On a clear night a year ago, a dozen heavily armed fighters broke into Omaima Farouq’s house in an upscale neighbourhood in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. At gunpoint, they whipped and slapped the woman and terrorised her children. Then they expelled them from the fenced two-story house.
“Since then, our life has been ruined,” the 45-year-old schoolteacher said. “Everything has changed in this year.”
Ms. Farouq, a widow, and her four children now live in a small village outside the central city of Wad Madani, 136 km southeast of Khartoum. They depend on aid from villagers and philanthropists since international aid groups cannot reach the village.
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Sudan has been torn by war for a year now, ever since simmering tensions between its military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) exploded into street clashes in the capital in mid-April 2023. The fighting rapidly spread across the country.
The conflict has been overshadowed by the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza Strip, which since October has caused a massive humanitarian crisis for Palestinians and a threat of famine in the territory.
But relief workers said Sudan was hurtling towards an even larger-scale calamity of starvation. Food production and distribution networks have broken down and aid agencies have been unable to reach the worst-stricken regions.
At the same time, the conflict has brought widespread reports of atrocities including killings, displacement, and rape, particularly in the area of the capital and the western region of Darfur.
Justin Brady, head of the U.N. humanitarian coordination office for Sudan (OCHA) said that potentially tens or even hundreds of thousands could die in coming months from malnutrition-related causes.
“This is going to get very ugly very quickly unless we can overcome both the resource challenges and the access challenges,” Mr. Brady said. The world, he said, needs to take fast action to pressure the two sides for a stop in fighting and raise funds for the humanitarian effort.
‘International neglect’
But the international community has paid little attention. The UN humanitarian campaign needs some $2.7 billion this year to get food, healthcare and other supplies to 24 million people in Sudan — nearly half its population of 51 million. So far, funders have given only $145 million, about 5%, according to OCHA .
The “level of international neglect is shocking,” Christos Christou, president of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), said in a recent statement.
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The situation in fighting on the ground has been deteriorating.
The military, headed by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the RSF, commanded by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, have carved up Khartoum and trade indiscriminate fire at each other. RSF forces have overrun much of Darfur, while Gen. Burhan has moved the government and his headquarters to the Red Sea city of Port Sudan.
The Sudanese Unit for Combating Violence Against Women, a government organisation, documented at least 159 cases of rape and gang rape the past year, almost all in Khartoum and Darfur. The organisation’s head, Sulima Ishaq Sharif, said this figure represents the tip of the iceberg since many victims don’t speak out for fear of reprisal or the stigma connected to rape.
In 2021, Gen. Burhan and Gen. Dagalo were uneasy allies who led a military coup. They toppled an internationally recognised civilian government that was supposed to steer Sudan’s democratic transition after the 2019 military overthrow of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir amid a popular uprising. The Generals subsequently fell out in a struggle for power.
The situation has been horrific in Darfur, where the RSF and its allies are accused of rampant sexual violence and ethnic attacks on African tribes’ areas. The International Criminal Court said it was investigating fresh allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the region, which was the scene of genocidal war in the 2000s.
A series of attacks by the RSF and allied militias on the ethnic African Masalit tribe killed between 10,000 and 15,000 people in Geneina, the capital of West Darfur near the Chad border, according to a report by UN experts to the Security Council earlier this year. It said that Darfur was experiencing “its worst violence since 2005.”
With aid groups unable to reach Darfur’s camps for displaced people, eight out of every 10 families in the camps eat only one meal a day, said Adam Rijal, the spokesperson for the Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur.
In Kelma camp in South Darfur province, he said an average of nearly three children die every 12 hours, most due to diseases related to malnutrition. He said the medical centre in the camp receives between 14 and 18 cases of malnutrition every day, mostly children and pregnant women.
Not including the Geneina killings, the war has killed at least 14,600 people across Sudan and created the world’s largest displacement crisis, according to the UN. More than 8 million people have been driven out of their homes, fleeing either to safer areas inside Sudan or to neighbouring countries.
Many flee repeatedly as the war expands.
Aid workers say the world has to take action.
“Sudan is described as a forgotten crisis. I am starting to wonder how many people knew about it in the first place to forget about it,” Mr. Brady said. “There are others that have more attention than Sudan. I don’t like to compare crises. It’s like comparing two cancer patients. ... They both need to be treated.”
Published - April 15, 2024 04:41 pm IST
