Hello, everyone. Good morning, afternoon or evening, and welcome to this edition of Elsewhere in Focus. You can find all the articles in the series here (along with my other diaries).
Against my autistic brain’s wish to follow proper order and thus write about Congo this time, I have decided to return to Sudan today to mark the passing of one year since the start of the current war in Sudan. I will share excerpts from many Sudanese and Sudan-focused reporters reflecting on what this year has been like for Sudanese and where they stand at the end of the year. Each of them gives specific insights into the situation and I do hope that you will follow the links to read all of these pieces in full, especially the non-UN pieces.
For a refresher, please take a look at my previous diary on Sudan that introduces you to the conflict. Or any of the excerpted pieces will give you a very brief overview of the situation. Some more than others.
Sudan
A Year of the Conflict In Numbers
What has befallen Sudan in this past year of conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary unit Rapid Support Forces (RSF), supported by UAE, Russia, and others?
At a high-level event in Paris that brought together countries and donors to invite pledges for humanitarian aid to Sudan, UN Assistant Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Joyce Msuya gave an overview of the situation.
Hunger is skyrocketing. Health systems have crumbled. Pregnant women are dying in labour. And the entire generation of children is missing out on an education.
Violations of international humanitarian law are now commonplace.
Women and girls are being terrorized amid a wave of conflict-related sexual violence.
Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed or injured, some of them victims of reported ethnic-based killings that remind us of the dark days in Darfur 20 years ago.
The recent escalation in El Fasher is raising the spectre of even greater danger to civilians in Darfur.
But amidst the despair, there is hope.
Across the country, humanitarian workers, community volunteers and women-led organizations are giving everything they have for the people of Sudan. And host communities are opening up their homes and sharing whatever they can with neighbours whose lives have been torn apart.
But without adequate funding, this hope could soon evaporate. The 2024 humanitarian appeal for Sudan has received just 6 per cent of the funding needed.
And we have a very narrow window to act. For example, if we do not have additional funding to deliver seeds and tools by June, farmers will miss the planting season – which would deepen hunger even further.
A UN OCHA situation report gives the bare bone numbers [emphasis mine].
- The number of people displaced by conflict since 15 April inside and outside of Sudan has reached 8.2 million.
- In the past two weeks, the number of people newly displaced increased by about 107,800 women, men, and children.
- FEWS NET warns that catastrophe levels of food insecurity are expected in parts of West Darfur, Khartoum, and among the IDPs, particularly in hard-to-reach areas of Darfur
- Save the Children warns 230,000 children, pregnant women and new mothers could die in the coming months due to hunger unless urgent life-saving funding and aid address their needs.
- Humanitarian partners have reached 2.3 million people with lifesaving assistance since 1 January 2024.
And the UN OCHA Sudan page gives the scale [emphasis mine].
Together with the 3.8 million internally displaced persons, from past internal conflict, Sudan currently faces the largest internal displacement crisis in the world and the most significant child displacement crisis, with more than 3 million children displaced inside and outside the country.
Nearly one in three people in Sudan is acutely food insecure, while the already-fragile health system is in tatters, with looming disease outbreaks, including an alarming cholera outbreak, as well as dengue fever, measles and malaria.
As per the tabs at the two UNOCHA pages, nearly 25 million—that is, nearly half the population of Sudan—are in need, with the numbers swelling every day.
As per a story from Yousra Elbagir, who has been reporting on Sudan for Sky News, official death count that the UN cites is near 14,790. However, the unofficial numbers are likely far higher. Indeed, around 15,000 were likely killed in RSF’s ethnic cleansing campaign in West Darfur alone a few months back. Since then there have been more of these violent interventions across Darfur.
The situation has taken a turn for the worse with both SAF and RSF bringing other armed actors into the conflict. Whereas, as per a CNN report, RSF has taken to forcefully recruiting men and children, SAF has been arming civilians searching for a way to defend themselves. The Al Jazeera long feature I link below details how the civilian armed group called the Mustanfireen has been killing RSF prisoners and even migrant working class Arab men (and perhaps veiled women) just out of suspicion that they are connected to RSF. Civilians and activists running soup kitchens are also targets for the same reason. These civilian recruits are not disciplined by the army for breaking laws and norms of war. You can imagine how that would turn out.
That is, the conditions are worsening with no end in sight.
Reporting As Your Country Falls Apart
In the midst of grief, pain and fear, Sudanese are trying to keep the world abreast of the developments in the country. With the hope that the world may rally to their cause: to bring peace and justice to their land.
In a feature from Yousra Elbagir for Sky News, you can read about the staggering statistics and the difficulty of getting accurate data, especially on deaths. She writes about the memories that people hold close when there is no other way to keep records and the toll the reporting—even on social media—takes on the people of her country.
Writer Sara Elhassan posts daily online updates and videos about the conflict in Sudan using her Instagram and X account @bsonblast. She is one of the clearest, loudest and most devoted voices to the cause and when she shares, her anguish is measured and collective.
