Earlier this year, a famine was declared at the Sudanese refugee camp of Zamzam, where at least a dozen children now die of starvation every hour. Deaths will accelerate because one of the charities that is feeding the refugees has been forced to leave by fighting in Sudan’s civil war:
Medical charity MSF says it has been forced to suspend work in the vast camp for displaced people where famine has been confirmed in Sudan’s North Darfur region, putting thousands of malnourished children at risk of death. MSF said it had to halt activities in Zamzam camp following the obstruction of aid around nearby al-Fashir by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been besieging the city for months, as well as the Sudanese army’s systematic blocking of aid to areas outside its control.
The army and the RSF have been locked in conflict for nearly 18 months, triggering a profound humanitarian crisis in which more than 10 million people have been driven from their homes and U.N. agencies have struggled to deliver relief. “Because of the supply blockades MSF has been forced to stop supporting Zamzam camp and leave 5,000 children who are malnourished, including 2,900 children who are severely malnourished, without support,” MSF’s Claire San Filippo told a briefing on Friday….
Fewer than 200 trucks of aid have entered Darfur from Chad through a key crossing since mid-August, while the 450,000 people living in Zamzam alone need 100 trucks of food aid per month…
Staff working with a severe shortage of supplies at a hospital MSF supports in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, had seen a dramatic increase of violent trauma cases arriving after a recent escalation of fighting, as well as very high malnutrition rates. Medical staff were being insulted, harassed and assaulted as they worked.
This is a small portion of the suffering being experienced in Sudan, Africa’s third-largest country. As The Economist notes, in Sudan,
famine is consuming much of the country..It is almost certain to be as bad as, or worse than, the one that afflicted Ethiopia in the 1980s [which killed 1.2 million people]. If much more help does not arrive very soon, it may prove the worst anywhere in the world since millions starved to death during China’s Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
In May the Clingendael Institute, a Dutch think-tank, released a report which estimated that hunger and related diseases would kill more than 2 million people in Sudan by the end of the year. Timmo Gaasbeek, the report’s author, has since extended his projections to cover the next two years. In an “optimistic scenario”, in which fighting stops and this year’s harvest, expected in October, is slightly better than the last, he predicts around 6 million “excess deaths” by 2027. In the (more likely) scenario in which fighting continues until early next year, more than 10 million may perish. Although some experts have lower estimates, there is an emerging consensus that without decisive action Sudan faces mass starvation on a scale not seen in decades….
The cause of the famine is Sudan’s civil war, which began in April 2023, when the army and an auxiliary paramilitary, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), fell out. The ensuing conflict has a strong claim to be the biggest and most destructive in the world today. Perhaps 150,000 people have been killed by the fighting itself. At least 245 towns or villages have been burnt. Much of Khartoum, the capital, has been flattened. More than 20% of the country’s pre-war population of roughly 50 million have been forced to flee their homes.
Earlier, the water supply for the region containing one of Sudan’s largest cities (Port Sudan) was destroyed, when a dam collapsed, killing hundreds of people.
The RSF interfered with harvests in Sudan’s Jazira state, which is “home to one of the largest irrigation systems in the world,” reported CNN. Thousands of farmers fled the RSF into areas controlled by Sudan’s military, leaving fields untended.
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.
Frankenstein’s monster 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, and its breadbasket region. It is slaughtering males from western Sudan’s black African Masalit tribe. It sexually enslaved some women, and raped others. The RSF committed mass killings and rapes to drive the Masalit ethnic group from Sudan into the neighboring country of Chad.