—
Although the war between Ukraine and Russia has dominated the news, other countries have been suffering through their own violent conflicts in recent years. In this and other pieces, I highlight contemporary wars and other conflicts that are too often overlooked.
The civil war that broke out in Sudan in 2023 still rages in the summer of 2024. The conflict between rival Sudanese military factions has devastated the capital, Khartoum, and the western region of Darfur. Precisely how many people have been killed is unknown, but the death toll is likely very high. The war has also displaced millions and pushed many to the brink of famine. In June, US Agency for International Development Director Samantha Power called Sudan’s conflict “the single largest humanitarian crisis on the planet.”
Addressing this crisis requires countries to provide sufficient funding for international aid and aid agencies to have adequate access to those in need. Other countries and international organizations also need to bring the warring factions to the negotiating table in the hopes of brokering a ceasefire.
War on Many Fronts
After decades of dictatorship, the Sudanese have sought a path to a more democratic government in recent years. Democratization was derailed in 2021, however, by a military coup. Military rule turned into violent conflict in April 2023, when two rival military factions began fighting each other in Khartoum. The warring factions were the established Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan, and a powerful paramilitary organization known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Lieutenant-General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.
Within Khartoum, the RSF gained the initial military advantage, but the SAF took back part of the city in February 2024. Today the city is divided between the two factions. The SAF has made the coastal city of Port Sudan the new temporary capital.
The war has spread beyond Khartoum. In 2023, the RSF seized control of much of Darfur, home to about a quarter of Sudan’s population, capturing most Darfurian cities. The one major city they have not captured, El Fasher, home to roughly 1 million people, is currently under siege by the RSF. The RSF has also captured other areas in Sudan, including part of Gezira, a crucial agricultural region.
Caught in the Crossfire
While the SAF and RSF have fought each other, ordinary Sudanese have paid the price. How many people have been killed in the war is unknown, but the number may be very high. The United Nations estimates nine million people have been displaced by the conflict, which makes Sudan the largest displacement crisis on earth. Many Khartoum residents have fled. Those remaining must survive a war zone.
According to Dr. Sohail Albushra, a state health official, half of Khartoum's 50 hospitals were closed by June 2024. Many had been destroyed in the fighting. Hospitals still in operation struggled to keep up: at Al Nau hospital, near the frontlines, many patients have had to sleep two to a bed. Aliaa Hospital had to endure months of shelling; when electricity failed, surgeons performed operations by the light of mobile phones.
Looting by the RSF and others has been widespread in the city. For example, a local businessman reported that one of his factories was raided by fighters who stole 8,000 motorbikes and rickshaws. Almost all the city’s 1,060 bank branches have been robbed. Mohamed Eldaw, a banker, comments, “A city of this size, this wealth, and nothing remains?... It must be the biggest episode of looting in history.”
The situation in Darfur has been no better. The RSF has reportedly looted and destroyed civilian goods and humanitarian resources in the Darfurian cities they have seized. Further, following their capture of a neighborhood in the city of El-Geneina in November 2023, the RSF reportedly massacred civilians: survivors spoke of men being rounded up and either shot or hacked to death with axes. The United Nations estimates 10,000-15,000 people have been killed in El-Geneina since the civil war began.
The example of El-Geneina heightens fears about what will happen if El Fasher falls to the RSF. Since the current siege began in April 2024, more than 40 villages near the city have been burned, some deliberately destroyed by the RSF and others destroyed amid fighting between the RSF and SAF. Following the RSF seizure of part of eastern El Fasher, more than 20,000 buildings within the city have been damaged or destroyed. A major hospital run by Doctors Without Borders was forced by an RSF attack to shut down in June.
Meanwhile, the SAF has been accused of harming civilians in El Fasher by indiscriminately bombing civilian areas with airstrikes and artillery. The SAF reportedly bombed an area next to a children’s hospital in May.
However, the greatest threat to the Sudanese right now is not bombs or bullets but hunger.
The Weapon of Hunger
The civil war has disrupted food production in Sudan and blocked access to food. Both the SAF and RSF have plundered farms and destroyed important farming infrastructure, including 75 percent of the region’s flour-milling capacity. In the breadbasket region of Gezira, for example, the RSF plundered the areas they captured, taking farmers’ crops and civilian goods, forcing many farmers to flee. The result of such disruptions has been much lower grain production during the 2023-2024 harvest, with production almost half of what it was the previous year.
The war has also obstructed humanitarian aid from getting to people in need. Both sides try to direct international aid to the territory they control (for the SAF, largely northern and eastern Sudan; for the RSF, Darfur and areas in Gezira and elsewhere in central Sudan) and block it from reaching territory controlled by the other side. The SAF has an advantage in this respect as it is recognized by the United Nations as the legitimate government of Sudan: UN agencies are based in the SAF’s temporary capital of Port Sudan and depend on the SAF’s approval to travel elsewhere in the country.