What her followers do not see is the hours spent behind the scenes trying to make contact with family members that are still trapped in some of the worst areas of fighting - all while dedicating 12 hours a day to monitoring general news from across the country.
As these journalists and writers gather information and file stories, they see their own people being killed; their homes destroyed, and their friends and cities devastated. Zeinab Mohammed Salih writes for BBC’s Letters from Africa series about her own experience reporting on the war.
I'm not supposed to cry as a journalist when I am covering stories, but I have been crying a lot lately.
Before December, when I travelled on a reporting trip from my home in the Sudanese city of Omdurman - just across the river from the capital, Khartoum - the only people I would see from my window were those carrying the dead bodies of loved ones on their shoulders.
They were looking for a roadside space to bury the corpses as going to a proper cemetery was too dangerous.
The dead civilians, many killed by bullets and shells, were the collateral damage of a war that began exactly a year ago, when Sudan's two leading military men fell out over the country's political future, after seizing power together in a coup in 2021.
I have lost many friends and acquaintances.
The bustle of my close-knit, working-class neighbourhood was replaced by silence, sometimes interrupted by the sound of a military plane foreshadowing an airstrike as the army would be targeting an area controlled by fighters from the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group.
People would flee their homes fearing that they would be hit.
On 15 April last year, I remember looking forward to breaking the Ramadan fast in the evening with some fellow journalists. I was planning later to reunite with a long-lost childhood friend.
We never met and I have not seen him to this day. He left the country while I remained.
The pain and grief are not the only constants in these reporters’ lives. Fear and displacement, the constant threat of violence, the need to flee, and the need to remain and report are also part of it. In Mat Nashed’s long feature for the Al Jazeera, he includes the story of a young journalist who has faced threats, raids and fear of torture at the hands of SAF along with the ever present violence from RSF.
Just south of Khartoum, a young journalist named Noon* was working in Gezira State’s capital Wad Madani, an hour’s drive away from her family who lived in Hasaheesa to the north.
Noon, a writer, knew her work was dangerous, but she never told her family about the risks she was taking to cover all aspects of the war. Like other journalists, she was under surveillance and worried about being arrested but Noon continued to report, knowing what she did mattered.
“Military intelligence always accused me [of being some sort of spy] at every checkpoint,” she said. “They would constantly question my identity and the validity of my travel documents.”
Being a woman, she faced an extra, sexual, layer of harassment at checkpoints, she said, often being called a “Habashiyya” - a term describing a woman from Eritrea or Ethiopia - and accused of providing the RSF with sexual favours.
On November 25, the army began investigating her, confiscating her hard drive and laptop and making her worry that her sources may be taken and arrested.
She worked anonymously, writing about the impact of the civil war on civilians and talking to people in displacement shelters about their fears. In the course of her work, something became clear to her.
“This isn’t just a war between the army and the RSF. The Islamic movement in Sudan has also entered this war [to fight with the army],” she told Al Jazeera.
“The army and Kizan often accuse journalists and activists of being part of the December revolution [which brought down al-Bashir in 2019],” Noon said.
“Kizan” is a common name for members of Sudan’s political Islamic movement that ruled alongside al-Bashir for 30 years.
Many Kizan are speculated to hold prominent positions in the army and intelligence services, while others are said to have mobilised their own militias to fight alongside the army.
In early December, the army arrested and tortured Noon’s colleague in a village in Gezira, she told Al Jazeera, without providing details of what happened.
Both the security services and militias aligned with the army are accused of detaining and sometimes killing civil activists.
It is in the midst of such pain that they bring us these stories. The least we could do is keep track and spread awareness. Push whichever power that we can push to act. Keep the crisis from being relegated to the margins.
The Forgotten War?
Does the world know that Sudan is in the midst of a crisis? What is it doing?
Even in April, when there was only the one war that the West was obsessed with, there had been limited focus on Sudan. And now, when tens of thousands have been killed (unofficial estimates say around 40,000 or more), with 25 million displaced, and millions at the brink of famine, the world and the media has barely any attention or aid to spare Sudan. Nesrine Malik writes for the Guardian about this neglect and its possible causes.
And more jarring is that the world has gazed with indifference upon this crucible of war. The “forgotten war” is what it’s called now, when it’s referenced in the international media. Little is offered by way of explanation for why it is forgotten, despite the sharpness of the humanitarian situation, the security risk of the war spreading, and the fact that it has drawn in self-interested mischievous players such as the United Arab Emirates, which is supporting the RSF, and therefore extending the duration of the war.
One of the reasons for this is Gaza and the escalating Middle East conflict, and how they have monopolised global attention and diplomatic bandwidth for the past six months. And another is that for those reporting within Sudan and the few who manage to get in, doing so is difficult and fraught with danger, limiting the output of images and details that can be broadcast consistently to galvanise attention. But the rest, I suspect, is down to what to most will seem unremarkable: this is just another African country succumbing to intractable conflict.
