness took root among Druze civilian politicians and, most importantly, among Druze military officers as a result,' Landis notes. Shishkali was eventually overthrown in a coup d'etat, in which Druze officers played a key role. The Druze used their position not only to seek economic privileges from Damascus, but also to gain recognition for the wide-ranging autonomy they had enjoyed under the French. This battle was not easily won, though. The government hit back, rolling back subsidies, choking the lucrative smuggling routes into Jordan, and most importantly, destroying the profitable hashish trade. Tribal leaders such as Sultan Pasha al-Atrash found their influence diminished, just as a new, Left-leaning generation of Druze emerged. Faced with vicious ethnopolitical propaganda and economic decline, the Druze found other means to act. In 1953, Druze officers Colonel Amin Abu Asaf and Captain Mohammed al-Atrash were plotting a coup. The army, thus, became a stage for the making and unmaking of power, with Alevi, Kurds, Christians, and Druze all competing to protect their interests against the majority. Also read: What's behind Israel's strikes in Syria & who are the 'Druze' that Netanyahu has vowed to protect A grim future? For the Druze, support from Israel—where they constitute a recognised official minority—is now critical. As historian Laila Parsons notes, early Jewish Agency officials operating in Palestine saw the benefits of developing ties to local minorities, and Itzhak Ben Tzvi—later to become Israel's second president—cultivated ties with the Druze. For the most part, the Druze stayed neutral in the Arab revolt of 1936-1939. The defeat of a small Druze detachment fighting the Israeli defence forces near the settlement of Ramat-Yohanan, wrote Parsons, stilled Druze desire to interject themselves in the conflict. In the war of 1947-1948, the Druze emerged better off than their Palestinian Christian and Muslim neighbours. They now had the choice of living as minorities in a Jewish state or as minorities in an Arab state. For most Druze, the choice was simple. For the Druze left in Syria and Lebanon, though, the future likely looks very different. Israeli air power was committed to protect Sweida from Bedouin tribes attacking the Druze. Still, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa is an ally of the United States and is seen as key to the suppression of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Israeli support for Druze defiance cannot, therefore, be taken for granted in the future. Even more critically, the Druze have opened themselves up to a long war with the Bedouin tribes and their Islamist supporters within Syria's new regime. Looking into the fires raging in Syria, it's hard not to see only darkness: The ethnoreligious conflicts that the Ba'ath state managed—and occasionally crushed—have returned to the centre stage of political life. The acquisition of power again involves access to guns and weapons, not political legitimacy. The genuinely federal structures that Syria's minorities demanded during their march to independence could offer a way forward. But there's little hope that a society in which jihadists see themselves as victorious will be prepared to concede it. The author is Contributing Editor at ThePrint. His X handle is @praveenswami. Views are personal. (Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
Ya Libnan
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Ya Libnan
Alawite women snatched from streets of Syria, may never make it back
By Maggie Michael Alawite Syrians, who fled the violence in western Syria, walk in the water of the Nahr El Kabir River, after the reported mass killings of Alawite minority members, in Akkar, Lebanon March 11, 2025. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo 'Don't wait for her,' the WhatsApp caller told the family of Abeer Suleiman on May 21, hours after she vanished from the streets of the Syrian town of Safita. 'She's not coming back.' Suleiman's kidnapper and another man who identified himself as an intermediary said in subsequent calls and messages that the 29-year-old woman would be killed or trafficked into slavery unless her relatives paid them a ransom of $15,000. 'I am not in Syria,' Suleiman herself told her family in a call on May 29 from the same phone number used by her captor, which had an Iraqi country code. 