Omar Al Bashir had just fallen as president of Sudan when I visited Sarah Abdelgalil at her home in England this April. Abdelgalil is a spokeswomen for the Sudanese Professionals Association, the organization that spearheaded protests that removed Bashir. When there was a statement to make about how to topple Bashir, she was usually involved. When there is a diplomat to harangue in London, Abdelgalil does it. Along the way, she is a pediatrician at the local hospital, head of the Sudan Doctors Union in the United Kingdom, and takes care of her son and her mother.

When protests began in December 2018 over the ongoing economic crisis, Sarah and the Sudanese Professionals Association—a collection of labor unions without a formal leader—insisted on nonviolence, leading to an unprecedentedly peaceful and effective set of protests that astonished the world. When I visited Abdelgalil in April, the association, along with other civilian groups, were about to begin negotiations with the military over the country’s political future. Abdelgalil feared it all could go wrong—that the military might open fire on protestors, as they had done in the past. “We need the international community to be aware that a massacre could happen, and to tell the military they are being watched,” Abdelgalil told me. She has tallied body counts after massacres in Sudan before.

On June 3, members of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the new name for the Janjaweed militia group that terrorized Darfur, began a brutal crackdown on demonstrators in Khartoum, the country’s capital. Demonstrators had staged a sit-in outside of the military’s headquarters: After the peaceful and triumphant removal of thirty-year dictator Bashir, who was accused of genocide, stealing billions of dollars, and torture, the military junta that removed him after popular protests refused to hand over power to civilians. The RSF, presumably prompted by the military to disperse the demonstrators, stormed the site, shooting, terrorizing, and torturing. Rape cases were especially prolific. Women’s underwear were paraded around like trophies; a senior U.N. official estimated to me that there were likely over a thousand cases of sexual violence in the ensuing 72 hours. Bodies were dumped in the Nile River. More than 100 people died, according to Sudanese doctors’ unions, but the true number is likely higher: Hospitals have been targeted by security forces and an internet shutdown has stopped the flow of information.

Abdelgalil is once more tracking body counts. When I spoke with her last Wednesday, she was afraid. The RSF now occupy Khartoum, and their relationship with the regular Sudanese military is not stable. Some members of Sudan’s military and intelligence service view the RSF as an untrained militia under the command of a warlord. Experts fear these military factions could fight and turn Sudan into a new Libya. One senior U.N. official told me Sudan could become the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis, while an activist compared it to a “pre-Rwanda moment.”

Hopes for a civilian government are slipping away in Sudan. It is clear that the RSF leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as “Hemeti,” is positioning himself to become president. The civilians who captured the world’s imagination this past spring find themselves under siege. One civilian negotiator told me last week he was afraid that if civilian leaders did not sign a deal ceding control to military and paramilitary authorities, more atrocities could follow.