Qualla: 2025 Tarasin landslide

2025 Tarasin landslide: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Public domain. The second wave was the cruelty of it. The first landslide came at around 5 p.m. on 31 August 2025, sweeping through the village of Tarasin in the Marrah Mountains of Central Darfur. Neighbors from higher up the slope rushed down through the rain to dig out survivors, to pull children from the mud, to do what mountain villages have always done for each other. A few hours later, the second slide came and buried them too. By the time the Sudan Liberation Movement reached the site, the village was simply no longer there.

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Image: Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center | Public domain

2025 Tarasin landslide: A Village at 5 p.m.

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Crocodile2020, CC0. Tarasin, sometimes written Tarseen or Tarsin, sat in a fold of the Jebel Marra range, the volcanic massif that rises from the semi-desert of western Sudan. It was a farming village of stone and mud houses, livestock, and the terraced fields that have fed families in these hills f...

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Image: Crocodile2020 | CC0

2025 Tarasin landslide: Why the Mountain Let Go

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Public domain. The Sudanese Ministry of Minerals blamed the heavy rains of late August, which saturated the mountain slopes until gravity took what friction had held for centuries. Jebel Marra is a young volcano geologically speaking, its flanks built of loose pyroclastic debris and weathered b...

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Image: Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center | Public domain

2025 Tarasin landslide: The Scale They Couldn't Reach

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Public domain. The SLM appealed to the United Nations and to every international organization it could reach, pleading for help simply to recover the dead. Accusations flew: SLM officials blamed elements of the former al-Bashir regime, embedded in the rival SAF-aligned government in Port Sudan,...

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Image: Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center | Public domain

2025 Tarasin landslide: A Ceasefire No One Honored

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Public domain. Both warring governments, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, pledged aid. The African Union called for a ceasefire to allow humanitarian access. On 2 September, the SAF-aligned government announced it would keep the Adre border crossing with Chad open through...

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Image: Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center | Public domain

2025 Tarasin landslide: What Remains

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Public domain. In Sudan's terrible year, Tarasin became one more place name added to a litany already too long: El Fasher, Khartoum, the villages of West Darfur. Unlike those, the landslide was not a human act. The Marrah Mountains did not take sides in a civil war. They simply slipped, as moun...

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Image: Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center | Public domain