Civilian activist Mouawia had just escaped el-Fasher when he heard the RSF had taken the city.
When Mouawia heard the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group had overrun the western city of el-Fasher after besieging it for most of the two and a half years of war with Sudan’s army, he was devastated.
Speaking to media over the phone on Sunday, the activist’s voice broke as he spoke of his fear for the civilians still trapped there and of not knowing if he would ever be able to return to his city.
“It feels like we’ve lost everything,” the 31-year-old said from the nearby town of Tawila. “I just keep thinking of the people still there – the children, the families – and I can’t stop worrying.”
The RSF announced its takeover of el-Fasher on Sunday after it said it took the army’s last garrison in the city, belonging to the Sixth Armoured Division.
It had besieged the capital of North Darfur state for 18 months, attacking people and blocking all aid from entering, engineering a famine that has taken hold for months.
Mouawia, who refused to give his full name for fear of RSF retaliation, left el-Fasher in early October, covering the roughly 60km (37 miles) to Tawila over several days by cart and walking.
He had decided to leave after realising he would no longer be able to continue his work helping civilians in the city as the RSF’s attacks increased in viciousness.
A shell exploded nearby as they walked, throwing him to the ground and injuring him in the stomach.
After a harrowing walk to try to get out of the firefight, he and a companion were able to get to a fellow volunteer’s home, a doctor’s assistant who was able to administer first aid.
A trip to a hospital confirmed that Mouawia’s wounds had shrapnel in them, but they could not be removed, given the overcrowding and severe lack of resources in the hospital. The shrapnel remains in Mouawia’s stomach, now healed over.
The injury changed everything. Unable to continue volunteering and with the daily bombardment closing in, he decided to leave el-Fasher through a “safe corridor” for fleeing civilians that the RSF had announced.
He and his team formally handed over their clinic to the Ministry of Health, and he and a fellow volunteer set out with a small cart, some cash and their identity papers.
Escape
“We left quietly, praying to reach somewhere safe,” he said. But as they moved through the “safe corridor”, they realised it was anything but.
The corridor looped northwest despite Tawila being to the southwest because the RSF had erected enormous sand berms around the city during its siege, leaving just one direction open.
The fighters shouted racial slurs and demanded to know the positions of Sudanese army forces, refusing to listen when Mouawia and his companion showed their passports and explained they were volunteers.
After hours of questioning, they were released – only to be stopped again minutes later at another checkpoint where a fighter found newly printed Sudanese government currency in Mouawia’s bag. He snarled: “This is flangi money,” a Sudanese slur used to describe any fighter with the army or its allied forces.
“Eat it,” the soldier ordered, slapping Mouawia and forcing him to swallow a wad of bills.
“He told me to hand over everything,” Mouawia recalled. The soldiers stole the rest of their cash and phones before letting them pass.
Farther along, two RSF fighters on motorbikes stopped them, accusing them again of being fleeing soldiers.
But finding nothing when they searched them, they allowed them to continue towards a mosque near Garni, where they stopped to sleep until morning before continuing their two-day journey to Tawila.
Their ordeal deepened when an RSF four-by-four blocked the road between Garni and Jughmer, about 11km (7 miles) to the west.
A soldier noticed the scar on Mouawia’s stomach and shouted: “He’s a soldier! I told you!”
They were dragged from a cart, interrogated and threatened at gunpoint until they were eventually released, shaken but alive.
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