Tag: Sudan

Back in September I wrote about the siege of el-Fasher in Sudan, wherein the town and its government defenders faced the paramilitary rebel forces, the Rapid Support Force (RSF). At the time the RSF besiegers were constructing a wall to encircle the town and cut residents and defending forces off from resupply and reinforcements.

At the end of October, RSF troops pushed into el-Fasher and captured the main government military base, effectively ending resistance in the town. Brutality followed suit.

In the following three weeks, social media footage has evidenced mass killings and summary executions. Satellites high above the conflict have captured images of mass graves dug and filled.

This graphic from a BBC article covering the horror includes a four-panel small multiple of satellite photos of a children’s hospital in the city. The first two images, screenshot here, capture the day before the city’s fall and then a few days later the appearance of likely bodies and the digging of a small mass grave.

The rest of the graphic in the article details the worsening of the situation.

In my September post I commented about how the RSF besiegers used one of mankind’s most ancient forms of warfare. Two months later they followed that up by another of mankind’s most ancient forms of warfare: slaughter the inhabitants of a captured town.

Suffice it to say the article’s content does not make for an easy read. The graphics buttress the article with a necessary, but cold clinical detachment as it is not as if the RSF will allow journalists or statisticians into el-Fasher to catalogue their crimes.

The graphics comprise a number of satellite photographs along with a few social media videos and images linking the RSF to the mass killings. The designers annotated the photographs clearly and they communicate just what we know about the crimes without any added hyperbole or hysteria. A well done piece.

Unfortunately, as for the subject matter, it does not look like things in Sudan will be getting any better anytime soon.

Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics team.

Conflict—a brutal civil war—continues unabated in Sudan. In the country’s west opposition forces have laid siege to the city of el-Fasher for over a year now. And a recent BBC News article provided readers recent satellite imagery showing the devastation within the city and, most interestingly, one of the most ancient of mankind’s tactics in siege warfare: encircling the town or fortress with a wall. No one gets in. And no one gets out.

The screenshot from the article above is of a village to the west of the city and it reveals the brutality of siege warfare. Paramilitary opposition forces constructed their siege wall through the middle of the village, which the image reveals barely exists any longer.

I love images like this because sometimes complex graphics are not necessary to tell the story. The scale of obliteration is obvious to the audience. And it only requires a moment’s extra thought to realise each building was someone’s home or business.

This second screenshot is of an annotated map from the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University. Coloured lines indicate the siege wall’s size and progress. Unlike the obvious nature of the first set of side-by-side images, here the story requires annotations.

Colours indicate when the paramilitaries built the segment of wall. The village in the satellite photos can be seen on the left of the map with the green dashes appropriately cutting through the text label. There are only four colours relevant to the wall and I perhaps would have explored using a light-to-dark gradient instead of four distinct hues as a gradient implies a progression. The wall began in the north, then went to the west and worked clockwise, i.e. cyan to green to yellow to red. A gradient probably would have been clearer in that regard.

I think the drawback with that particular graphic is the legend is not in the graphic itself. Instead, the BBC had to explain it via the article’s text. The lack of an integrated graphic hurts in cases just like this when, say, a screenshot of the image is used without the accompanying text. Here is an example of how that could work.

Overall I like the graphics. And by like I mean the design of the graphics. I do not like the ongoing civil war. The paramilitary forces have made clear their intention to starve and bombard the city’s population to death. Alas, I doubt we will see anything change anytime soon.

Credit for the original pieces go to the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University and the BBC graphics team.

Credit for the edit is mine.