Sudan’s Famine Enters Dangerous New Phase
Here’s what to know as critical farmlands get dragged into the country’s devastating civil war.
With the world’s attention focused on crises elsewhere, Sudan’s war-induced famine is growing in what used to be productive farmlands.
Staples of the Sudanese diet, such as sorghum and millet, have been unavailable in most markets, forcing people to survive on animal feed made of peanut shells. Now even that has become too expensive for most people because of constrained supplies.
Heavy rains are cutting off roads, class="backlink" data-vars-page-type="story" data-vars-link-type="Manual" data-vars-anchor-text="warring parties">warring parties are blocking aid deliveries and farmers are reluctant to risk being killed while working the fields. The country is now in the middle of the long, dry period between harvests—from the middle of July to September.
Famine could spread from six locations to 17, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, an initiative supported by the United Nations and major relief agencies, said recently.
“Millions of people are already weakened after a sustained run of rising hunger; many do not have the strength to miss even a single meal a day,” said Francesco Lanino, Save the Children’s deputy country director for Sudan.
More than two-thirds of the country’s 49 million people need humanitarian aid, according to the U.N. With the U.S., formerly the largest donor to the mosaic of aid agencies working on the ground, now stripping back its contributions, a full-blown disaster is building unless the war ends.
How did the crisis reach this point?
Darfur has been the site of two genocides over the past two decades. Both have been carried out by what is now called the Rapid Support Forces, a rebel group trying to overthrow Sudan’s military government. The RSF, which is composed mainly of ethnically Arab fighters, has been targeting tens of thousands of Black Sudanese in Darfur.
The Sudanese army’s last stronghold is in Darfur’s capital, El Fasher. Residents trapped there are subjected to daily bombings and ethnic violence.
The RSF fighters, driving in pickup trucks mounted with machine guns, have repeatedly attacked displacement camps over the course of the war, raping women and killing men and teenage boys, rights groups say. Recently, RSF fighters attacked two famine-stricken displacement camps outside El Fasher, where they killed more than 40 civilians and injured dozens of others.
The fighting, now in its third year, has triggered the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with the U.N. accusing both sides of using hunger as a weapon. The U.S. estimates that more than 150,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
What does it look like on the ground?
In August last year, the IPC’s review committee declared that famine had taken hold in the Zamzam displacement camp, home to more than 500,000 people. Some 637,000 Sudanese are already living in famine, with an estimated eight million in need of emergency food assistance, according to the U.N.
In the city of El Fasher, the U.N.’s World Food Program is supporting over 250,000 trapped residents with digital cash, but they can’t find any food to purchase in the markets due to blocked roads, according to the U.N.
“Everyone in El Fasher is facing a daily struggle to survive,” said Eric Perdison, WFP’s regional director. “People’s coping mechanisms have been completely exhausted by over two years of war.”
Children at a camp in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains last year.
At a displaced-people’s camp in South Darfur, some 13 children have died from starvation in early August, while many other residents are battling malnutrition, the Sudan Doctors Network said.
In the Kordofan region, famed for its sorghum and wheat fields, residents have begun to starve to death, after escalating violence disrupted the main harvest, aid officials say. In areas around the Nuba Mountains, bags of food aid dropped from aircraft—to sidestep rebel-infested highways—often split open on landing, leaving famine-stricken residents scrambling to collect what food they can from the ground.
What can the rest of the world do to intervene?
The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have led talks to reach a truce between the warring factions, but with little success. During the signing of a peace deal between Rwanda and Congo in Washington in June, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Washington’s next priority would be to end Sudan’s conflict.
But there are powerful geopolitical factors in play, with countries like Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Russia and China all competing for influence. With a 400-mile Red Sea coastline, the country is perched on a strategic shipping lane between the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.
The U.S. has accused Russia of backing both sides, while Iran and the U.A.E. have also seized on the conflict to extend their influence across the region. Iran tried to persuade Sudan to let it build a naval base on its Red Sea coast, while the U.A.E. has been aiding the RSF to protect its economic interests in Sudan, which range from ports along the Nile River to vast farmlands and lucrative gold mining operations, according to researchers and activists.
In response to a request for comment, the U.A.E. denied that it was aiding either side in the war and called for an immediate cease-fire and unhindered passage for humanitarian aid throughout the country.
A camp hosting Sudanese refugees in Chad last year.
How could this war destabilize the region?
The RSF has seized control of the strategic border region that straddles Sudan, Egypt and Libya, inserting themselves at the center of a vital trade corridor. The region also serves as a transit route for migrants trying to reach Europe from sub-Saharan Africa.
Nearly four million Sudanese have fled to neighboring countries, most of them to Chad, South Sudan, Libya and Ethiopia. The influx has strained public resources in some of the most-fragile states and increased the spread of diseases such as cholera, measles and malaria, further straining underfunded refugee camps, according to the World Health Organization.
Write to Nicholas Bariyo at nicholas.bariyo@wsj.com
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