The Government of Peace and Unity held its second cabinet session in El Fasher on 28 October, focusing on food shortages and contacts with the UN. On the same day, Yale researchers published satellite evidence that civilian life has returned to only a small part of the city.
Sudan's Government of Peace and Unity, the Tasis-led administration based in Nyala, held its second cabinet meeting in El Fasher, North Darfur, on 28 October, The Sudan Times reported, citing government spokesperson Khalid Ahmed Danaa.
Chaired by Prime Minister Mohamed Hassan al-Taishi, the session examined plans to address the risk of food shortages across Tasis-administered territory and heard a briefing from the foreign minister on his meeting with the UN Secretary-General's personal envoy for Sudan. Ministers also praised what they described as recent military advances in Blue Nile, Kordofan and the Tina area. No funding commitments or timetable for the food-security measures were announced, the paper noted.
Holding cabinet sessions in El Fasher, which the RSF captured in October 2025, is part of the administration's effort to show that it can govern and restore services there. It has promoted voluntary returns of displaced families to the city.
What the satellite imagery shows
The same day, Yale School of Public Health's Humanitarian Research Lab published "El-Fasher, One Year Later", which presents a very different picture. As summarised by Radio Dabanga, the report finds:
- a 9.02% rise in vegetation across the city between January and March 2026, compared with the 2019–2023 average, which researchers read as a sign that daily human activity has largely stopped;
- visible activity concentrated in about 5 sq km around the First Degree neighbourhood, where the only active market of the nine assessed was located in September 2026 imagery;
- no signs of normal operation at any of 19 healthcare facilities, and excavation and burn sites at five hospitals, where imagery indicated materials consistent with human remains had been burned;
- a 75km trench and earth barrier around the city, designed to restrict civilians leaving and aid entering.
The researchers say these findings contradict claims by the RSF and affiliated administrations that life has returned to normal, and call for an international investigation and unrestricted access for the International Criminal Court. In a separate report on 23 October, Amnesty International said, citing humanitarian organisations, that fewer than 70,000 people were in the city, against a pre-war population of more than one million.
Analysis: The two accounts are not entirely at odds: the cabinet's own focus on food shortages and services shows how much remains to be rebuilt. But the Tasis government's case that it can govern El Fasher will depend on giving independent investigators and aid agencies the access they have asked for, so that claims of recovery can be checked.
Photo: Displaced women selling charcoal at a market in El Fasher, 2015. Roman Deckert, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.