Half of Sudan’s population of 49 million people are close to famine and 10 million have been displaced from their homes, many into exile, by a devastating war between two rogue generals. It has so far cost 150,000 lives, greater than Gaza and Lebanon together, and famine experts fear as many as 2.5 million could die from hunger this year.
In the Zamzam refugee camp on the outskirts of the western city of el-Fasher, Medecins sans Frontieres estimates that every two hours a child dies from starvation or disease. The city is in the grip of the most brutal of the warring factions, the paramilitary RSF, a descendant of the Janjaweed horseback militia accused of genocide in Darfur 20 years ago, whose purpose, its soldiers tell locals, is to drive out or kill its ethnic black people. Humanitarian food access is being blocked.
Since April 2023, when they overthrew a civilian government and then turned on each other, Sudan has been gripped by the vicious conflict between the SAF, led by the country’s de facto president, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, “Hemeti”. Both sides are accused of involvement in widespread massive war crimes, with the UN speaking of “genocide”.
Funded by the country’s gold resources and the Sudanese army’s once-vast business empire, the generals have internationalised the war with the SAF in receipt of Russian oil, Ukrainian pilots and Iranian drones. The UAE is backing the RSF which is reported to have recruited “mercenaries” from the Central African Republic, Chad and South Sudan. Weapons produced by China, Iran, Turkey, Russia and the UAE proliferate.
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Peace talks in Switzerland, sponsored by the US and Saudi Arabia, have stalled, the SAF refusing to send a delegation until the RSF withdraws from all the territory it occupies. It is vital now that renewed international pressure is applied by the UN both for humanitarian access points from Port Sudan, from South Sudan and across the desert from Libya and Egypt, and for an effective internationally-enforced arms embargo.