Over a million people could starve to death in the Sudan if its civil war continues to block food supplies from reaching most areas of the country. As a news report explains:
Mohammed el-Balal is one of many Sudanese civilians doing everything they can to ward off a devastating famine – and there is one man whose photograph he will never forget. Sadiq, a middle-aged father, grips the arms of his wheelchair tightly to keep himself upright, his painfully thin legs poking out in front of him. Sadig “is in a wheelchair, but he’s not disabled” Mr Balal says: “He’s just so malnourished that he has lost the ability to walk.”… When volunteers found Sadiq, he “hadn’t had a proper meal for over a month”, Mr Balal said, because any food he could get, he was giving to his children.
Sadly, there are many people like Sadig in Sudan right now. The country is being destroyed by a war between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which broke out in April last year. More than nine million people have fled their homes, and everyone in the country has been affected in some way.
Things are about to get worse. “I expect that by September, we’re looking at about 70% of the population being extremely hungry,” said Timmo Gaasbeek, a food security expert….”That could lead to two-and-a-half million deaths, or more. It could be as many as four million. There is just not enough food.”… “The war has paralysed the economy of the country, so people have no money,” said Dr. Amgad al-Farid,…In one part of Omdurman — Sudan’s largest city — food prices have increased by 400% in recent times, said Ahmed, who we are only calling by his first name….”most of the people eat only once a day, and sometimes not even that. “It wasn’t like this a few months ago when looted food from factories was sold cheaply. Now, in RSF-controlled areas, food has become so expensive and rare.”…humanitarian aid rarely gets through, and people are only surviving because of the food kitchens. But some of those are running out of money, and even food to buy.
Mr Balal from Khartoum Aid Kitchen knows of people who have starved to death. People are struggling, and dying, not only in [Sudan’s capital] Khartoum, but also in [provinces such as] Darfur, Kordofan, [and] Gezira….People in the Nuba mountains in the south …. boil leaves to survive…
“Both sides use starvation as a weapon of war,” said Alex de Waal from the World Peace Foundation….The RSF is “essentially a looting machine. They rampage through the countryside and towns, stealing everything there is, and that’s how they sustain themselves.” While the Sudanese Armed Forces “are trying to starve the areas under control of the RSF” to up the pressure on their rival. The two sides “show no signs of any willingness to relinquish what is a cheap and very effective weapon”.
Tens of thousands of Sudanese have previously died of starvation during the war. Thousands of bodies were left decomposing in morgues in the country’s capital. At least 100,000 civilians were killed in fighting between Sudan’s warring factions.
Frankenstein’s monster has turned on its creator, in Sudan. Over a decade ago, Sudan’s military created the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a genocidal militia it used to wipe out villages inhabited by some African tribes in Sudan’s Darfur region. Now, this Frankenstein’s monster, the RSF, is fighting Sudan’s military in a civil war, and has taken over most of Sudan’s capital region, its breadbasket region, and its vast western expanses. The RSF is looting much of the populace, selling the loot at so-called “Dagalo markets.” It is slaughtering males from western Sudan’s black African Masalit tribe. And it is turning some women into sex slaves, while raping others.
Recently, the RSF renewed its bloody mass killings and rapes to drive the Masalit ethnic group from Sudan into the neighboring country of Chad. At a single camp for displaced people in Western Sudan, the RSF slaughtered 1600 people, almost all Masalit. It killed many thousands of Masalit in and around the city of El Geneina, the biggest city in Sudan’s West Darfur region.
In Sudan, Arab militias such as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have enslaved thousands of black men to be laborers in western Sudan. They also are abducting women to be sex slaves (both women from rival Arab tribes, and women from African ethnic groups like the Masalit).
Slavery is also making a comeback in the war-torn country of Yemen, which is on the other side of the Red Sea from Sudan. The Toronto Sun reports that the Houthis who rule northern Yemen “are enthusiastic advocates for the vile practice” of slavery…. there are 1,800 slaves” taken by Houthi leaders.
