Sudan’s hidden crisis

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: the crisis in Sudan.

The Sudanese suffered through years of war and unrest, but a few years ago seemed headed towards self-governance. Now, a new conflict has brought a humanitarian crisis, one that’s gotten little attention from the press.

WORLD’s Lindsay Mast has the story.

LINDSAY MAST: In the middle of the dusty Sudan countryside Raous Fleg spots a patch of low lying grass and starts picking leaves. She and two other women have walked for two hours from a displaced persons camp in the South Kordafan area. Video from Reuters shows them stopping sometimes to eat the leaves raw. It’s part of a desperate search for food.

Later, they’ll cook what they find with tamarind seeds and water over open fire and feed it to their children. It will be something resembling a meal.

In the last 18 months, a war between rival military groups has devastated Fleg’s country. The World Food Programme says nearly a quarter of Sudan’s 48 million people have fled their homes. More than 25 million face acute hunger and multiple areas are on the brink of famine, or already there.

SOUND: [CELEBRATIONS IN KHARTOUM]

In 2019, people celebrated in the streets of the capital of Khartoum… after a military coup deposed President Omar Al-Bashir, Sudan’s authoritarian ruler of 30 years. The country adopted a transitional civilian and military government that, at least in theory, would include the Sudanese people.

But in April 2023 the two armies that had worked to overthrow Al-Bashir turned against each other. The Sudan Armed Forces, or SAF, is the official Sudanese military. It started fighting the Rapid Support Forces, known as the RSF, which has roots in the Janjaweed Isalmist militia.

SOUND: [GUNFIRE]

A UN fact finding mission reports both groups have committed human rights violations and international crimes. Additionally, it found the RSF has killed, raped, and tortured non-Arab, ethnically Black people in West Darfur.

Joseph Siegle is Director of Research at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

SIEGLE: It is, I think, in some people's books, we could consider it genocide, and a real attempt to, if not, exterminate this population, but, you know, pushing them out of their long held in long known home areas.

Continued fighting raises concerns about a regional conflict. Sudan is the third-largest country in Africa. It also borders the Red Sea, an important shipping route. One analyst told The Washington Post, “whoever controls Sudan, controls the Red Sea.”

Joseph Siegle once again:

SIEGLE: “As in any conflict, once it becomes regionalized, internationalized, it becomes a lot more complicated to negotiate a ceasefire and have all sides stand down.”

But many countries have interest in Sudan– the Red Sea shipping route as well as its natural resources, like gold, silver, copper and uranium.

Russia has long wanted a Red Sea port in Sudan. It initially supported the RSF, prompting Ukraine to send special forces to Sudan to fight against Russia there. But Russia recently switched sides, aligning with Iran’s support of the SAF. The Washington Post reports that Iran has supplied drones to the effort.

On the other side, The U.N. reports that the United Arab Emirates has been sending the RSF weapons and ammunition through Chad. The UAE denies those allegations, though a New York Times investigation backs them up.

Some say applying global pressure to the UAE to stop aiding the RSF could help end the war. An opinion piece in The Washington Post called on the U.S. to do just that. America has led peace talks regarding Sudan, but also counts the UAE as an ally. Audio from a meeting between the UAE and US presidents.

BIDEN: UAE is going to become a major defense partner of the United States

In the meantime, the Sudanese people bear the brunt of the conflict with millions uprooted. Aid trucks have arrived, but both armies have been accused of hampering efforts to distribute it. And now, people are starving.

EDEM WOSORNU: We, the international community, have failed.

That’s Edem Wosornu, a UN Official, speaking about the first confirmed famine in seven years. It’s in Darfur’s Zamzam camp, which houses an estimated half million displaced Sudanese people.

SOUND: [RADIO DABANGA]

Yet media coverage of the crisis has been sparse. In May, The Economist reported that in the first five months of 2024, global media outlets ran about 600 stories on Sudan per month. By comparison, coverage of Gaza and Ukraine were more than 100,000 stories per month–for each conflict.

Part of the problem is that it’s hard for news from Sudan to get out. UNESCO reports that most internal media outlets have stopped broadcasting altogether. Journalists have fled, been taken captive, and even killed.

WILLEMS: The situation on the ground for journalists is very bad. People are really persecuted.

Leon Willems is a Senior Adviser at Free Press Unlimited who worked as a journalist in Sudan for years. He says the communication infrastructure wasn’t great to start with. And now much of it has been destroyed.

WILLEMS: Just imagine, the times before, you know Nokia 2g on your cell phone. You can send very simple text messages of 130 140 sign. So that is about what people can get out.

In a world where pictures and video plays an important role in getting people’s attention, that’s a challenge.

WILLEMS: If you don't see it, then you don't get the reaction, the International charitable reaction, the political urgency. This is a war that is not televised. It's not pictured. Foreign reporters are not let in, and so we depend on these local journalists.

Back in South Kordafan, the women put clumps of mushy leaves into the outstretched hands of toddlers and children. It’s hard to say if it will be enough to sustain them while they wait… wait for more political pressure, wait for aid to get through, and wait for the fighting to stop.

WILLEMS: There's many crises, and they're all important in many different ways, but this is one where silence leads to many people going dead.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lindsay Mast.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.