Johannesburg — It’s often called the forgotten conflict, but the civil war that has torn Sudan apart for 19 months is fueling the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis. In just over a year and a half, 13 million people have been displaced from their homes. At least one overcrowded camp for displaced civilians is already dealing with famine, while other parts of the country are suffering though famine-like conditions.
Outbreaks of dengue fever, malaria, cholera and measles are hitting children the hardest, with the collapse of the education system also keeping roughly 90% of Sudan’s kids out of school.
Fighting broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The violence followed months of squabbling between the two top generals who’d been running the country — former allies who head the army and the RSF — during negotiations aimed at fully integrating the RSF into the army ahead of the formation of a new transitional government.
The talks broke down and the tension descended quickly into a full-scale war between the well-armed sides. The U.S. government, along with international partners, has tried to broker a peace agreement, but there’s been no progress. The Biden administration, meanwhile, has sanctioned individuals and companies affiliated with both sides in the war over alleged human rights abuses and war crimes.
Journalists and aid officials have largely been blocked from traveling to the country to report on the conflict first-hand, but independent researchers say the number of deaths from the war has been vastly unreported. According to a study published this week by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, an estimated 61,000 people died in Khartoum State alone, home to the capital city of the same name, between April 2023 and June 2024.
The study found that more than 90% of those deaths have gone unrecorded, but the estimated toll is considerably higher than previously believed.
The study estimates that there have actually been more violent deaths just in Khartoum state than the current number of formally recorded deaths across the entire country.
“Our findings reveal the severe and largely invisible impact of the war on Sudanese lives, especially of preventable disease and starvation, said the report’s lead author Dr. Maysoon Dahab, adding that “the overwhelming level of killings” in the central Kordofan and western Darfur regions “indicate wars within a war.”
Fear of a bloody RSF assault on El Fasher as famine grips IDP camp
The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab, in another report published this week, said RSF combatants were advancing on the city of El Fasher in Darfur from three directions. It’s expected that the RSF will launch an assault on the city anytime, which analysts fear will bring thousands more deaths.
If El Fasher falls to the RSF, there’s concern that the group will attack the nearby Zamzam camp, which is home to roughly 500,000 civilians displaced by the war. Siting satellite imagery, Yale’s HRL said the camp, which is still under the control of the Sudanese Army, had almost doubled in size in recent days, with new defensive positions visible, indicating preparations for an attack.
Famine was formally declared in the Zamzam camp at the beginning of August, with aid workers warning that thousands of children would die in the coming weeks without access to proper nutrition.
Amnesty International says weapons from UAE and France in Sudan
The war in Sudan has been complicated by support and weapon supplies from external countries to both sides. A new report by Amnesty International alleges the RSF is using weapons supplied by the U.S.-allied United Arab Emirates, and equipped with military technology made in France.
Amnesty experts have warned that those weapons could be used by the RSF to commit further alleged war crimes.
A July report by the rights group said there was a constant weapons supply from the UAE, China, Russia, Turkey and Yemen into Sudan, and often into Darfur, in breach of a long-standing United Nations arms embargo on the region.
The report said Amnesty had found evidence of RSF forces using newly-manufactured UAE armored personnel carriers called Nimr Ajban, equipped with French-made Galix weapons systems, in multiple areas of Sudan, including Darfur.
Amnesty International
Amnesty said it had verified photos shared on social media showing the APCs equipped with the Galix systems.
The rights group has called on the U.N. Security Council to expand the Darfur arms embargo, which has been in place for almost 20 years, to cover all of Sudan.
“Continued military support for the militia [RSF] due to the complexity of the situation in Sudan, and the involvement of several internal and external actors, is a key factor in the continuation of the war,” Sudan’s acting Charge DÁffairs in South Africa, Dr. Nawal Ahmed Mukhtar, told a group of journalists this week. “This must stop so that the massacres and crimes against humanity can come to an end.”
A panel of experts sent by the U.N. Security Council arrived in Sudan earlier this week to investigate and document alleged war crimes by the RSF.
It’s the first trip by such a U.N. fact-finding mission since the war broke out last year, despite months of reports suggesting that starvation and rape are both being weaponized against Sudanese civilians.
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