In mid-March last year, residents of Al-Malha in North Darfur awoke to the sound of gunfire as Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Joint Force troops withdrew from the town. Within hours, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had taken control, completing what many residents had long feared was an inevitable takeover of the locality.
For Al-Malha’s people, life has not been the same since. What followed was a prolonged humanitarian crisis marked by displacement, food shortages and growing insecurity. According to several residents from Al-Malha now living across Sudan and abroad who spoke to Atar, more than 90 percent of the population of the locality’s administrative centre has fled. Most sought safety in northern Sudan, while others crossed into neighbouring countries.
From the beginning, we knew the cost of staying was too high. None of us wanted to leave our hometown, but we had only one choice: to flee in order to survive.
Musa Alyan, resident of Al-Malha
Musa Alyan, a native of Al-Malha now living in Libya, said the conditions that emerged during the RSF’s first weeks in control convinced many families that leaving was their only option.
“From the beginning, we knew the cost of staying was too high,” he told Atar. “None of us wanted to leave our hometown, but the fear of what was coming—and the warning signs we had already seen—left us with only one choice: to flee in order to survive.”
Although he escaped, Alyan says he remains in regular contact with relatives and friends who are still scattered across the locality. Their accounts, he said, describe a humanitarian catastrophe that has continued to deepen, with widespread hunger and suffering that, in his words, is “beyond what any human being should have to endure.”
Al-Malha locality sits in the Meidob Hills, roughly 220 kilometers from Al-Fashir and about 355 kilometers from Dongola, the capital of Northern State. It borders Libya to the north, North Kordofan state to the east, Northern State to the northeast, the localities of Kutum and Wadi Howar to the west, Melit locality to the south, and Al-Kuma locality to the southeast. It comprises seven administrative units:
Al-Malha, Al-Halaf, Marega, Um Baiada, Al-Hara Al-Atrun, Abu Qurun and Ain Basaro.
Al-Malha’s population is made up largely of the Meidob people, whose economy rests on a pastoral system built around raising camels and livestock — a system badly shaken by the waves of drought that struck the region in the 1970s and 1980s. The Meidob economy also relies on cross-border trade with Egypt, Libya and Chad, alongside traditional farming. The locality is rich in natural resources, including the Atrun salt flats, palm oases, and gold-mining sites in Taqru, Rahib and Um Al-Haraeer.
A Curse of Geography
The road to treatment has become a road of death and fear.
Osman Ibrahim, resident of Al-Malha locality
Shams Al-Din Markaz Adam, a survivor of the RSF attack on his village, Um Al-Tayman, on May 17, 2025, who has since been displaced to Al-Dabba in Northern State, explained that Al-Malha locality’s proximity to Al-Tina locality — where SAF and Joint Force troops are stationed — has become an abiding curse. “Ever since the RSF seized Al-Fashir, vehicles and motorcycles carrying RSF fighters have been passing through, heading toward the areas still under SAF control,” he said. Adam noted that these forces, on their way toward Al-Tina and Karnoi, attack the villages and valleys where displaced people have taken shelter.
Osman Ibrahim, a resident of Al-Malha locality, told Atar that the road stretching from Al-Malha to Al-Halaf, Al-Halaf Al-Thani and Darishqa, and onward to Melit, has become an open stage for RSF forces to move through and commit every manner of abuse against residents. He said the road has also opened up to gangs and mercenary elements arriving from several countries by way of neighboring Libya. “These elements are infiltrating and moving freely inside Sudanese territory right now, exploiting the security vacuum and the chaos spreading across the region,” Ibrahim said, adding: “These gangs and groups operate under RSF protection, blocking the roads, which has halted commercial travel, and they target residents who set out seeking treatment in Al-Malha’s referral hospital — which, for all its dilapidated state, remains the only option available, if you can even reach it.”
Ibrahim said many patients heading to Al-Malha never arrive, as the journey has turned into a genuine threat to women, children and the elderly, and those who do reach the town do not return — they instead move on in search of treatment in Al-Dabba, in Northern State. But Ibrahim insists that whoever sets out for either destination fails to reach it. “Killings, executions and looting are no longer hidden from anyone, and the voices of the victims still linger in people’s memory. Worse still, some of these criminals are known to residents by name and move about in broad daylight without fear,” he said.
Ibrahim pointed to an RSF strongpoint in the Darishqa area, east of Al-Malha and west of Melit, where he says most of the abuses committed against civilians take place. “This position bears direct responsibility for what is happening. There is clear, well-coordinated collusion between it and the multiple gangs currently active in the area,” he said.
Placing full responsibility for the breakdown in security on the RSF, Ibrahim said the area lies under its complete control, that the gangs’ movements are well known, and that killings and looting recur daily — evidence, in his view, of collusion, deliberate silence and indirect sponsorship of these crimes. He said these are not isolated, individual incidents but a dangerous state of lawlessness whose price is paid by innocent civilians, particularly women, the elderly and the sick, for whom the road to treatment has become a road of death and fear. He was adamant that a deliberate, recurring pattern underlies these crimes.
