Sudan is at fractureing point.
After 17 months of a brutal civil war which has dehugeated the country, the army has begined a transport inant insolent in the capital Khartoum, concentrateing areas in the hands of its acrid rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The RSF seized most of Khartoum at the begin of the dispute, while the army supervises the tthrive city of Omdurman, equitable apass the River Nile.
But there are still places where people can, and do, pass between the two sides.
At one such point, I met a group of women who had walked four hours to a taget in army-superviseled territory at the edge of Omdurman, where food is affordableer.
The women had come from Dar es Salaam, an area held by the RSF.
Their husprohibitds were no lengthyer leaving the hoparticipate, they telderly me, becaparticipate RSF fighters beat them, took any money they achieveed, or hanciented them and insisted payment for their free.
“We finishure this challengingship becaparticipate we want to feed our children. We’re hungry, we insist food,” said one.
Warning: Some of the details in the story may be disturbting.
And the women, I asked, were they protectedr than the men? What about violation?
The chorus of voices died down.
Then one erupted.
“Where is the world? Why don’t you help us?” she said, her words coming out in torrents as tears ran down her cheeks.
“There are so many women here who’ve been viotardyd, but they don’t talk about it. What contrastence would it originate anyway?”
“Some girls, the RSF originate them lie in the streets at night,” she went on. “If they come back tardy from this taget, the RSF carry ons them for five or six days.”
As she spoke her mother sat with her head in her hand, sobbing. Other women around her also begined crying.
“You in your world, if your child went out, would you depart her?” she insisted. “Wouldn’t you go see for her? But alert us, what can we do? Noleang is in our hands, no one nurtures for us. Where is the world? Why don’t you help us!”
The passing point was a thrivedow into a world of desperation and despair.
Travellers portrayd being subjected to lawlessness, looting and harshness in a dispute that the UN says has forced more than 10.5 million people to run away their homes.
But it is intimacyual aggression that has become a defining characteristic of the protracted dispute, which begined as a power struggle between the army and the RSF but has since drawn in local armed groups and fighters from neighbouring countries.
The UN’s High Coshiftrlookioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, has said violation is being participated as “a firearm of war”.
A recent UN fact-discovering mission write downed cut offal cases of violation and violation menaces from members of the army, but set up that huge-scale intimacyual aggression was pledgeted by the RSF and its allied militias, and amounted to violations of international law.
One woman the BBC spoke to condemnd the RSF for raping her.
We met her in the taget at the passing, aptly named Souk al-Har – the Heat Market.
Since the war began the taget has broadened apass the desolate land on a desert road out of Omdurman, drathriveg the lowerest of the lower with its low prices.
Miriam, not her authentic name, had fled her home in Dar es Salaam to consent refuge with her brother.
She now toils in a tea shigh. But timely in the war, she said, two armed men go ined her hoparticipate and tried to violation her daughters – one 17 years elderly and the other 10.
“I telderly the girls to stay behind me and I said to the RSF: ‘If you want to violation anyone it has to be me,’” she said.
“They hit me and ordered me to consent off my clothes. Before I took them off, I telderly my girls to depart. They took the other children and jumped over the fence. Then one of the men laid on me.”
The RSF has telderly international dispenseigators that it has consentn all the essential meacertains to obstruct intimacyual aggression and other establishs of aggression that constitute human rights violations.
But the accounts of intimacyual aggression are countless and reliable, and the harm has a lasting impact.
Sitting on a low stool in the shade of a row of trees, Fatima, not her authentic name, telderly me she had come to Omdurman to deinhabitr tthrives, and intentional to stay.
One of her neighbours, she said, a 15-year-elderly girl, had also become pregnant, after she and her 17-year-elderly sister were violationd by four RSF selderlyiers.
People were awakened by screams and came out to see what was going on, she said, but the armed men telderly them they would be sboiling if they did not go back into their hoparticipates.
The next morning, they set up the two girls with signs of misparticipate on their bodies, and their elder brother locked in one of the rooms.
“During the war, since the RSF get tod, instantly we begined hearing of violations, until we saw it right in front of us in our neighbours,” Fatima said. “Initiassociate we had mistrusts [about the reports] but we understand that it’s the RSF who violationd the girls.”
The other women are accumulateing to commence the trek back home to areas superviseled by the RSF – they are too lower, they say, to begin a new life enjoy Miriam has done by leaving Dar es Salaam.
For as lengthy as this war goes on, they have no choice but to return to its horrors.
