The road out of El-Fasher is paved not with promise, but with peril. In the besieged remains of this city in North Darfur, people face a wrenching choice: stay and gradually starve under constant bombardment, or attempt escape down a route that demands ransom and risks death. The journey becomes a kind of extortion-chamber. According to aid workers, those trying to leave have been obliged to hand over hundreds of dollars — or valuables — just to pass through checkpoints held by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Inside the city, the siege has squeezed life down to its barest flicker: supplies cut off, food skyrocketing, children hollow-eyed from malnutrition. The World Food Programme reports that staple foods cost up to 460 percent more in El-Fasher than elsewhere, while evacuation roads have become deadly trenches.
And so the road beckons — but it is lined with deaths. Eyewitnesses say dozens of unburied bodies mark the 70-kilometre trek to safety, victims of hunger, violence or the shelling that riddled the path. Those who flee say the RSF erects berms, blocks roads and treats all who move as prey.
The story of this road is the story of a city trapped: a last stronghold of the regular army now encircled, with civilians paying the price. Every payment, every step, becomes part of the calculus of survival. And in Darfur’s bleak landscape, “getting out” is no simple escape — it’s a gamble that the world is still watching.
Sources : AP news, The Guardian
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