'Ali Dinar's accession to the throne of a restored Darfur Sultanate, and his claims of sovereignty over all small frontier states, ushered in a new period of conflict.

Subsequently the Sultan's brother, Taj al-Din Isma'il, rallied the Masalit forces and drove out the Darfuri army.

[4] Masalit tribes were among the rebel groups that fought against the Sudanese central government and the pro-government Janjaweed militia during the War in Darfur that started in 2003.

Reprisals and ethnic cleansing led to an estimated 170,000 deaths over two years, and intermittent violence persisted afterwards.

As part of the 2023 civil war in Sudan, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) (a successor to the Janjaweed) launched a new campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur.

In June 2023, Khamis Abakar, a Masalit and the governor of West Darfur, accused the RSF of genocide; he was later killed.

[1] Most Masalit are bilingual in Arabic, except in the central area, where the Nilo-Saharan vernacular is primarily spoken.

[7] This altogether suggests that the genetic introgression into the Masalit's ancestral population was asymmetrical, occurring primarily through Afro-Asiatic-speaking males rather than females.