Beirut, Lebanon – Sudan’s army is pushing the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to retreat from Khartoum, sparking hope among many in the capital for renewed stability.
However, local relief workers said they fear they will be targeted in a wave of reprisals.
“Every time the army recaptures an area, … they start to target civilians and the humanitarian volunteers. This is why we are all so frightened,” said *Ahmed, a local relief volunteer in Sharq el-Nile, an area in Khartoum that the army is threatening to recapture.
A war on local relief workers
Local volunteers like Ahmed are members of Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs), grassroots networks that have led the humanitarian response since Sudan erupted into war in April 2023.
ERRs provide multiple services, such as supporting soup kitchens, safe spaces for women and children, and basic healthcare for the sick and wounded.
Most rely on donations from the Sudanese diaspora and funding from international NGOs and United Nations agencies.
Despite their vital humanitarian role, ERR workers face arrests, kidnappings and extrajudicial killings from both sides in the conflict.
Many have been targeted for their pro-democracy stances, which threatened the joint rule of the then-allied RSF and army after a popular uprising brought down their former boss President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.
Four years later, the RSF and army turned their guns against each other after they cooperated to overthrow a civilian administration and sabotage popular aspirations for democracy. The war between the two sides has killed tens of thousands of people and generated the largest humanitarian crisis in the world by most measures.
On top of that, at least 112 ERR members have been killed since the start of the war, according to an ERR spokesperson. The actual toll could be higher amid fears that reporting attacks could bring violent retaliation.
As the army advances in Khartoum, many ERR members fear for their lives and are calling for protection.
“We have been thinking about how we get some kind of protection [for ERR members], and we need the international community to push and advocate for us,” said Mokhtar Atif, the spokesperson for ERR volunteers in Khartoum North.
According to volunteers, analysts and international aid workers, the army often treats any person carrying out humanitarian activities in RSF areas as a traitor.
“Many volunteers are refusing to evacuate [from Khartoum] because there are badly needed UN [aid] convoys that should be coming in the next few days” and the ERR members need to distribute the aid to hungry civilians, said Hajooj Kuka, spokesperson for the Khartoum ERRs coordination committee.
“Many of these volunteers have made peace with the fact that they will be killed [by the army] and some have already sent messages [to us and their friends] saying their goodbyes,” he told Al Jazeera.
Surveillance and killings
Several ERR volunteers told Al Jazeera they know of fellow aid workers and civilians who were recently killed by the army and aligned militias in Khartoum North.
They said their teams are overwhelmed by the massive humanitarian crisis and cannot monitor attacks accurately.
Al Jazeera sent written questions to army spokesperson Nabil Abdullah, asking him to respond to the accusations that the army and aligned militias are targeting local activists and civilians as they recapture Khartoum.
He did not respond before publication.
However, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement that it is aware of at least 18 people killed in seven incidents by army-affiliated fighters in Khartoum North on January 25.
Al Jazeera is unable to confirm if any of those killed were ERR members.
The UN human rights office is also trying to verify footage that shows fighters from the Baraa bin Malik Brigade, a militia that supports the army, reading out a long list of names and saying “zaili” – Arabic for “killed” – after each name.
“The army has its own spies that monitor civilians interacting with the RSF,” speculated one ERR member in Khartoum who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Kuka gave another reason why he believes the army uses spies to monitor relief workers.
He said one of his ERR members was arrested a month ago after crossing from an RSF area in Khartoum to a nearby town controlled by the army.
The member was tortured – Kuka did not disclose how – and accused of collaborating with the RSF due to working in a medical centre that was providing care to the wounded and sick.
According to Kuka, the army told the ERR member that it had been monitoring the medical centre for a long time and considered all the staff RSF collaborators.
A few dozen people work at the centre.
“The army knows the people [who volunteer at the centre] by name, … and they said they are going to get them,” Kuka told Al Jazeera.
Smears and accusations
Since the army launched its offensive to take the capital in late September, anonymous social media users have smeared local relief workers and other activists as RSF collaborators on closed Facebook groups and private WhatsApp chats, ERR members said.
“There is always disinformation that spreads whenever the army retakes a new area,” Atif said.
Al Jazeera’s authentication agency, Sanad, looked at screenshots of six Facebook posts that threatened or smeared people in Halafya, a neighbourhood in Khartoum North.
Sanad said the posts were uploaded by anonymous users and in private groups.
Atif added that the posts began circulating just as the army recaptured Halafya in early October.
At the time, the UN-designated expert on Sudan, Radhouane Nouicer, said in a statement he was alarmed by reports that army-aligned militias had summarily executed at least 70 young men in Halafya on suspicion they were RSF collaborators.
“These [smears on social media] started in September just before the army executed lots of civilians in Halafya,” Atif said,
Lists of alleged collaborators are spreading again as the army consolidates control over Khartoum North, ERR members said.
One list circulating over WhatsApp and seen by Al Jazeera accuses 125 people – activists, politicians, medics and lawyers – of conspiring against the army and state.
Kuka said an ERR member is also on the list and several of his peers have also received death threats on Facebook.
Escape
The summary killings carried out by army-aligned militias in Halafya are compelling many ERR volunteers to look for a way to escape from their neighbourhoods in Khartoum to save themselves and their families.
Many said they were equally frightened after army-aligned militias carried out extrajudicial executions of unarmed men in civilian clothes in Wad Madani, the capital of Gezira state, which the RSF surrendered control of a month ago.
The army targeted unarmed men in Wad Madani across ethnic and tribal lines, accusing them of sympathising with the RSF.
While the army promised to investigate the incidents, local relief workers in Khartoum are convinced they will suffer a similar fate if they continue.
“We knew we would be next after the horror that happened in Wad Madani,” Ahmed said from Sharq el-Nile.
On Saturday, Ahmed pooled his family’s savings to evacuate his elderly mother towards Darfur, a sprawling western region that the RSF almost entirely controls.
He hopes to raise enough money to reunite his younger brother and baby sister with their mother in the coming days.
From Darfur, they plan to cross the border into Chad, a country that has already absorbed more than 700,000 Sudanese refugees. The vast majority fled RSF atrocities and abuses.
Ahmed may join them, but he is running out of time to escape. He is dependent on ERR members abroad to wire him money, so he can pay for transportation to leave the city.
“Everyone [working in humanitarian work] around here is really scared. Really scared,” Ahmed said.
“Everyone [from the ERRs] is just arranging to flee right now. If they can’t afford to flee, they are looking for a way to get enough money and escape before the army arrives.”
*Names have been changed to protect sources from possible reprisals.