'All the accents around me are strange.' Reuters reviewed the call, which the family recorded, along with about a dozen calls and messages sent by the abductor and intermediary, who had a Syrian phone number. Suleiman is among at least 33 women and girls from Syria's Alawite sect – aged between 16 and 39 – who have been abducted or gone missing this year in the turmoil following the fall of Bashar al-Assad, according to the families of all them. The overthrow of the widely feared president in December after 14 years of civil war unleashed a furious backlash against the Muslim minority community to which he belongs, with armed factions affiliated to the current government turning on Alawite civilians in their coastal heartlands in March, killing hundreds of people . Since March, social media has seen a steady stream of messages and video clips posted by families of missing Alawite women appealing for information about them, with new cases cropping up almost daily, according to a Reuters review which found no online accounts of women from other sects vanishing. The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria told Reuters it is investigating the disappearances and alleged abductions of Alawite women following a spike in reports this year. The commission, set up in 2011 to probe rights violations after the civil war broke out, will report to the U.N. Human Rights Council once the investigations are concluded, a spokesperson said. Suleiman's family borrowed from friends and neighbours to scrape together her $15,000 ransom, which they transferred to three money-transfer accounts in the Turkish city of Izmir on May 27 and 28 in 30 transfers ranging from $300 to $700, a close relative told Reuters, sharing the transaction receipts. Once all money was delivered as instructed, the abductor and intermediary ceased all contact, with their phones turned off, the relative said. Suleiman's family still have no idea what's become of her. Detailed interviews with the families of 16 of the missing women and girls found that seven of them are believed to have been kidnapped, with their relatives receiving demands for ransoms ranging from $1,500 to $100,000. Three of the abductees – including Suleiman – sent their families text or voice messages saying they'd been taken out of the country. There has been no word on the fate of the other nine. Eight of the 16 missing Alawites are under the age of 18, their families said. Reuters reviewed about 20 text messages, calls and videos from the abductees and their alleged captors, as well as receipts of some ransom transfers, though it was unable to verify all parts of the families' accounts or determine who might have targeted the women or their motives. All 33 women disappeared in the governorates of Tartous, Latakia and Hama, which have large Alawite populations. Nearly half have since returned home, though all of the women and their families declined to comment about the circumstances, with most citing security fears. Most of the families interviewed by Reuters said they felt police didn't take their cases seriously when they reported their loved ones missing or abducted, and that authorities failed to investigate thoroughly. The Syrian government didn't respond to a request for comment for this article. Ahmed Mohammed Khair, a media officer for the governor of Tartous, dismissed any suggestion that Alawites were being targeted and said most cases of missing women were down to family disputes or personal reasons rather than abductions, without presenting evidence to support this. 'Women are either forced into marrying someone they won't want to marry so they run away or sometimes they want to draw attention by disappearing,' he added and warned that 'unverified allegations' could create panic and discord and destabilize security. A media officer for Latakia governorate echoed Khair's comments, saying that in many cases, women elope with their lovers and families fabricate abduction stories to avoid the social stigma. The media officer of Hama governorate declined to comment. A member of a fact-finding committee set up by new Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to investigate the mass killings of Alawites in coastal areas in March, declined to comment on the cases of missing women. Al-Sharaa denounced the sectarian bloodshed as a threat to his mission to unite the ravaged nation and has promised to punish those responsible, including those affiliated to the government if necessary. GRABBED ON HER WAY TO SCHOOL Syrian rights advocate Yamen Hussein, who has been tracking the disappearances of women this year, said most had taken place in the wake of the March violence. As far as he knew, only Alawites had been targeted and the perpetrators' identities and motives remain unknown, he said. He described a widespread feeling of fear among Alawites, who adhere to an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam and account for about a tenth of Syria's predominantly Sunni population. Some women and girls in Tartous, Latakia and Hama are staying away from school or college because they fear being targeted, Hussein said. 'For sure, we have a real issue here where Alawite women are being targeted with abductions,' he added. 