When Mouawia heard the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group had overrun the western city of el-Fasher after besieging it for most of the two and a half years of war with Sudan’s army, he was devastated.

Speaking to Al Jazeera over the phone on Sunday, the activist’s voice broke as he spoke of his fear for the civilians still trapped there and of not knowing if he would ever be able to return to his city.

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“It feels like we’ve lost everything,” the 31-year-old said from the nearby town of Tawila. “I just keep thinking of the people still there – the children, the families – and I can’t stop worrying.”

The RSF announced its takeover of el-Fasher on Sunday after it said it took the army’s last garrison in the city, belonging to the Sixth Armoured Division.

It had besieged the capital of North Darfur state for 18 months, attacking people and blocking all aid from entering, engineering a famine that has taken hold for months.

Escape

Mouawia, who refused to give his full name for fear of RSF retaliation, left el-Fasher in early October, covering the roughly 60km (37 miles) to Tawila over several days by cart and walking.

He had decided to leave after realising he would no longer be able to continue his work helping civilians in the city as the RSF’s attacks increased in viciousness.

Mouawia, a media graduate, had been injured a few weeks earlier on his way to a clinic he and a group of other volunteers were operating in the western sector of the city.

A shell exploded nearby as they walked, throwing him to the ground and injuring him in the stomach.

After a harrowing walk to try to get out of the firefight, he and a companion were able to get to a fellow volunteer’s home, a doctor’s assistant who was able to administer first aid.

A trip to a hospital confirmed that Mouawia’s wounds had shrapnel in them, but they could not be removed, given the overcrowding and severe lack of resources in the hospital. The shrapnel remains in Mouawia’s stomach, now healed over.

The injury changed everything. Unable to continue volunteering and with the daily bombardment closing in, he decided to leave el-Fasher through a “safe corridor” for fleeing civilians that the RSF had announced.

He and his team formally handed over their clinic to the Ministry of Health, and he and a fellow volunteer set out with a small cart, some cash and their identity papers.

“We left quietly, praying to reach somewhere safe,” he said. But as they moved through the “safe corridor”, they realised it was anything but.

Ransom, humiliation

The corridor looped northwest despite Tawila being to the southwest because the RSF had erected enormous sand berms around the city during its siege, leaving just one direction open.

The two men headed first to Garni, about 16km (10 miles) away, hoping to reach somewhere they could sleep before continuing their journey.

At the outskirts of Garni, a journey that can take up to five hours on foot, RSF fighters stopped them at a checkpoint and accused them of being soldiers disguised as civilians.

The fighters shouted racial slurs and demanded to know the positions of Sudanese army forces, refusing to listen when Mouawia and his companion showed their passports and explained they were volunteers.

After hours of questioning, they were released – only to be stopped again minutes later at another checkpoint where a fighter found newly printed Sudanese government currency in Mouawia’s bag. He snarled: “This is flangi money,” a Sudanese slur used to describe any fighter with the army or its allied forces.

“Eat it,” the soldier ordered, slapping Mouawia and forcing him to swallow a wad of bills.

“He told me to hand over everything,” Mouawia recalled. The soldiers stole the rest of their cash and phones before letting them pass.

Farther along, two RSF fighters on motorbikes stopped them, accusing them again of being fleeing soldiers.

But finding nothing when they searched them, they allowed them to continue towards a mosque near Garni, where they stopped to sleep until morning before continuing their two-day journey to Tawila.

Their ordeal deepened when an RSF four-by-four blocked the road between Garni and Jughmer, about 11km (7 miles) to the west.

A soldier noticed the scar on Mouawia’s stomach and shouted: “He’s a soldier! I told you!”

They were dragged from a cart, interrogated and threatened at gunpoint until they were eventually released, shaken but alive.

Hours later, the vehicle returned, the fighters demanding 10 billion Sudanese pounds ($3,500) – an impossible ransom.

“I said: ‘Even if you kill me, I don’t have 10 billion,’” Mouawia recalled.

After tense arguments, the fighters lowered the demand to 2.5 billion Sudanese pounds ($860) and took them to an area with phone reception, ordering them to call relatives for money and threatening to kill them.

Desperate, Mouawia contacted a friend in Khartoum, who managed to transfer 1 billion Sudanese pounds, and another volunteer sent 1.5 billion, completing the ransom through a Starlink RSF station located near the checkpoint.

One of the fighters decided to keep some of the money for himself, Mouawia recounted, whispering that he shouldn’t tell the other fighters about the first billion from his friend in Khartoum.

Appeased with the 1.5 billion pounds, the fighters feigned kindness as they left, saying: “We’ll return your money if you want,” giving him a WhatsApp number “for protection” and driving away.

Survival

By then, exhaustion had set in. The two men spent the night in the tiny village of Arida Djangay, sleeping beside their cart.

The next morning, they resumed their journey, only to encounter a new RSF ploy to take money from people on the road: convoys of RSF vehicles demanding “transport fees”.

“They said they’d take us for free but later demanded 1 million [pounds] per person [$0.50],” he said.

At Silik camp in Korma, west of Garni and on the way down to Tawila – about 45 minutes away from it – soldiers stopped their cart again, detaining passengers, including women and children, and extorting “ticket money” from people to transfer them in RSF vehicles instead.

When an elderly man protested that he was already at his destination, the soldiers demanded payment anyway.

“People were furious,” Mouawia said. He and his companion pleaded for calm, reminding the fighters of their earlier promises of safe passage – but to no avail.

Eventually, they secured more money to pay off the fighters from friends who sent mobile transfers.

“We paid just to survive,” he said.

Finally, a sympathetic driver agreed to take them to Tawila for 130,000 pounds ($0.04) via a bank transfer.

“After everything, I just thanked God we made it alive,” Mouawia said softly.

In Tawila, he finally rested although now he questions how he will be able to go on.

“When we were helping people,” he said, “we kept going knowing that someone had to keep hope alive – even in a place like el-Fasher.”

‘Everything stopped’

When war erupted in el-Fasher on April 15, 2023, the once-bustling city collapsed. Within days, medical centres closed, streets emptied and civilians were trapped between bombardment and siege.

“Everything stopped,” Mouawia recalled, going on to detail how he and a group of young residents – doctors, engineers and students – decided to help by reopening a clinic in their neighbourhood.

Within a week, they had cleaned and reopened it, depending solely on local donations and shared meals to sustain their work.

“We worked together regardless of our beliefs or political leanings,” Mouawia said.

The unity carried them through air raids and shortages. They treated gunshot victims, pregnant women and displaced families who appeared at their door in panic. At the end of 2024, their initiative expanded to community kitchens and other forms of support, which kept running despite the bombings.

In May, as the RSF intensified its siege on el-Fasher and launched drone strikes on community kitchens, the volunteers switched to delivering food house to house instead.

“The food we cooked for displaced families became our only meal of the day,” he said.

For nearly two years, their courage held the neighbourhoods together, but by the middle of this year, the siege had tightened. The RSF occupied key areas, blocked supply routes and turned hospitals into military zones.

As the volunteers themselves became targets, those like Mouawia began to see no option but leaving.