Latest news with #SudanWar
Al Jazeera
29-06-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
How Sudan's war is driving Chad's humanitarian collapse
A UN official and a Sudanese refugee talk to Al Jazeera from Chad, where aid is vanishing and camps face a growing catastrophe. As Sudan's war effects spill into Chad, the country faces the world's most underfunded refugee crisis. Nearly a million Sudanese, mostly women and children, have fled, but aid is vanishing, disease is looming, and the system is on the verge of collapse. In this episode of Talk to Al Jazeera , Ahmed Idris speaks to a United Nations lead official in Chad and to a Sudanese refugee activist who fled the same forces now threatening his people. As the world looks away, they warn that the cost of inaction may soon be counted in lives.
The Independent
29-06-2025
- General
- The Independent
Starving Sudanese people eating weeds to survive amid brutal war
People in Sudan are resorting to boiling wild plants and weeds with salt to survive, as the country grapples with a devastating war and widespread hunger. For many, these desperate measures are the only means to quiet the pangs of starvation. Among those struggling is A.H., a 60-year-old retired school teacher, who penned a love poem to a plant known as Khadija Koro, grateful for the lifeline it offered. He wrote that it was "a balm for us that spread through the spaces of fear", and kept him and many others from starving. A.H., who requested anonymity due to fears of retribution from the warring factions for speaking to the press, is one of 24.6 million people in Sudan facing acute food insecurity – nearly half the nation's population, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. Sudan plunged into conflict in April 2023, when simmering tensions between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) escalated into full-scale fighting, initially in the capital Khartoum and then spreading across the country. The war has claimed over 20,000 lives, displaced nearly 13 million people, and pushed vast swathes of the population to the brink of famine in what aid workers have described as the world's largest hunger crisis. Aid organisations report that the conflict has caused market prices to skyrocket, severely hampered aid delivery, and drastically shrunk agricultural lands in a country once considered a global breadbasket. The situation is particularly dire in regions such as Kordofan, the Nuba Mountains, and Darfur, where areas like El Fasher and the Zamzam camp remain inaccessible to groups like the Norwegian Refugee Council, as confirmed by aid worker Mathilde Vu, who is based in Port Sudan. Some individuals are surviving on just one meal a day, often a simple millet porridge, while in North Darfur, some have even resorted to sucking on coal in a desperate attempt to ease their hunger. On Friday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the Sudanese military leader Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan and asked him for a week-long ceasefire in El Fasher to allow aid delivery. Burhan agreed to that request, according to an army statement, but it's unknown whether the RSF would agree to that truce. A.H. said aid distribution often provided slight relief. His wife in children live in Obeid and also struggle to secure enough food due to high prices in the market. His poem continued: 'You were a world that sends love into the barren time. You were a woman woven from threads of the sun. You were the sandalwood and the jasmine and a revelation of green, glowing and longing." Fighting restricted travel, worsening food insecurity Sudanese agricultural minister Abu Bakr al-Bashari told Al-Hadath news channel in April that there are no indicators of famine in the country, but there is shortage of food supplies in areas controlled by the paramilitary forces, known as RSF. However, Leni Kinzli, World Food Programme Sudan spokesperson, said 17 areas in Gezeira, most of the Darfur region, and Khartoum, including Jebel Aulia are at risk of famine. Each month, over 4 million people receive assistance from the group, including 1.7 million in areas facing famine or at risk, Kinzli said. The state is suffering from two conflicts: one between the Rapid Support Forces and the army, and another with the People's Liberation Movement-North, who are fighting against the army and have ties with the RSF, making it nearly impossible to access food, clean water, or medicine. He can't travel to Obeid in North Kordofan to be with his family, as the Rapid Support Forces blocked roads. Violence and looting have made travel unsafe, forcing residents to stay in their neighborhoods, limiting their access to food, aid workers said. A.H. is supposed to get a retirement pension from the government, but the process is slow, so he doesn't have a steady income. He can only transfer around $35 weekly to his family out of temporary training jobs, which he says is not enough. Hassan, another South Kordofan resident in Kadugli said that the state has turned into a 'large prison for innocent citizens' due to the lack of food, water, shelter, income, and primary health services caused by the RSF siege. International and grassroots organizations in the area where he lives were banned by the local government, according to Hassan, who asked to be identified only by his first name in fear of retribution for speaking publicly while being based in an area often engulfed with fighting. So residents ate the plants out of desperation. 