This is a different war from the one waged in Darfur, which drew in celebrities, politicians and even the international criminal court in previous years. And it is different from the war between the north and south, which also attracted so much advocacy and political pressure that a peace agreement and secession was secured. It is not, as in the past, a conflict resonantly framed as Muslims against Christians, or Arabs against Africans, stirring sympathy and outrage. It is the challenge of a new configuration of political and economic entrepreneurs who wish to displace the old military cluster of ruling parties – but with no experience and even less interest in actually running parts of the state captured in the meantime.
On a political level Sudan falls, and has always done, low on the list of priorities for power brokers in the west, who have few interests in the country. They either crudely isolated it through sanctions or, after the revolution, naively and hastily tried to marshal the two armed parties to agreement and a de-facto return to a militarised, centralised status quo.
The Sudanese have no narrative to attract a world caught in the web of anti-Black/anti-African racism. Unlike in the early 2000s when George H W Bush’s government took action against the ethnic cleansing in Darfur (“Arabs against Africans”) or a few years after, when the world rallied to bring an end to the civil war that led to the creation of South Sudan (“Muslims against Christians”). That is what she is seeing.
(*Arabs being Afro Arabs).
How Can the World Resolve this Conflict?
Nada Wanni writes for Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) about the difficult path that international and national actors must follow to ensure a sustainable solution.
As has happened historically with national dialogue processes during al-Bashir’s period and the transition, extensive ‘lists’ of broad sectors such as: ‘civil society’, ‘professionals’, ‘experts’, ‘women’, ‘youth’, ‘religious leaders,’ ‘native administration,’ ‘refugees’, ‘workers,’ ‘farmers’, ‘herders’ and other categories are routinely put together. Real ‘inclusivity’ and participation remains a remote element to these conventions.
We should remember that notions of ‘civil society’ and ‘civil society organizations’ have been extensively used by both military actors and the political elite in all of Sudan’s recent political dialogue before and after the war to lend legitimacy and the appearance of having ‘expanded political participation’. This is frequently a political message that some civilian politicians are keen to send both internally to the Sudanese people, and externally to the Western community. However, some of the civilian politicians on these platforms continue to practice subtle, controlled forms of diversification and plurality in these political processes.
Paradoxically, at the same time, there is an ongoing debate among these platforms about the ‘political parties-civil society’ composition and the balance within these bodies. Some politicians believe that the presence of civil society within such platforms is at the expense of the traditional role of political parties. This is currently being debated with percentages being used for participation.
It is essential to note here that there are voices and groups within platforms like Taqaddum, particularly from youth groups, resistance committees and some civil society organisations, who have been pushing against the control of these bodies by political elites, and for genuine, uncontrolled political dialogue. It remains to be seen if they will succeed.
At the same time, other civilian entities comprising political parties and civil society organizations who are not happy with the current political direction of Taqaddum or who have been excluded from its processes will likely organize themselves into new alliances. Regional countries with a stake in the war could support such new ‘parallel’ coalitions for political influence and leverage.
It is imperative that the Sudanese do not allow the political ambitions of certain individuals to jeopardise real political dialogue and negotiations by reducing the Sudanese people’s credible political leadership to attendance lists, percentages, and a managed plurality. They need to define for themselves what credible political participation looks like.
She talks about planned conferences in Jeddah and elsewhere and how they might fail and how they might deliver. What is important is to make the process Sudanese led and to ensure all sections of Sudanese are represented, without which, any dialogue will lack legitimacy.
While Some Despair, Others Maintain Hope
From Cairo, where she had fled to from Khartoum after the war broke out, Journalist Lujain Alsedeg writes for Taz that she still has hope in Sudan.
Today, the war in my city is one year old, our home in Khartoum was destroyed and looted after we left. And the apartment I rented with my family in Cairo never felt like home. We still have daily conversations about what will happen when the war ends, we disagree over how we will know that the war ended, there is no authority left in Sudan that can be trusted, there is no guarantee that even if the war stopped for a while that it will not resurface again with old or new faces of conflict.
The leader of the RSF famously said before that „if you are not fighting, you don’t have an opinion“, and SAF leader recently echoed this sentiment by declaring that only the people who were „resilient“ in the face of aggression will rule the country, implying that leaving or not choosing a side in the war will be used as an excuse to exclude people in the future. The attempts to shatter our dreams of returning home have already started.
But I still believe in a way back, and I don’t think it will happen after a big peace declaration, or a grand gesture by one of the warring parties. I am simply waiting for an opening. A chance for ordinary people to exist peacefully without participating in the conflicts and violence, a chance to rebuild our homes and our city, and I would seize it in a heartbeat.
I hope that one day, they will all be able to return home and rebuild a peaceful, kind, and democratic Sudan.
Until next Wednesday everyone. Stay safe. Be well. Take care.
We cannot help everyone. Know every story. Mourn every loss. Even so, may we have the heart to hold others and their hopes and travails within us and do what we can for those whose stories are being neglected.