'Targeting women of the defeated party is a humiliation tactic that was used in the past by the Assad regime.' Thousands of Alawites have been forced from their homes in Damascus, while many have been dismissed from their jobs and faced harassment at checkpoints from Sunni fighters affiliated to the government. The interviews with families of missing women showed that most of them vanished in broad daylight, while running errands or travelling on public transport. Zeinab Ghadir is among the youngest. The 17-year-old was abducted on her way to school in the Latakia town of al-Hanadi on February 27, according to a family member who said her suspected kidnapper contacted them by text message to warn them not to post images of the girl online. 'I don't want to see a single picture or, I swear to God, I will send you her blood,' the man said in a text message sent from the girl's phone on the same day she disappeared. The teenage girl made a brief phone call home, saying she didn't know where she had been taken and that she had stomach pain, before the line cut out, her relative said. The family has no idea what has happened to her. Khozama Nayef was snatched on March 18 in rural Hama by a group of five men who drugged her to knock her out for a few hours while they spirited her away, a close relative told Reuters, citing the mother-of-five's own testimony when she was returned. The 35-year-old spent 15 days in captivity while her abductors negotiated with the family who eventually paid $1,500 dollars to secure her release, according to the family member who said when she returned home she had a mental breakdown. Days after Nayef was taken, 29-year-old Doaa Abbas was seized on her doorstep by a group of attackers who dragged her into a car waiting outside and sped off, according to a family member who witnessed the abduction in the Hama town of Salhab. The relative, who didn't see how many men took Abbas or whether they were armed, said he tried to follow on his motorbike but lost sight of the car. Three Alawites reported missing by their families on social media this year, who are not included in the 33 cases identified by Reuters, have since resurfaced and publicly denied they were abducted. One of them, a 16-year-old girl from Latakia, released a video online saying she ran away of her own accord to marry a Sunni man. Her family contradicted her story though, telling Reuters that she had been abducted and forced to marry the man, and that security authorities had ordered her to say she had gone willingly to protect her kidnappers. Reuters was unable to verify either account. A Syrian government spokesperson and Latakian authorities didn't respond to queries about it. The two other Alawites who resurfaced, a 23-year-old woman and a girl of 12, told Arabic TV channels that they had travelled of their own volition to the cities of Aleppo and Damascus, respectively, though the former said she ended up being beaten up by a man in an apartment before escaping. DARK MEMORIES OF ISLAMIC STATE Syria's Alawites dominated the country's political and military elite for decades under the Assad dynasty. Bashar al-Assad's sudden exit in December saw the ascendancy of a new government led by HTS, a Sunni group that emerged from an organization once affiliated to al Qaeda. The new government is striving to integrate dozens of former rebel factions, including some foreign fighters, into its security forces to fill a vacuum left after the collapse of Assad's defence apparatus. Several of the families of missing women said they and many others in their community dreaded a nightmare scenario where Alawites suffered similar fates to those inflicted on the Yazidi religious minority by Islamic State about a decade ago. IS, a jihadist Sunni group, forced thousands of Yazidi women into sexual slavery during a reign of terror that saw its commanders claim a caliphate encompassing large parts of Iraq and Syria, according to the U.N. A host of dire scenarios are torturing the minds of the family of Nagham Shadi, an Alawite woman who vanished this month, her father told Reuters. The 23-year-old left their house in the village of al Bayadiyah in Hama on June 2 to buy milk and never came back, Shadi Aisha said, describing an agonising wait for any word about the fate of his daughter. Aisha said his family had been forced from their previous home in a nearby village on March 7 during the anti-Alawite violence. 'What do we do? We leave it to God.' (Reuters)
Yahoo
16-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'Pray for us. They've arrived': How Syria descended into revenge bloodshed