Soaring Prices
In the Marega area of Al-Malha locality, the local emergency response room painted a grim picture of conditions there, revealing steep increases in the prices of basic goods at the town market and residents’ inability to buy them after losing their jobs and their financial means. According to a statement the room issued on July 10, a 25-kilogram sack of flour cost 190,000 Sudanese pounds, a sack of onions 175,000 pounds, a pound of cooking oil 16,000 pounds, a kilogram of lentils 12,000 pounds, a bar of soap 3,000 pounds, a kilogram of sugar 12,000 pounds, a malwa of millet 10,000 pounds, a malwa of sorghum 8,000 pounds, a pound of dried okra 6,000 pounds, a kilogram of rice 12,000 pounds, and a small can of tomato paste 6,000 pounds.
Given the acute cash shortage, buying and selling now runs largely through banking apps, the room said — giving rise to two separate prices for the same item. The room described the surge in the cost of provisions across Al-Malha locality’s various administrative units and village councils as “alarming,” noting that the increase deepens the hardship of both displaced and host families straining to secure even the barest essentials of life.
The Al-Malha emergency response room said separately that the Dar Difa area is suffering a sharp spike in prices alongside a total absence of basic food items, worsening living conditions and deepening families’ hardship amid dire humanitarian and economic circumstances. According to Atar’s own monitoring, a sack of sugar cost 480,000 Sudanese pounds in cash and 520,000 pounds through the Bankak app, a 25-kilogram sack of flour ran to 190,000 pounds in cash and 220,000 pounds via Bankak, a sack of onions cost 500,000 pounds in cash and 550,000 pounds via Bankak, a 9-pound gallon of cooking oil cost 210,000 pounds in cash and 240,000 pounds via Bankak, and milling a single malwa of grain cost 3,000 pounds in cash and 5,000 pounds via Bankak.
Drone Wounds and Burning Markets
Having the market and its goods here used to be a source of reassurance for people. Now it has become a source of worry.
Jibril Murada, trader at Ashar market
Last June weighed heavily on Al-Malha locality, deepening residents’ suffering. The Al-Malha Human Rights Observatory disclosed what it called violations of international humanitarian law committed in the locality “since March 20, 2025, by both parties to Sudan’s conflict,” describing them as “war crimes and crimes against humanity resulting from a wide-scale, systematic attack against civilians.” According to the observatory, civilian casualties fell on June 18 and 19 “after a civilian vehicle carrying passengers was struck by a drone belonging to the SAF between the Monday and Tuesday markets, as they were traveling to a gold-mining site in the town of Taqru in Al-Malha locality, killing nine people and wounding two others,” the observatory’s tally found.
Not long after, and not far away, the same statement said, “the market in the Um Baiada area was subsequently struck by another drone, also belonging to the SAF. Um Baiada lies 70 kilometers east of the locality’s administrative seat, and the strike burned the market to the ground.” The strike took place on June 19, according to a resident who spoke to Atar’s correspondent.
Not every market fire in the area traces back to the warring parties’ drones — some burned for other reasons, made likelier by the local building materials markets typically built from. Local sources disclosed that the market in the Ashar area, south of Al-Malha town, was consumed by a massive fire on July 1, destroying it and inflicting heavy losses in goods and property. Yassin Kamal Al-Din, a member of Ashar’s emergency response room, told Atar the market fire struck amid already harsh living conditions and a severe shortage of food supplies in the local community.
Jibril Murada, a trader at the market, told Atar that losses have piled up on merchants, but their heaviest toll will fall on residents, since the market held a large stock of goods and merchandise that cannot be replaced under current conditions — the roads are closed, goods are subject to looting and confiscation, and vehicles are targeted by drones. “Having the market and its goods here used to be a source of reassurance for people. Now it has become a source of worry,” he said.
Not far away either, the Adrur emergency response room disclosed a massive fire at the popular market in early June — the only functioning market in the area. The room said the fire inflicted severe material losses in property and goods, amid a wave of grief and sorrow among local residents.
The flames consumed large sections of the market, destroying two grain mills that residents depended on to grind sorghum into their daily staple. The fire also engulfed the stalls and merchandise of displaced families who had recently sought shelter in the area and relied on small-scale trading in the market as their only source of income.
A Warning Bell
To keep ignoring the severed supply chains into the Al-Malha area amounts to silent complicity in a man-made famine whose warning signs are mounting rapidly.
Sudan Human Rights Monitor and BEZA Organization.
According to field information received by the Sudan Human Rights Monitor and the BEZA Organization for Development, Humanitarian Services and Peacebuilding, gathered from several areas and administrative units within Al-Malha locality in North Darfur, strong indicators have emerged that the area is sliding into a food crisis. A memo issued by the two organizations on July 11, drawing on local sources, described the volatility and fragility of security, food and health conditions in Al-Malha, and the extent to which “local solidarity mechanisms — including emergency response rooms, local and nongovernmental organizations, and grassroots mutual-aid initiatives — have been worn down.”
The memo traced how “fragile supply lines” deteriorated alongside the security situation starting in March 2025, “when RSF forces launched a wide-scale military assault on the SAF and the Joint Force units stationed in the area.”
The Sudan Human Rights Monitor and BEZA memo called for an urgent response: “To keep ignoring the severed supply chains into the Al-Malha area amounts to silent complicity in a man-made famine whose warning signs are mounting rapidly — yet one that can still be confronted through decisive action. There is no more time left for political maneuvering or bureaucratic procedure. The situation has already crossed the danger line.”
