On the first day of the Muslim festival known as Eid al-Adha, hundreds gathered in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, to pray for peace. However, residents said that the momentary tranquility was broken by gunfire.
Despite separate unilateral ceasefires promised by the warring generals for the holiday, witnesses in Omdurman, the capital’s twin city, reported airstrikes and anti-aircraft fire late on Wednesday.
“The country can’t take any more of this,” Khartoum resident Kazem Abdel Baqi earlier in the day told AFP.
In the conflict between army head Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his adversary and former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who is in charge of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), about 2,800 people have died and more than 2.8 million have been displaced.
Burhan urged “youth and all those able to defend” in Sudan to join the military on Tuesday. His plea was generally rejected by civilians and was reiterated by the defense ministry last month.
After the early morning prayer that ushered in the three-day holiday, typically a highlight of the year for Sudanese, Baqi declared, “We pray to God to make our country safe and secure,” rejecting Burhan’s call to arms.
Men in white and women in colorful clothing gathered in orderly rows in an empty courtyard to pray, hugging and wishing each other well in a rare moment of calm after more than 10 weeks of nonstop gunfire, bombings, and artillery fire that had reduced citizens’ homes to ruins.
Bodies have been left to fester on the streets of Khartoum and the western area of Darfur, where the majority of the bloodshed has happened.
Outside of Khartoum, notably in the Jazira region where many people have fled the capital, similar prayer meetings were held.
Dark Eid
Families sought to spread holiday cheer as millions of people trapped in the beleaguered capital continued to ration electricity and water in the stifling heat.
Rituals associated with Eid have turned into a “unattainable dream,” according to Omar Ibrahim, a father of three who resides in Khartoum’s Shambat neighborhood.
Ibrahim questioned, “Will the guns be silent for Eid?”
Both parties have routinely broken numerous cease-fires that have been declared and others that have been brokered by the US and Saudi Arabia.
The most recent unilateral truce statements were warmly received by the United Nations mission in Sudan (UNITAMS).
It issued a statement on Eid al-Adha saying, “May Eid al-Adha be a reminder that the violence must stop,” and warning the parties at war that “accountability for crimes committed during wartime will be pursued.”
In the past, Sudanese Muslims who could afford it would sacrifice an animal for Eid, but the U.N. reports that a record 25 million people in Sudan currently require humanitarian relief.
This week, there were numerous fronts in the conflict between the RSF and the army for control of Khartoum, with paramilitaries taking the main police station and targeting military installations all around the city.
Burhan referred to the RSF as “an existential threat” to the state in his Eid speech where he pleaded with the youth to protect Sudan.
Ahmed al-Fateh, a local of Khartoum, declared that he was “against Burhan’s call to tell the youth to take up arms and fight with the army.”
He told AFP that because the youth had never engaged in combat, they might cause more harm than good.
Before the Darfur governor advised people to arm themselves in self-defense more than a month ago, the defense ministry had asked army reservists and military pensioners to report to military posts.
Given worries that what started as a power struggle amongst generals is turning into civil war, researcher Hamid Khalafallah characterized Burhan’s speech as “very irresponsible” on Twitter.
Every thirty seconds
The situation in Darfur’s western sector keeps becoming worse.
According to the U.N., entire cities are under siege, and entire neighborhoods have been destroyed.
According to locals, the United Nations, the United States, and others, the RSF and affiliated Arab militias have targeted and killed individuals because of their ethnicity, serving as a somber reminder of Darfur’s terrible past.
Against Darfur’s non-Arab ethnic minorities, former strongman Omar al-Bashir equipped and sent out the Janjaweed militia in 2003, starting a war that resulted in more than 300,000 deaths and 2.5 million displaced people.
According to the U.N. refugee agency, more than 170,000 people have escaped Darfur and entered the neighboring country of Chad since April.
According to the most recent International Organization for Migration figures, about 645,000 people have sought shelter outside of Sudan, while an additional 2.2 million people have been displaced within the country.
Five (Sudanese) families cross the border into Chad through Adre town “every 30 seconds,” according to Laura Lo Castro, the UNHCR’s representative in Chad.