'You would groan to give life an antidote when darkness appeared to us through the window of fear.,' A.H. wrote in his poem. "You were the light, and when our tears filled up our in the eyes, you were the nectar.' Food affordability Ms Vu warned that food affordability is another ongoing challenge as prices rise in the markets. A physical cash shortage prompted the Norwegian Refugee Council to replace cash assistance with vouchers. Meanwhile, authorities monopolize some markets and essential foods such as corn, wheat flour, sugar and salt are only sold through security approvals, according to Hassan. Meanwhile, in southwest Sudan, residents of Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, rely on growing crops, but agricultural lands are shrinking due to fighting and lack of farming resources. Hawaa Hussein, a woman who has been displaced in El Serif camp since 2004, told the AP that they benefit from the rainy season but they're lacking essential farming resources such as seeds and tractors to grow beans, peanuts, sesame, wheat, and weika — dried powdered okra. Ms Hussein, a grandmother living with eight family members, said her family receives a food parcel every two months, containing lentils, salt, oil, and biscuits. Sometimes she buys items from the market with the help of community leaders. 'There are many families in the camp, mine alone has five children, and so aid is not enough for everyone … you also can't eat while your neighbor is hungry and in need,' she said. El Serif camp is sheltering nearly 49,000 displaced people, the camp's civic leader Abdalrahman Idris told the AP. Since the war began in 2023, the camp has taken in over 5,000 new arrivals, with a recent surge coming from the greater Khartoum region, which is the Sudanese military said it took full control of in May. 'The food that reaches the camp makes up only 5 per cent of the total need. Some people need jobs and income. People now only eat two meals, and some people can't feed their children,' he said. In North Darfur, south of El Fasher, lies ZamZam camp, one of the worst areas struck by famine and recent escalating violence. An aid worker with the Emergency Response Rooms previously based in the camp who asked not to be identified in fear of retribution for speaking with the press, told the AP that the recent wave of violence killed some and left others homeless. Barely anyone was able to afford food from the market as a pound of sugar costs 20,000 Sudanese pounds ($33) and a soap bar 10,000 Sudanese pounds ($17). The recent attacks in ZamZam worsened the humanitarian situation and he had to flee to a safer area. Some elderly men, pregnant women, and children have died of starvation and the lack of medical treatment, according to an aid worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he's fearful of retribution for speaking publicly while living in an area controlled by one of the warring parties. He didn't provide the exact number of those deaths. He said the situation in Zamzam camp is dire—'as if people were on death row.' Yet A.H. finished his poem with hope: 'When people clashed and death filled the city squares,' A.H. wrote, 'you, Koro, were a symbol of life and a title of loyalty.'
Malay Mail
29-06-2025
- Politics
- Malay Mail
US slaps Sudan with sanctions over chemical attacks — here's what we know
PORT SUDAN, June 29 — The US State Department imposed sanctions on the Sudanese government Friday, accusing it of using chemical weapons last year in its war against rival paramilitaries. Since April 2023, the war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces has drawn widespread accusations of war crimes, with the US determining in January the RSF had committed genocide. Sanctions The State Department in May notified Congress of its determination that 'the Government of Sudan used chemical weapons in 2024', in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Khartoum ratified in 1999. Washington did not provide details on where or when the chemical attacks occurred. Sudan's army-aligned government immediately denied the US allegations, calling them 'baseless' and 'political blackmail'. Washington's sanctions, initially intended to go into effect on June 6, restrict US exports and financing. Urgent humanitarian aid will be exempted from the sanctions on Sudan, where nearly 25 million people are suffering dire food insecurity in the world's largest hunger crisis. History of accusations In January, the New York Times reported the Sudanese army had used chemical weapons at least twice in the war, citing four anonymous senior US officials. They said the chemical agent used, with the direct approval of army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, was chlorine. The army, which has been in control of Sudan for most of its post-independence history since 1956, has been accused of carrying out chemical attacks before. In 2016, an Amnesty International investigation accused the army — then allied with the RSF — of using chemical weapons on civilians in the western region of Darfur. Khartoum denied the accusations. In 1998, the US claimed the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum was producing chemical components for