El-Fasher: A Broken City Seen from Space
From the edge of Tawila, where a dusty road turns into a series of muddy tracks, survivors point toward the horizon and say the skyline has changed. What once was a bustling regional capital—mosques punctuating the air with the call to prayer, markets spilling into the streets with spices and chatter—now looks to the world like a smudge on a satellite photo.
There is an eerie intimacy to satellite imagery. It flattens heat and shadow into shapes and, in recent days, those shapes have become evidence—silent testimony of something most of us recoil from: mass killing. Researchers at Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab reported finding dozens of clusters in and around El-Fasher that are consistent with groups of human bodies. “We are seeing signs that cannot be explained away as normal activity,” one researcher told me. “The images are stark.”
What the Pictures Say
The lab identified at least 31 clusters across university grounds, residential neighbourhoods and military sites—concentrations that, the analysts say, point to summary executions or mass fatalities. Numbers like that strip away euphemism: 31 clusters. Each cluster may represent dozens of lives.
These findings came after the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the powerful paramilitary force that has been fighting Sudan’s regular army since April 2023, took El-Fasher following an 18-month siege. The capture marks a grim milestone: the RSF now controls all five state capitals in Darfur, intertwining military strategy with geography and, potentially, a new map of suffering.
Voices from the Road
People arriving in Tawila arrive barefoot, some with plastic sacks, others with the blank, stunned faces of those who have seen too much. Hayat, a woman in her late 30s carrying a baby at her breast and three other children clinging to her skirts, described the journey with the kind of detail that makes horror real.
“We left at dawn,” she said, voice small. “There were men on the road. They stopped the young ones who walked with us. I saw them drag a boy into a compound. I don’t know if he will be alive. We ran and ran until the sun burned the backs of our necks.”
A doctor who escaped with a handful of colleagues says that the stories are worse than anything they feared: executions, sexual violence used as a weapon, aid workers threatened and killed. “You can close your eyes to images on a screen,” she told me, “but when a woman tells you she saw her child shot while trying to cross a street, that memory becomes permanent.”
Numbers that Matter
Humanitarian agencies put hard figures beside those stories. The United Nations estimates more than 65,000 people fled El-Fasher in the days following its fall. Before the final assault, roughly 260,000 people lived in the city. That leaves tens of thousands unaccounted for—some trapped in basements or buildings, others potentially detained, killed, or hiding in the desert.
“We are deeply concerned,” a UN official told me. “The flow of people out of El-Fasher is substantial, but the communications blackouts and ongoing insecurity mean we cannot verify the fate of thousands. That uncertainty is itself a humanitarian crisis.”
The Anatomy of a Collapse
Once a historic capital of Darfur, El-Fasher sat at the crossroads of trade and tradition. Its markets used to be full of daraba (local bread), roasted coffee, and the clipped laughter of everyday life. Now the market stalls are upended, mosques closed, and the city’s university has become a ruin watched from above.
The fall of El-Fasher did not happen in isolation. It was the final domino in an 18-month campaign that has split Sudan along a new axis—east and west divided, with the army holding the north, east and centre, and the RSF consolidating power in the west. For ordinary Sudanese, that line is not a strategic map; it is a line across families, farms and futures.
Accountability and Doubt
The RSF announced a handful of arrests shortly after taking the city, saying it had detained fighters accused of abuses. Skepticism greeted that claim. Tom Fletcher, the UN humanitarian chief, has publicly questioned whether the RSF will genuinely investigate violations or if such statements are merely for show. “We need more than words,” he warned.
For survivors, promises from either side ring hollow. An aid worker who requested anonymity described being turned away from checkpoints and threatened with arrest. “There is a culture of impunity built over decades here,” she said. “Unless international actors and regional bodies act, the immediate headlines will fade—and the suffering won’t.”
Beyond the Headlines: What This Means
Ask yourself: what does a single city’s collapse mean in an interconnected world? It means people whose lives were simple—vendors, teachers, parents—are now part of a displacement calculation that will affect humanitarian budgets, migration patterns, and regional stability. It means refugee flows that strain neighbouring towns and countries, and a new narrative for a region long associated with conflict.
This crisis also reconnects us with broader global themes: the militarization of paramilitary groups, the failure of national institutions to protect civilians, and the way climate stress and economic marginalization can inflame old divisions. These are not abstract concerns; they are the air people breathe when aid doesn’t arrive and when phones go dark.
Local Color and Human Cost
Even amid the rubble, the small textures of place remain. In Tawila, women trade recipes for porridge made with whatever grain they have left; a group of boys, who escaped with only sandals, swear in local dialects as they recount their narrow misses. An elder recounts memories of a Sultan’s palace that stood where now only dust collects. These are the human details that statistics alone cannot hold.
Experts warn that unless there is an immediate and impartial investigation, documented with both on-the-ground work and satellite verification, these images will be another set of silent witnesses. “Satellite imagery gives us a lifeline when cameras and people can’t reach a scene,” said a conflict analyst. “But imagery needs to be matched with testimony, medical reports and forensic evidence to build a case for justice.”
A Question for the Reader
What responsibility does the outside world have when cities vanish behind blackouts and pixels reveal clusters of bodies? When the instruments of international law are slow and politics are swift, how do we weigh intervention, accountability and the sovereignty of a nation in the throes of implosion?
There are no easy answers. But the faces in Tawila—children with crusted eyes, mothers who have lost husbands, aid workers who sleep with boots on—are part of a moral ledger that demands attention. The falling of El-Fasher is not simply another footnote in a long conflict: it is a call to look harder, act faster, and remember the people who can no longer tell their own stories.
In the weeks ahead, more satellite passes will come. Aid convoys will attempt routes. Diplomats will issue statements. And the question will remain: will the images translate into protection, justice, and the slow work of rebuilding lives? Or will they be archived—harrowing, unforgettable, and ultimately ineffectual?
