(Reuters) – Aid workers said that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is at war with the Sudanese army, has imposed new restrictions on aid delivery to areas where it seeks to strengthen its control, including parts where famine is spreading.
This move comes as the RSF attempts to form a parallel government in the west of the country, while rapidly retreating in the capital Khartoum, developments that could increase the risk of division in the country from which South Sudan separated in 2011.
It also threatens hundreds of thousands of people with famine in Darfur in the west of the country, many of whom have been displaced in previous rounds of conflict.
Aid workers have previously accused RSF fighters of looting aid during the war that has been raging for about two years. They also accused the army of preventing or obstructing access to areas controlled by the RSF, exacerbating hunger and disease.
Several aid workers, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said that since late last year, the RSF has begun demanding higher fees and oversight of operational processes such as hiring local staff and security, practices used by pro-army authorities, as well as further tightening the noose on aid delivery.
There have been no previous reports of RSF movements, and aid organizations are trying to counter these practices.
The war, which erupted due to a power struggle between the army and the RSF, has caused what the United Nations describes as the world’s largest and most devastating humanitarian crisis.
About half of Sudan’s 50 million population suffers from severe hunger, mostly in territories controlled or threatened by the RSF. More than 12.5 million have been displaced.
Aid agencies have been unable to provide sufficient assistance, and the freezing of USAID funding is expected to increase difficulties.
In December, the Sudanese Agency for Relief and Humanitarian Operations, which oversees aid on behalf of the RSF, issued directives, copies of which Reuters has seen, requiring aid organizations to register through a “cooperation agreement” and conduct independent country-level operations in RSF-controlled territories.
Despite the agency agreeing last month to suspend the directives until April, aid organizations say the restrictions are still ongoing.
Aid workers said that tightening bureaucratic controls is partly due to the RSF’s quest for international legitimacy, but it also provides a means of raising funds for a faction facing military setbacks while still controlling vast areas of the country, including most of Darfur.
Throughout the war, the momentum on the battlefield has swung between the two sides as each relied on local and foreign support, with few indications of a decisive breakthrough.
However, in the past few days, the army has rapidly regained control of areas in the capital that the RSF had seized at the beginning of the war, including the presidential palace in Khartoum, progress documented by a Reuters journalist
