Famine looms in Sudan after a year of war
The Peninsula
It s been almost a year since a ruinous civil war flared in Sudan. Close to 25 million people roughly half the country s population need humanitar...
It’s been almost a year since a ruinous civil war flared in Sudan. Close to 25 million people - roughly half the country’s population - need humanitarian assistance, according to U.N. estimates.
Close to a fifth of the country’s population has already been forced from their homes by the conflict, marking the largest population of internally displaced people in the world right now.
The war pits the country’s armed forces, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), headed by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, universally referred to as Hemedti. Burhan and Hemedti worked hand-in-glove in 2021 when the two collapsed a civilian-led government that was presiding over the country’s fragile transition to democracy after years of dictatorship.
But power-sharing disputes and turf wars fractured their alliance and led to an entrenched, sprawling series of battles across the African nation - shaped, in part, by the competing interests of a number of outside powers.
Countless civilians are caught in the crossfire: Artillery bombardments and airstrikes pounded urban areas, while warring militias pursued tribal vendettas and carried out hideous ethnic massacres.
