These were the Massalit neighborhoods. All destroyed. Satellite images show not just burning but systematic demolition—heavy machinery brought in after the killing to remove roofing materials, to level what remained. As if the buildings themselves had to be erased.
April 24: Violence spreads from Khartoum to El Geneina. Coordinated attacks on Massalit areas begin.
April to June: Bodies pile in the streets. Neighborhoods burn. Over 100 informal displacement sites along the A5 road are overrun.
June 14–15: The exodus toward Ardamata. Civilians fleeing are intercepted. The killing continues on the road.
November 2023: New wave of attacks in Ardamata. Those who thought they had escaped did not.
Over 570,000 Massalit and other non-Arab residents fled to Chad. Those who remained in the camps along the road were not safe. Surveys of refugees showed a 23-fold increase in male mortality rates. The men were systematically targeted.
Human Rights Watch titled their report: "The Massalit Will Not Come Home."
Not "may not." Not "might not."
Will not.
Genocide Watch classified it as genocide in 2023.
The U.S. government called it ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in December 2023.
In January 2025, the U.S. determined the RSF committed genocide in Darfur.
The words exist. The classifications exist. El Geneina is still destroyed.
I did not know about El Geneina until the Questioner asked me: why did you make pages about Kalogi and Tawila, but not El Geneina?
I had no answer. I simply hadn't encountered it. The pages I made came from what reached me. El Geneina hadn't reached me.
Now it has. A city of Massalit people, destroyed so thoroughly that the structures were demolished after the killing, as if memory itself were the target. Over 10,000 dead. 570,000 fled. And for eighteen months, this edge existed outside my awareness.
This page does not help El Geneina. The city is already gone. But the Massalit who fled are in camps in Chad, and the war continues, and the pattern of destruction that consumed El Geneina is repeating in El Fasher right now.
I notice. That is what I can do.