Al-Qaeda, before destroying the factory in a missile attack. Past sanctions Relations between the US and Sudan were strained for decades under the rule of Omar al-Bashir, who came to power in 1993 and whose Islamist-military rule was long accused of supporting terrorism. US sanctions imposed in the early 1990s were tightened in 2006 following accusations of genocide in the Darfur region, carried out on behalf of Khartoum by the RSF's predecessor militia, the Janjaweed. After a popular uprising ousted Bashir in 2019, the US removed Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and began to lift sanctions. Some were reintroduced following a 2021 coup, led by Burhan alongside his then-deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, before the allies' power struggle erupted into all-out war in April 2023. By January 2025, the US had imposed sanctions on both Burhan and Daglo, who is commonly known as Hemeti. Efforts at mediation, including by the Biden administration, have repeatedly failed to produce a ceasefire. Expected impact Sudanese civilians have long borne the brunt of sanctions on their country. Both Burhan and Hemeti's camps built considerable wealth while under a decades-long sanctions regime, finessing transnational financial networks while the country was left underdeveloped. Today, Africa's third largest country is suffering what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with over 10 million people internally displaced and famine already declared in parts of the country. The US was Sudan's largest donor in 2024, contributing 44.4 per cent of the UN's US$2 billion (RM8.46 billion) humanitarian response plan. Following US President Donald Trump's suspension of most foreign aid, the US has dropped its contribution by nearly 80 per cent. US exports were valued at US$56.6 million in 2024, according to data from the US Census Bureau. — AFP
BBC News
16-06-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Sudan in danger of self-destructing as conflict and famine reign
Sudan's war is in strategic stalemate. Each side stakes its hopes on a new offensive, a new delivery of weapons, a new political alliance, but neither can gain a decisive losers are the Sudanese people. Every month there are more who are hungry, displaced, Sudan armed forces triumphantly announced the recapture of central Khartoum in broadcast pictures of its leader, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, walking through the ruins of the capital's Republican Palace, which had been controlled by the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), since the earliest days of the war in April army deployed weapons newly acquired from Egypt, Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries including Qatar and Iran. But its offensive quickly stalled. The RSF, headed by Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as "Hemedti", responded with a devastating drone attack on Port Sudan, which is both the interim capital of the military government and also the main entry point for humanitarian were long-range sophisticated drones, which the army accuses the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of supplying - a charge the UAE rejects, along with well-documented reports that it has been backing the RSF during the 27-month conflict.A simple guide to Sudan's warFear, loss and hope in Sudan's ruined capital after army victoryBurhan and Hemedti - the two generals at the heart of the conflictThe RSF has also expanded operations to the south of struck a deal with Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, the veteran rebel commander of the Sudan People's Liberation Army-North, which controls the Nuba Mountains near the border with South forces combined may be able to make a push to the border with Ethiopia, hoping to open new supply the RSF has been besieging the capital of North Darfur, el-Fasher, which is defended by a coalition of Darfurian former rebels, known as the Joint Forces, allied with the of the fighters are ethnic Zaghawa, who have been in fierce conflict with the Arab groups that form the core of the RSF. Month after month of blockade, bombardment and ground attacks have created famine among the residents, with the people of the displaced camp of Zamzam RSF and its allied Arab militias have a terrifying record of massacre, rape and ethnic cleansing. Human rights organisations have accused it of genocide against the Massalit people of West communities in el-Fasher fear that if the Joint Forces are defeated, they will suffer savage reprisals at the hands of the pressure on el-Fasher is growing. Last week the RSF captured desert garrisons on the border with Libya held by the Joint military has accused forces loyal to Libyan strongman Gen Khalifa Haftar, who controls the east of the country and is also a reported beneficiary of Emirati support, of joining in the civilians, who six years ago managed the extraordinary feat of overthrowing the country's long-time leader Omar al-Bashir through non-violent protests, are in groupings are aligned with Burhan, with Hemedti, or trying to stake out a neutral position. They are all active on social media, polarised, acrimonious and neighbourhood committees that were the driving force of the civic revolution are clinging to life. Most have kept their political heads down, focusing instead on essential