It has been over two months since the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – the paramilitary group battling the Sudanese army for control of my country – attacked Zam Zam displacement camp in Darfur and slaughtered hundreds of people inside.
During the devastating 11 April raid, and in the days that followed, I lost nearly two dozen members of my family, while my dear Aunt Zahra – a second mother to me – was forced to flee across the border to a camp in Chad.
From my base in Uganda (where I relocated to after leaving Zam Zam when Sudan’s war first broke out) I documented everything — confirming who the RSF had killed, who had made it out, where the injured had been taken, and who had gone missing.
I didn’t sleep for a week as I fielded calls from across the Sudanese diaspora – from Khartoum, Cairo, London, Sydney, Minnesota – desperate voices pleading for news. They believed that, as a journalist, I might know more than they did.
My family’s losses were immense. But what broke me the most was watching the world stay silent. Zam Zam, in North Darfur state, was the largest displacement camp in Sudan, and yet the world refused to look as it was turned into a mass grave.
For months, camp residents had warned of a looming RSF attack. Its fighters viewed Zam Zam not as a shelter, but as a threat – a place filled with people from communities aligned with armed movements that support the Sudanese army.
The RSF had killed many civilians in similar situations since launching its rebellion in April 2023, with backing from the United Arab Emirates, with much of its worst abuses inflicted on Darfur, its traditional stronghold.
In El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state, RSF forces carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing and collective punishment against civilians in 2023. Everybody in Zam Zam feared that what happened there would happen to them.
But the warning signs were ignored. By the time the RSF attack on Zam Zam ended, more than 500 people were dead, while dozens of girls – some as young as 13 – had been raped. I personally lost ten cousins, six of them children.
Zam Zam – originally built to shelter people displaced by the early 2000s Darfur conflict, but swollen in numbers by the current war – is no longer a safe haven for civilians. It is now an RSF barracks, with those left inside unable to leave freely.
What happened in Zam Zam was not an accident of war. It was one of many calculated RSF atrocities – part of a scorched-earth campaign designed to depopulate, terrorise, and punish those deemed loyal to the army and allied groups.
Zam Zam is a symbol of what happens when the international community looks away — of what becomes of civilians when those with guns act with impunity. But it is also a story of individual loss, as my family story shows.
What I lost
Aunt Zahra – 62, tall, calm, and warm – moved to Zam Zam in 2014 after escaping government raids on her village of Tabit in North Darfur. During that offensive, more than 200 women and girls were raped, according to human rights groups.
Zahra arrived in Zam Zam with three daughters and four sons and soon built a new life with a small home and farm. She cultivated a reputation as a wise woman who others turned to for advice, Quranic knowledge, and kindness.
I still remember the atmosphere of Zahra’s home – a simple mud structure near the market, always filled with the scent of fresh sorghum bread and the sound of children laughing.
Zahra never went to school, but she had memorised the holy book and taught its verses to children who came by for a snack or to shelter from the sun. She taught it to her grandchildren whom she looks after, alongside their parents.
I still remember the atmosphere of Zahra’s home – a simple mud structure near the market, always filled with the scent of fresh sorghum bread and the sound of children laughing.
But in this place of refuge, safety was still fragile. Even before the war, women in the camp were often harassed, robbed, and raped by RSF forces while traveling to their farms outside the camp.
During the current war – which has produced the world’s largest displacement and hunger crises – huge numbers of Darfuris fled from surrounding areas into Zam Zam, seeking protection, as other had done in decades past.
But the RSF blocked aid convoys from reaching the camp, and famine took hold last year. The paramilitary fighters then began periodically shelling the site before finally launching a full assault in April.
Zahra was boiling herbal tea for four grandchildren when the first explosion hit. Used to the sound of blasts, life momentarily kept going. Then moments later, the ground shook, and the sky turned black with smoke.
Zahra gathered the children and ran. She had no plan, just survival. Along with her daughters, Suad and Khadija, and her grandchildren, Ahmed and Nawar, she fled on foot, trying to reach the outskirts of Zam Zam. But the escape was dangerous.
About five kilometres south of the camp, her group encountered RSF fighters. One tried to seize Ahmed, 11, claiming he was "old enough to be a spy". Khadija refused to let go of her nephew. The fighter shot them both.
They were buried in shallow graves by my Uncle Osman just before sunset on 12 April. He then led 11 surviving family members on a silent, hours-long trek to Abu Shouk camp, while Zahra traveled east with other relatives towards the town of Tawila.
Tawila was overcrowded and starved of aid, so we scraped together money to help Zahra and others reach Chad. Along the way, they were stripped of their possessions by the RSF and allied militias. Some were forced to remove their clothes. Others were beaten for simply speaking.
Dignity removed, memories stolen
In three days, our family lost everything – and they were not alone. At least 500 civilians were confirmed dead by the camp’s administrative committee. Others put the toll much higher.
Among the victims were elderly men who couldn’t run, babies crushed under rubble, teachers who had volunteered to educate displaced children, and local aid workers. They are not statistics. They were people with names and dreams.
I have learnt during this period that displacement is about more than just losing your home. It takes your dignity, steals your memories, shatters your family into pieces scattered across oceans – and it never lets you forget.
More than half a million people have now fled Zam Zam, heading for El Fasher, Neivasha, Abu Shouk, or scattered villages near Wadi Shagra. They live under trees and in bombed-out schools. They have nothing to eat or drink and no medicine.
I have learnt during this period that displacement is about more than just losing your home. It takes your dignity, steals your memories, shatters your family into pieces scattered across oceans – and it never lets you forget.
Still, even amid the ashes, there are some flickers of hope. In the makeshift camps of Tawila, some 65 kilometres from Zam Zam, some mothers bake tiny millet sweets to distract hungry children.
The children of Tawila, meanwhile, mold animals from the mud, pretending they are still in school, and some youth have started rebuilding shelters for the displaced. Local solidarity initiatives have sprung up, as they have across Sudan.
Aunt Zahra currently lives in the Toulm refugee camp in eastern Chad and has built a small house. The neighbours are not the same as her family and friends in Zam Zam, but she still has hope for a better tomorrow.
This piece was published in collaboration with Egab. Edited by Philip Kleinfeld and Dahlia Kholaif.