By Maggie Michael, Feras Dalatey, Reade Levinson and Maya Gebeily DAMASCUS (Reuters) - The cries for revenge reached fever pitch on March 6. Dozens of messages posted by various armed factions on social media, and shared with hundreds of thousands of Syrians, called for a "general mobilization" - or "al nafeer" - to help crush a fledgling insurgency by supporters of deposed and widely hated leader Bashar al-Assad. Hundreds of pickup trucks full of fighters, as well as tanks and heavy weaponry, poured down major highways towards the coastal heartlands of the minority Alawite sect to which Assad belonged. They were seeking revenge against loyalists to the ousted president, mostly his Alawite former officers. Some of them had allegedly carried out a spate of hit-and-run attacks on the new military in an effort to stage a coup against the Sunni Islamist-led government. Overnight and in the early hours of March 7, pro-government fighters fell on the neighborhood of Al-Qusour in the city of Baniyas, among the first major highway exits, opening fire on residential buildings and killing families in their homes. Similar attacks unfolded in a string of towns and villages further north along the coast including Al-Mukhtariya, Al-Shir, Al-Shilfatiyeh and Barabshbo where the ethno-religious Alawite community is concentrated. "I heard children screaming, gunfire, and my father trying to calm down the children," said Hassan Harfoush, an Alawite from Al-Qusour who's now living in Iraq, describing a phone call with his family before his parents, brother, sister and her two children were shot dead in the town on the afternoon of March 7, a Friday. "My father was telling me: Pray for us. They've arrived." Harfoush said he'd left Syria months earlier following Assad's ouster at the urging of his father who feared a wave of retaliation against Alawites: "He told me to at least have one of us alive." Within about six days, hundreds of Alawite civilians lay dead, according to Reuters reporting and several monitoring groups. Just three months after Assad's ouster in December ended his brutal rule and almost 14 years of civil war, parts of western Syria had descended into vengeful bloodletting. Reuters pieced together the events that culminated in the deadly rampage from interviews with more than 25 survivors and relatives of victims, as well as drone footage and dozens of videos and messages posted on social media. The news agency was unable to determine if there was any coordinated plan by security forces to attack the Alawite enclaves or target civilians. The Syrian government, which is now run by former members of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel group, didn't respond to a request for comment for this article. Syria's interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa denounced the mass killings as a threat to his mission to unite the country. He has promised to punish those responsible, including those affiliated to the government if necessary. "We fought to defend the oppressed, and we won't accept that any blood be shed unjustly, or goes without punishment or accountability, even among those closest to us," he told Reuters in a previous interview this week. While he blamed Assad loyalists for provoking the violence, Sharaa acknowledged that in response "many parties entered the Syrian coast and many violations occurred". It became an opportunity for revenge for years of pent-up grievances, he said. Reuters reached out for comment to several Assad loyalists who had posted messages online urging violence who didn't respond. Monitoring groups including Syria Network for Human Rights (SNHR) - an independent UK-based group - said over 1,000 people died in the violence, more than half killed by forces aligned with the new authorities and others by Assad loyalists. SNHR said the dead included 595 civilians and unarmed fighters, the vast majority Alawite. Reuters counted more than 120 dead bodies in at least six locations in the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartous by geolocating videos posted to social media by residents, family members and the killers themselves. The toppling of Assad, whose Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, saw the ascendancy of a new government led by HTS, a Sunni Islamist group that emerged from an organization once affiliated to al Qaeda. Many of Syria's Sunnis, who make up more than 70% of the population, felt politically and economically marginalized by Bashar al-Assad and his father Hafez, who both harshly cracked down on Sunni-dominated protests against their rule. The new government is striving to integrate into its security forces dozens of rebel factions, born out of the long civil war. It relies on its own as well as newly recruited fighters in a group known as the General Security Service (GSS), other militias - including some foreign fighters - have been needed to fill a security vacuum left after the dismantling of Assad's defence apparatus. The mass killings were mostly carried out by gunmen from various factions aligned with the new government, including GSS, according to several of the witnesses. Video posted to Facebook and verified by Reuters showed some men in uniforms and arm patches similar to those worn by GSS participating in the violence in the coastal city of Jableh. GSS did not respond to a request for comment. A member of the GSS said he and dozens of other members of the unit had been deployed to the coast on March 6 with the mission of rooting out pro-Assad fighters, and returned to their base in Aleppo this week. He said GSS fighters hadn't targeted non-combatants as far as he knew, adding that the general mobilisation calls on social media had drawn in other undisciplined fighters who had killed civilians en masse. "Anyone who had weapons joined," he added. 