Sudan is in the middle of a bloody civil war between its military and a rapacious militia known as the Rapid Support Forces. Both sides kill civilians indiscriminately as they battle each other. The RSF also engages in ethnic cleansing, enslaves people (mainly non-Arab black people), and systematically loots the areas it takes control of. At least seven million people are severely malnourished and 2.5 million could starve to death by the end of this year.
Sudan’s military is now telling the UN not to bring relief supplies through the main border crossing into western Sudan, which is controlled by the RSF. The military knows there is a famine in some RSF-controlled areas, but it doesn’t want food to reach them, because the RSF will loot a big chunk of the food. The military would rather that the civilians in these areas die of hunger, than allow the RSF to loot some of the food and use it buy more weapons that it can use to seize more parts of Sudan from the military. The RSF already controls a majority of Sudan’s populated areas. The RSF has looted the areas it controls, selling the loot at so-called “Dagalo markets” to make money to buy weapons, ammunition, and transport vehicles.
As Sudan hurtles toward famine, its military is blocking the United Nations from bringing enormous amounts of food into the country through a vital border crossing, effectively cutting off aid to hundreds of thousands of starving people during the depths of a civil war. Experts warn that Sudan, barely functioning after 15 months of fighting, could soon face one of the world’s worst famines in decades. But the Sudanese military’s refusal to let U.N. aid convoys through the crossing is thwarting the kind of all-out relief effort that aid groups say is needed to prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths — as many as 2.5 million, according to one estimate — by the end of this year. The risk is greatest in Darfur, the Spain-sized region that suffered a genocide two decades ago. Of the 14 Sudanese districts at immediate risk of famine, eight are in Darfur, right across the border that the United Nations is trying to cross. Time is running out to help them.
The closed border point, a subject of increasingly urgent appeals from American officials, is at Adré, the main crossing from Chad into Sudan. At the border, little more than a concrete bollard in a dried-out riverbed, just about everything seems to flow: refugees and traders, four-wheeled motorbikes carrying animal skins, and donkey carts laden with barrels of fuel. What is forbidden from crossing into Sudan, however, are the U.N. trucks filled with food that are urgently needed in Darfur, where experts say that 440,000 people are already on the brink of starvation. Refugees fleeing Darfur now say that hunger, not conflict, is the main reason they left.
The Sudanese military imposed the edict at the crossing five months ago, supposedly to prohibit weapons smuggling. It seems to make little sense. Arms, cash and fighters continue to flow into Sudan elsewhere on the 870-mile border that is mostly controlled by its enemy, a heavily armed paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces, or R.S.F. The military doesn’t even control the crossing at Adré, where R.S.F. fighters stand 100 yards behind the border on the Sudanese side.
Even so, the U.N. says it must respect the order not to cross from the military, which is based in Port Sudan 1,000 miles to the east, because it is Sudan’s sovereign authority. Instead U.N. trucks are forced to make an arduous 200-mile detour north to Tine, at a crossing controlled by a militia allied with Sudan’s army, where they are allowed to enter Darfur. The diversion is dangerous, expensive and takes up to five times as long as going through Adré. Only a fraction of the required aid is getting through Tine — 320 trucks of food since February, U.N. officials say, instead of the thousands that are needed. The Tine crossing was closed for most of this week after seasonal rains turned the border into a river. Between February, when the Adré border crossing was shut, and June, the number of people facing emergency levels of hunger went from 1.7 million to seven million.
A Sudanese publication notes that starvation is widespread now not just in Sudan’s west, but also in its south, such as South Kordofan, where people are eating leather, tree leaves, and wild plants:
Residents of Dilling city in Sudan’s South Kordofan state are facing severe food shortages and rising prices. Due to a lack of humanitarian aid, some are resorting to eating tree leaves and animal feed….“Most residents, especially those displaced in shelters, have resorted to eating tree leaves and leftover animal feed to survive,” [a resident] said. “All roads leading to the city are closed. We need rescue and rapid intervention. People are dying of hunger here.”…
Some Dilling residents resort to desperate measures like consuming leather to survive. Zainab Askar, a local resident, told Sudan Tribune that closed roads have cut off humanitarian aid and commercial convoys, leaving the city without essential goods. “There is a shortage of goods as the roads have been closed and no humanitarian aid or commercial convoys are allowed to enter,” Askar told Sudan Tribune. She added that many citizens have resorted to eating leather and relying on herbs foraged from the mountains. “Many citizens have resorted to eating ‘leather’ to survive,” Askar said, adding that residents also rely on herbs like “Arak Al-Nabi” and “Al-Khol” for sustenance.
Sudan’s agriculture minister, appointed by Sudan’s military government, says that Sudan is not facing a famine, because only 755,000 people out of its 50 million people are facing “catastrophic hunger” — that is, starving to death. If less than 2% of Sudan’s population die of hunger, he doesn’t view that as a famine. In reality, millions could starve. But if the agriculture minister admitted that Sudan was facing a famine, that could trigger UN Security Council orders overriding the military’s ban on relief supplies traveling into RSF-controlled areas — which the military doesn’t want:
“755,000 citizens are not a significant percentage compared to the total population … they cannot call that famine,” said [agriculture minister] Abubakr al-Bushra, in a news conference….The army has blocked aid and commerce from entering RSF-controlled areas, while supplies that reach those areas are expensive and frequently stolen, often by RSF soldiers, residents and aid agencies say.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), an initiative of U.N. agencies, regional bodies and aid groups, had in late June said that while half the population were experiencing acute hunger, there were 14 spots across the country at risk of famine.
Famine can be declared if at least 20% of the population in an area experience catastrophic hunger, and thresholds on child malnutrition and death from starvation are met. Al-Bushra cast doubt on experts’ ability to measure data in RSF-controlled areas…Following the IPC data, an independent committee could declare a famine, potentially triggering Security Council orders overriding army restrictions on which crossings could be used for aid deliveries. Al-Bushra said the government rejected such orders. “We reject the opening of our borders by force because that could open the borders with opposing states, borders that the militia controls,” he said, while another official cast such a move as part of a conspiracy against the country.
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 150,000 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. 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.
