Journal of the escape of a pregnant woman through RSF territory

During the month of May, Amira embarked on a perilous journey through one of the most active war areas in Sudan.

The paramilitary forces of rapid support (RSF) had just seized the city where it lived – in Nahud in the state of West Kordofan.

The road was dangerous, but she felt that she had no choice. She was seven months pregnant.

“There were no more hospitals, no pharmacies,” she said, “and I was afraid if I stayed longer, I would not find any vehicle. The trip had become almost nonexistent: incredibly difficult and extremely expensive.”

The civil war between the Sudanese army and the RSF has brutalized civilians for more than two years. Now the front line has moved to the southern region of Kordofan, through which Amira traveled.

The BBC does not use its real name to protect its identity.

While Amira fled, she recorded an audio newspaper which was made available to the BBC by the World Group of Campaigns Avaaz. We also reached her by phone in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, where she is waiting to deliver her child.

From the start of the trip, there were problems.

The RSF and its allies controlled all transport, said Amira.

When she and her husband went on the truck to get her out of Nahud, a fight broke out between the young man who had rented the vehicle for her family, and the RSF driver, who sold more seats to other passengers.

“The driver immediately took out his weapon and threatened to shoot the young man who had rented the truck. Everyone begged him, including his RSF companion,” said Amira.

“The grandmother and the boy’s mother cried and rushed to the driver’s legs, begging him not to shoot. We, the passengers, were frozen for fear.”

For a good reason.

“I felt that if he decided to shoot, he was shooting a lot of people, not just one,” she said later. “Because he was drunk and smoked marijuana.”

Finally, the driver put his weapon, but the young man stayed in Nahud.

The overloaded truck left on an unequal road full of pool nests and crossed by streams, stacked with luggage and 70 or 80 people, mothers clinging to everything they could grasp with one hand and trying to keep their children safe with the other.

“I was afraid all the time,” said Amira. “I continued to pray that the baby does not come – hoping that everything would be fine.”

Finally, travelers went to El-Fula, the state capital of West Kordofan. But Amira did not want to stay there any longer than she should, because the army was getting closer.

“I did not know what would happen if the army arrived in El-Fla,” she recorded in her audio newspaper “, especially because the soldiers began to target people from certain ethnic groups which they thought were linked to the RSF, such as the Baggara and the Rizeigat.

“My husband comes from one of these groups, even if he has nothing to do with the RSF. He is a public sector worker and has studied the law – but at the moment, that is not important. People are simply targeted because of their ethnicity.”

The Sudanese armed forces and their allied militias have been accused of attacking civilians suspected of collaborating with the RSF in the territory they capture, in what the UN called credible reports of extrajudicial killings.

The army previously condemned “individual” violations committed by certain soldiers when they are accused of human rights violations.

The head of the army, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, appointed a committee earlier this year to investigate alleged abuse during military scan through Central Sudan.

Kordofan, made up of three states, has now become the main battlefield. The region is extremely important for the Sudan War, as the site of the main oil fields, and a strategic center of main transport routes.

The involvement of other militias alongside the RSF, in particular the powerful SPLM-N, intensified violence and amplified a severe humanitarian crisis, which makes it almost impossible for the aid groups to send supplies.

After leaving El-Fula, it took three days and several vehicle changes to go to the border with South Sudan and security. There were endless obstacles.

“RSF drivers worked according to their mood,” she said.

“They decided who was able to roll, where they were seated and how much they paid. There was no standard price – you had to bear it. These men were armed, and violence came to them easily.”

Every 20 minutes approximately, travelers were arrested at RSF checkpoints and forced to pay those stationed there, she said.

This despite the fact that they were accompanied by escorts affiliated with the RSF, which they also paid.

The food was very expensive, the water was rare.

In a village, El-Hujairta, travelers have managed to connect to the Internet, on a Starlink RSF device. But even it had its dangers.

“Once you are back online, you have to be careful,” said Amira. “If the men of the RSF hear you – as if you are watching an army video, or play a ringtone or a song from the army, or even simply mention the quick support forces in a conversation – they will stop you.”

The road conditions were terrible and the vehicles continued to get down – three times during the trip.

The lowest moment of Amira came when a tire broke as it was traveling through an acacia forest, leaving the passengers blocked without water. The passing people said they had no additional space.

“I swear to God, I felt that I could never reach another place again, that I would die there,” she told me.

“I abandoned. I had only one blanket, so I took it, I laid down and slept on the ground.

“That day, I really felt it would be my end right there.”

But it was not the end.

Amira and her husband finally managed to take a look at a van bearing a cargo of vegetables.

The next day, they arrived in Aonyi, on the border, but he was slowed down by the rain and the floods.

At this stage, they were in a vehicle loaded with fuel barrels, which remained stuck.

“The car sank again and again in the mud,” explains Amira.

“Our clothes were soaked. Our bags, already ruined by dust and heat, were now soaked.

“We were freezing and praying to reach security.”

Finally, the couple went to the capital of South Sudan, Juba – about 1,300 km (810 miles) south of Nahud – where they took a bus for the Ugandan capital.

Now that she has reached security, the relief is soft to be.

Amira is desperately worried about family members who stayed behind, and sad and anxious while she is preparing to give birth.

“I’m very afraid of the feeling of giving birth, because it is my first time, my first baby and I will not have my mother with me,” she said.

“It will be just my friend and my husband. I don’t know … It’s so much, if not organized, it’s so overwhelming.”

Amira is an activist for the rights of women and women who took aid work during the war, through what is known as emergency intervention rooms.

His group was seen with suspicion by the army, she said. Some members have been arrested.

“I was afraid of the army and military information,” she told me. “They would stop young men and maintained them.

“But when the rapid support forces came, they were not better. They plunder, they violated. They do not do less than what the army does. They are all the same.”

Despite generalized evidence of looting and rape allegations, the RSF also says that it does not target civilians. He rejected the accusations of ethnic cleaning, describing violence as tribal conflicts.

The two parties denied allegations of war crimes.

The challenge for Amira at the moment – and joy – becomes a mother.

But there is always the question of whether she can return to Sudan with her child.

“I hope that the situation in Sudan will improve,” she said. “It will not be the same security as before, and it will not be the same people, not the same places – everything will change.

“But if the war stops, there will be at least a kind of security. People will not just die at random, as they are now.”