'STRIKE WITH AN IRON FIST' Assad's 24 years in power has left a toxic legacy after his escape to Moscow in December. Many among Syria's Sunni community, which makes up the bulk of the population, harbour deep resentment at loyalists of the former president who have staged a low-level insurgency this month. The temperature rose on March 6, when the government said that fighters led by Alawite former officers in Assad's military staged one of their deadliest attacks yet, killing 13 members of the government-led security forces in Latakia province, a large Alawite centre. No one has claimed responsibility for the killings. Reuters was able to review several messages calling for Syrians to head to the coast for the general mobilization. For example, one Facebook page with more than 400,000 followers that says it is affiliated with GSS posted calls for Arab tribes in Syria to mobilize to support government fighters against Alawite insurgents. It also posted videos of armed groups sending fighters and vehicles to the coast to join the fight. Reuters could not immediately determine who runs the page. Calls to arms also appeared in at least three WhatsApp groups each comprising hundreds of people in three different parts of northern Syria. The messages were localized, identifying specific meeting points in each area from which convoys would set off towards the coast. On the same day, residents in major cities Damascus and Aleppo told Reuters they heard some Sunni mosques blaring out the calls for jihad on their loudspeakers. One imam at a mosque in Damascus denounced the alleged attack on security forces by Assad's Alawite loyalists and called for Sunnis to take up arms against their sectarian enemies in a sermon broadcast on Facebook and seen by Reuters. The Damascus imam, Mohsen Ghosn, didn't respond to a request for comment via his Facebook page. Syria's religious affairs ministry, which is in charge of all mosques, also didn't respond. Reuters was unable to determine how many fighters were mobilized to the cause. Drone footage of the highway east of the coastal city of Latakia, near the village of Al-Mukhtariya, shows hundreds of vehicles - including trucks with fighters in the back, some military vehicles and at least two tanks - were coming into the area in the morning of March 7. The U.N. Human Rights Office told Reuters its inquiries indicated the mobilisation of fighters in support of the security forces included armed groups and civilians and happened very fast. "Many of the attackers were unidentified as they were masked, and it is therefore very difficult to tell who did what. It was very chaotic," a spokesperson said. "We don't have a clear picture of the structure of the chain of command inside the caretaker government's security forces." FIGHTERS GO HOUSE TO HOUSE Al-Qusour neighborhood, where Harfoush's family met with tragedy, saw some of the worst massacres, according to six witnesses and relatives of those slain. One resident told Reuters fighters first fired heavy ammunition, artillery, and anti-aircraft guns at residential buildings. Shortly after, the militants began going house to house, killing civilians, he added. The resident said about 15 militants stormed his home in three different groups, including some members of the GSS whom he identified by their uniforms as well as two Afghan fighters whose language he recognized. Only his identity as a Christian saved him and his family, he said. One GSS officer had discouraged the other militants from killing them, he added. The resident's neighbours were less fortunate. Two other Al-Qusour residents said several of their family members were killed. Another woman listed about 50 people she said she knew were killed, including her parents, their neighbours and the neighbours' three-year-old child. A fourth resident said militants had dragged people from homes and killed them, including his 28-year-old nephew. Fighters stole cars, phones and money from residents, forced women to hand over their jewellery at gunpoint and torched houses, shops, and restaurants, according to survivors. Reuters was unable to independently confirm these accounts. That same day, March 7, and in ensuing days, militants also descended on a string of towns and villages further north along the coast and in hills around the city of Latakia. Reuters was able to verify footage of dozens of bodies lying in those villages that were shared online in the days after the killings. One video posted online on March 7 showed the bodies of at least 27 men, many elderly, lying by a roadside in Al-Mukhtariya. On the same day in Al-Shilfatiya, a 20-minute drive away, the bodies of at least 10 people in civilian clothing were laid out on the ground outside a pharmacy and along the road, a video posted to Facebook and verified by Reuters showed. Many were still bleeding.