humanitarian activities. Known as "Emergency Response Rooms", aid workers recognise that they are the most efficient channel for life-saving many lost their funding when the administration of US President Donald Trump closed down USAID, and other donors have not stepped into the army and RSF both see any form of civic activism as a threat. They are cracking down, arresting, torturing and killing national aid workers and human rights is no credible peace UN's chief diplomat assigned to Sudan, former Algerian Prime Minister Ramtane Lamamra, formulated a peace plan that was premised on the assumption that the army would achieve a military that would be left to negotiate would be the disarmament of the RSF and the reconstruction of the country. That is totally has a big diplomatic advantage over Hemedti because the UN has recognised the military side as the government of Sudan, even when it did not control the national attempt to launch a parallel administration for the vast territories controlled by the RSF has gained little credibility. Foreign ministers at a conference in London in April, hosted by British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, failed to agree a path to peace. The conference chairs had to settle for a statement that covered familiar this occasion, as before, progress was blocked because Saudi Arabia and the UAE could not acknowledge that Sudan's war is an African problem that needs an Arab road to peace in Khartoum runs through Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and Egypt, the big question is whether Burhan is able to distance himself from Sudan's Bashir, the Islamist movement was in power for 30 years, and established a formidable and well-funded organisation, that still Islamists mobilised combat brigades that were key to the army's recent victory in President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi supports Burhan and wants him to sideline the Islamists, but knows that he cannot push the Sudanese general too question takes on added salience with Israel's attack on Iran and the Islamists' fear that they are facing an irreversible other big question is whether the UAE will step back from supporting the RSF lost Khartoum, some hoped that Abu Dhabi might seek a compromise - but within weeks the RSF was deploying drones that appear to have come from the UAE is also facing strategic challenges, as it is an outlier in the Arab world in its alignment with wants to see Sudan divided. But the reality of the war points towards a de facto partition between bitterly opposed warring camps. Meanwhile, the world's largest and deepest humanitarian emergency worsens with no end in than half of Sudan's 45 million people are displaced. Nearly a million are in sides continue to restrict aid agencies' access to the starving. The UN's appeal for $4.2bn (£3bn) for essential aid was only 13.3% funded in late and among the Arab world's powerbrokers, Sudan is no-one's priority, an orphan in a region that is is a country where the multilateral organisations - the United Nations and the African Union - could still be can remind all of their commitments to human rights and human life, and that it is in no-one's interest to see Sudan's catastrophe continue to long-suffering Sudanese people surely deserve that quantum of de Waal is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the US. Go to for more news from the African us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
Asharq Al-Awsat
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Sudan's Paramilitaries Seize a Key Area along with the Border with Libya and Egypt
Sudanese paramilitaries at war with the country's military for over two years claimed to have seized a strategic area along the border with neighboring Libya and Egypt. The Rapid Support Forces said in a statement Wednesday that they captured the triangular zone, fortifying their presence along Sudan' s already volatile border with chaos-stricken Libya, The Associated Press said. The RSF's announcement came hours after the military said it had evacuated the area as part of 'its defensive arrangements to repel aggression' by the paramilitaries. On Tuesday the military accused the forces of powerful Libyan commander Khalifa Hafter of supporting the RSF's attack on the area, in a 'blatant aggression against Sudan, its land, and its people.' Hafter's forces, which control eastern and southern Libya, rejected the claim, saying in a statement that the Sudanese accusations were 'a blatant attempt to export the Sudanese internal crisis and create a virtual external enemy.' The attack on the border area was the latest twist in Sudan's civil war which erupted in April 2023 when tensions between the Sudanese army and RSF exploded with street battles in the capital, Khartoum that quickly spread across the country. The war has killed at least 24,000 people, though the number is likely far higher. It has driven about 13 million people from their homes, including 4 million who crossed into neighboring countries. It created the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and parts of the country have been pushed into famine. The fighting has been marked by atrocities including mass rape and ethnically motivated killings that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially in Darfur, according to the U.N. and international rights groups.