Both the SAF and RSF also extort money from aid workers, whether by requiring permits or requiring aid to be transported by trucks affiliated with their respective factions. Logistics is also a problem for aid workers: in Darfur, transporting aid must run a gauntlet of challenges, including fighting in areas such as El Fasher, checkpoints controlled by different armed factions, and poor road conditions, something that will get worse in the summer rainy season.
Sometimes factions will simply steal aid. As part of its looting of communities in Gezira, the RSF plundered a WFP compound that the UN reports contained food to feed 1.5 million people for a month.
The Human Toll
The impact of these activities by the warring factions on Sudan’s civilians has been predictable and terrible. In late June 2024, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the global organization responsible for declaring famine situations, estimated that 25.6 million Sudanese (over half the population) are in a food crisis. Of these Sudanese in crisis, 8.5 million are acutely malnourished or otherwise struggling to survive, and 755,000 people are in famine conditions. The IPC identified 14 areas across Sudan that are near famine, with the greatest famine threats being in Khartoum, Darfur, and Gezira. In Darfur, the Islamic Relief aid organization reports that the war’s disruptions of businesses have led to food prices doubling.
Compounding Sudan’s humanitarian crisis is the civil war’s damage to the healthcare system. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that 70-80 percent of Sudan’s health facilities were not functioning in February 2024. About two-thirds of Sudanese lack access to healthcare.
UN organizations commented, in a statement released in late May 2024, that “Malnutrition and disease reinforce each other, with sick children becoming more easily malnourished and malnourished children becoming sick more easily… Sudan risks a lost generation.”
Reuters has investigated the situation in Darfur, drawing on satellite images, photos and videos taken on the ground, interviews with people from the region, and other data. The investigation reveals a dramatic increase in the number of people dying from malnutrition and illness. Fourteen burial grounds in five communities across Darfur have grown rapidly in the first half of 2024 compared to the second half of 2023.
People forced from their homes into displaced persons (DP) camps are among those most at risk. Reuters’ analysis of satellite images shows a cemetery on the southern edge of Kalma DP camp expanding 2.5 times faster in the first half of 2024 than it did in the second half of 2023. In the Zamzam DP camp, home to hundreds of thousands, a cemetery on the edge of the camp expanded roughly three times faster in the first half of 2024 than in the second half of 2023. Consistent with such findings, Doctors Without Borders found in early 2024 that among 46,000 children under five in the Zamzam camp nearly a third were acutely malnourished.
Nertiti, a town in central Darfur, has been a haven for people fleeing the fighting: the UN International Organization for Migration reports that Nertiti has doubled in size as more than 33,000 displaced people have arrived. The town is still vulnerable to the RSF, which has stolen the harvest and has made the passage of humanitarian aid more precarious by threatening travelers on the road.
A local humanitarian worker in Nertiti told Reuters that people are eating tree leaves or digging up ant nests in search of bread crumbs. “Famine is already here,” he said.
A community leader in the Kalma DP camp similarly said that fear of the RSF is keeping people in the camp. “We are trapped here and we will die of hunger,” he said.
Future Steps
The most immediate need is to get humanitarian aid to the Sudanese. One possible step would be for UN agencies to relocate the headquarters for their Sudan operations to another nation, to gain greater independence from the SAF (while still maintaining a presence in Port Sudan). From this new location, the agencies could coordinate the transfer of aid into Sudan from neighboring countries such as Chad or South Sudan. This approach may allow greater access to RSF-controlled territory. Consider contacting the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to urge them to adopt such an approach.
The United States and other nations should fully fund UN humanitarian aid efforts in Sudan. Private donors may wish to give to nongovernmental aid organizations working in Sudan such as the Sudan Relief Fund, Action Against Hunger, Catholic Relief Services, Islamic Relief USA, or other groups working to address the crisis.
Beyond immediate humanitarian needs, the civil war needs to end. Other countries, including the United States, as well as regional organizations such the African Union, should intensify diplomatic efforts in Sudan.
Diplomacy should aim to broker a cease-fire between the SAF and RSF, which should include lifting the siege of El Fasher, and to end obstruction of the transport of aid throughout Sudan. Following a cease-fire, the goal should be to create a power-sharing arrangement between the factions that might allow for something like stability to return to Sudan.
American citizens should consider contacting President Biden, by phone, at 202-456-1111, or email; Secretary of State Antony Blinken, US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, and their representatives in the House and Senate to urge them to support both diplomacy to achieve a cease-fire and full funding of UN humanitarian aid efforts for Sudan. They might also wish to sign a petition calling for such policies.
You can also continue to inform yourself on the Sudan situation, through other commentary on the crisis and how to respond to it.
The Sudanese people have fallen into a humanitarian abyss. They urgently need our help.
Comments