FILE PHOTO: Smoke rises over the city as army and paramilitaries clash in power struggle, in Khartoum, Sudan, April 15, 2023 in this picture obtained from social media. Instagram @lostshmi/via REUTERS
CAIRO (Reuters) - Darfur inhabitants fear battles between Sudan's rival military leaders could reawaken war in the vast and largely desert region already scarred by a two-decade-old conflict.
The Darfur conflict originated around 2003-2004, pitting rebels against government forces backed by horse-riding militia known as "Janjaweed" in violence that killed some 300,000 people and uprooted millions from their homes.
Despite repeated peace deals, the conflict has simmered ever since, with violence rising in the past two years.
So when Sudan's army and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary, who had been ruling together during a political transition, began shooting at each other earlier this month in Khartoum, the violence quickly spread to Darfur.
Residents and sources have reported pillaging, ethnic reprisal attacks, and clashes between the two military factions in various population centres around the farming and nomadic region that is roughly the size of France.
Local mediation has helped cool the strife in the main cities of Nyala and al-Fashir, but shelling and looting have continued in the town of Geneina, leaving Darfuris fearing another major explosion of warfare.
"If this continues, if we get the killing of military commanders that are a part of influential tribes, then it'll be anarchy. There will be tribal mobilisation," said Ahmed Gouja, a journalist and rights activist in Nyala.
For Sudan's warring leaders - army chief Abdel-Fattah Burhan and RSF head Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as "Hemedti" - Darfur is as familiar as it is strategically important.
Both men built their careers in Darfur, and their latest fighting has introduced Khartoum citizens to the airstrikes, looting and insecurity that marked that conflict.
Burhan rose through the army ranks while fighting in Darfur.
Hemedti got his start as a leader of one of the militias that did much of the government side's fighting during the Darfur conflict, inflicting an outsize proportion of the violence.
As the army now tries to push his RSF fighters from positions across Khartoum, the group could fall back on its roots in Darfur to try to regroup and raise reinforcements.
INTERNATIONAL KNOCK-ON?
More bloodshed in Darfur may renew interest from the United States: past violence and accusations of genocide brought a celebrity-led campaign for peace and close engagement by Washington in negotiations.
Adding to the potential for trouble, Darfur borders four countries - Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic and South Sudan - that are themselves unsettled by internal conflicts.
For civilians it all points to more suffering.
Some 1.5 million displaced people live in camps in Darfur. Spasms of violence have continued for years, with fighters raiding settlements, torching villages and looting aid supplies.
"Whichever way the current battle for Khartoum goes, we expect a bloodier conflict now in the Darfur region - more armed groups, more weapons, deeper enmities," said Will Carter, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Sudan.
Sources in Geneina, near the border with Chad, said armed men on horses, motorbikes and trucks had pillaged parts of the city, triggering fighting between the army and RSF.
U.N. relief agency OCHA reported clashes there on Monday.
In Nyala and al-Fashir, however, residents said there had been some success in quelling the violence by agreement to deploy neutral police forces in town centres vacated by fighters, who remained in their areas of control.
"Life is slowly getting back to normal," said Mohamed Suleiman, a doctor in Nyala.
Still, there had been fighting in both cities, resulting in deaths, displacement, looting and a halt to aid operations that many locals depended on.
In al-Fashir, some of the worst damage was in Abu Shok, a camp for people who had fled fighting around their own villages. The camp's market was destroyed, the water supply failed and residents were cut off from hospital by clashes, Suleiman said.
Worryingly, some fighters are dealing with people depending on whether they appear to be from a particular ethnic group or tribe, Gouja said.
"I was looking for medicine for someone and I was stopped by soldiers who accused me of being RSF," he said, adding it was based on how he looked.
For locals, it adds to anxiety that though this new war started in Khartoum it may end in Darfur.
"If there is no political settlement they will come here," said Gouja, of the two warring sides.
(Reporting by Nafisa Eltahir and Khalid Abdelaziz, writing by Angus McDowall, editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
