One year into its ‘forgotten war’, Sudan is now like a ‘blood-soaked playground’ with spectre of famine on the horizon

Deaths in Sudan could reach 10,000 per day in the coming months if the mass displacement of people caused by a yearlong civil war sparks famine. The dire projection, which represents a worst-case scenario and would put the conflict on a par with the worst days of the Battle of the Somme, was being urgently debated by Western envoys and diplomats this week.

Other agencies, including the World Food Programme, say the estimates are exaggerated but accept that a major humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding.

Today marks the first anniversary of Sudan’s “forgotten war”, one that has been overshadowed in the western media by the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.

Yet the suffering caused by the fighting is immense − and the geopolitical ramifications far from insignificant.

It is already the world’s biggest single displacement crisis, with up to 11 million people, including four million children, forced from their homes and farms.

Millions of refugees have fled into neighbouring Chad and South Sudan. And, across the region, around 25 million people are now unable to feed themselves properly, with at least five million on the cusp of famine, according to the United Nations.

The UN refugee chief said on Friday that Sudanese refugees could make their way to Europe if humanitarian aid was not stepped up.

The World Health Organisation, meanwhile, said time was running out.

“We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg, and the situation could be much more dire,” said a spokesperson.

Sudan has become a “blood-soaked playground” for regional powers including the United Arab Emirates and Russia, who are arming and backing the warring sides.

The worst case of 10,000 deaths a day would put the conflict on course to rival some of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters of recent memory.

The Ethiopian famine of the mid1980s killed as many as one million, while war, disease and famine are estimated to have killed several million in the Democratic Republic of Congo at the turn of the 21st century.

Humanitarian agencies urged caution over such a high projected death rate, but said the situation was appalling and children were already starving to death.

Donors and Western governments, distracted by crises in Europe and the Middle East, have provided only a fraction of the money needed to avert disaster, they said.

Dr Christos Christou, president of the aid charity Doctors Without Borders, said: “Sudan is one of the worst crises the world has seen for decades.

“There are extreme levels of suffering across the country, the needs are growing by the day, but the humanitarian response is deeply inadequate.”

Dominic MacSorley, humanitarian ambassador for Concern Worldwide, said: “Hunger and suffering are at unprecedented levels, and yet we know Sudan has not hit its worst level of suffering.

“We can use words like ‘famine-like conditions’, but to be brutally frank, this does mean children are already dying.”

War erupted a year ago from a long-simmering rivalry between the de-facto president, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and his deputy, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagaloa, known as Hemedti. Fighting between the army and Hemdeti’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia has turned much of the country of nearly 50 million into a war zone.

Diplomatic attempts to halt the fighting have since been defeated by Sudan’s descent into a chaotic geopolitical chessboard of competing regional powers pursuing murky agendas.

Russia, Iran, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, the Saudis and even Ukraine are all backing sides.

Will Brown, a former Africa correspondent for The Telegraph and now a senior policy fellow on the Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said: “After a year of rising middle powers using Sudan as their blood-soaked playground, the country is barrelling down the road to the worst famine anyone alive has ever seen. Both generals in Sudan are playing us, treating humanitarian access as negotiable and threatening to ban aid organisations who work in areas they don’t control.

“We cannot allow this to become normalised. The West needs to present a united front and treat full aid access as something already agreed on and enshrined in international law.”

He said Russia was understood to be backing both sides in the conflict, with the remnants of the Kremlin’s Wagner mercenary group having long supported the RSF militia.

Moscow is also supporting the Sudanese army, fixing Khartoum’s MiG fighters and offering ammunition and four Antonov transport planes in return for gold. Analysts say Russia’s goals in the war are not clear. Russia’s involvement has in turn attracted Ukraine, which is understood to have sent small numbers of special forces to fight the RSF and its Wagner backers.

Iran is understood to have supplied its Mohajer-6 military drones to the Sudanese army. The remote-controlled aircraft are credited with allowing Khartoum to win several victories and regain territory in Omdurman in recent months. China is also thought to be supplying light arms to Khartoum. The Emiratis have been accused of supplying large quantities of military aid to the RSF via flights to neighbouring Chad.

The war “is brutal, devastating and shows no signs of coming to an end,” said veteran Sudan expert Alex de Waal.

But even if the violence stops now, “the state has collapsed, and the path to rebuilding it is long and fraught,” de Waal said.

As many as four-out-of-five of the country’s hospitals have been forced to shut. This breakdown in healthcare means officials have very little idea how many people are dying in the conflict.

Official death tolls, which are only compiled from those who make it to hospital before dying, are thought to be a huge undercount.

The war has also rekindled targeting of ethnic African civilians in Darfur by the Arab-dominated RSF. Two decades ago, as many as 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were driven from their homes largely by government-backed Arab militias called the Janjaweed, which have since evolved into the RSF.

Renewed targeting of ethnic African residents in Darfur last year killed up to 15,000 in one West Darfur town alone, according to UN experts.

“What is happening is verging on pure evil,” Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, said earlier in the war.

The fighting means many supply lines are cut and much of the country’s agricultural land is out of use. The warring sides are accused of blocking access to aid.

Food prices have jumped and many of those who have fled their homes with little more than their clothes have no money to spend. Famine is meanwhile looming in Khartoum, Al-Jazira, and in the Darfur and Kordofan regions.

Around two million people have fled the country, mainly to Chad and South Sudan. Mary-Ellen McGroarty, South Sudan director for the World Food Programme, said the country had taken 630,000 Sudanese refugees into a nation where more than half the population was already short of food.

She said since the war began, food prices had doubled in the capital, Juba.

“The refugees are going into refugee camps,” she said. “They have lost everything. It’s just heartbreaking, particularly for the young. Their whole lives upended: they are out of school, out of college, trying to see some hope in the future and not seeing it.”

Aid agencies say Sudan’s crisis has been forgotten because of Western attention on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Sofia Sprechmann Sineiro, secretary-general of Care International, said: “There is no shortage of humanitarian crises in the world right now and yes, absolutely, this one has received much, much less attention than it should.

“Humanitarian need over all has skyrocketed across the planet in many contexts around the world.

“Of course it is competing for attention with the War in Ukraine, Gaza and the devastation there.” (© Telegraph Media Group Ltd 2024)