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Sudan's RSF attacks famine-stricken camp as battle lines harden
By Maggie Michael, Nafisa Eltahir and Khalid Abdelaziz CAIRO/DUBAI (Reuters) -Sudan's Rapid Support Forces have attacked the famine-stricken Zamzam displacement camp, residents and medics say, as the paramilitary tries to tighten its grip on its Darfur stronghold while losing ground to the army in the capital, Khartoum. The latest fighting has hardened battle lines between the two forces in a conflict that threatens to splinter Sudan after plunging half the population into hunger and displacing more than one-fifth since April 2023. See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. This week, as it attempts to consolidate its territory, the RSF has staged multiple attacks on Zamzam residents, according to three people at the camp. Medical aid agency MSF has confirmed seven deaths from the violence, while residents say dozens may have been killed. Medics are unable to perform surgery inside Zamzam, and travel to al-Fashir's Saudi hospital, a frequent RSF target, has become impossible, MSF said. Reuters verified a video showing RSF forces inside Zamzam earlier this week, stamping on a rival flag as a building burned in the background. Zamzam is located near al-Fashir, capital of North Darfur and the army's last remaining foothold in the wider Darfur region. The RSF, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, says Zamzam is a base for the Joint Forces, former rebel groups now fighting alongside the army. The Joint Forces said in a statement on Thursday that they were not present in the camp. The Sudanese government said the army, Joint Forces, and other volunteers were able to push the RSF back from Zamzam on Wednesday. ARSON ATTACKS Nearly 22 months after war erupted from a power struggle between the two factions, the RSF controls almost all of Darfur in Sudan's west, and much of the neighbouring Kordofan region. The army controls Sudan's north and east and has recently made major gains in Khartoum. Next week, a "political charter" setting up a parallel government in RSF-controlled territories will be signed, with the announcement of a cabinet coming soon after, Ibrahim al-Mirghani, a politician who supports the effort, told Reuters. The RSF has targetted Zamzam with artillery for months, causing some people to dig holes for shelter, according to one resident and a video shared by activists. "Inside the neighbourhoods, they terrorise, steal, and kill ... people hide in these holes when they are firing and when they are raiding, because there is nowhere else to flee," the resident told Reuters. The RSF has also continued raids and arson attacks on villages surrounding al-Fashir in recent weeks, according to the Yale School of Public Health's Humanitarian Research Lab. The Yale Lab found that over half the structures in Zamzam's main market were destroyed in a manner consistent with arson attacks, executive director Nathaniel Raymond told Reuters. A video shared by army-aligned Darfur governor Minni Minnawi showed stalls burned to ash and vegetables strewn on the ground. Arson was also detected on residences along the northern entrance to the camp, said Raymond. Tens of thousands have been displaced, many seeking refuge in Zamzam and increasing the camp's population to up to one million people, according to the International Organisation for Migration. ESCAPE ROUTES 'BLOCKED' Sudan's top U.N. official Clementine Nkweta-Salami said on Thursday she was "shocked by the attacks on Zamzam IDP camp and the blockages of escape routes." Across Darfur RSF forces have restricted aid efforts, now also hit by freezes on USAID, according to U.N. and other aid workers. MSF, one of few humanitarian groups operating in the area, had to stop a nutrition programme for 6,000 malnourished children as attacks on Zamzam raised prices there, the aid group's North Darfur coordinator Marion Ramstein said. A global hunger monitor determined in August that Zamzam was experiencing famine. In December, it confirmed famine in two other camps in al-Fashir. Earlier this month, MSF said it found that the proportion of the camp's children who were malnourished had risen to 34%, a similar level to Tawila, a nearby town to which many have fled from RSF attacks.
