The situation in Darfur in the west of the country is becoming increasingly catastrophic for the people. After the RSF militias (see below) took the town of El Fasher in October after a year and a half siege, they are wreaking havoc among the civilian population. They hermetically sealed off the city; pools of blood and mass graves can even be seen from space. More than a quarter of a million people in El Fasher are defencelessly at the mercy of the militias, without food or medical care. Aid organizations are denied access. The shrugging of the shoulders by the world’s public is unbearable, reminiscent of the reactions to the genocides in Srebrenica or Rwanda. All the UN Human Rights Council has done so far is to pass a resolution condemning what is happening.

The people of Sudan are being left alone.

According to the United Nations, this is the biggest humanitarian disaster in the world. 12 million people are displaced, 26 million are starving or at risk of starvation. It is estimated that 150,000 people have fallen victim to the civil war so far.

The background

Sudan is a country in north-east Africa, five times the size of Germany and home to almost 50 million people. The country is characterized by aridity and is largely located in the Sahara or on its southern edge, the Sahel region.

Sudan was a British colony until 1956, and there has been political unrest in the country since independence. An almost 50-year civil war between the predominantly Christian south and the Muslim north ended in 2011 with the independence of South Sudan.

However, uprisings also repeatedly broke out in other regions of the country, the most famous and most momentous in 2003 in Darfur in the west of the country. This region alone is as big as France.

The background to the conflict was a dispute over the distribution of water and grazing land between nomads and farmers. The government under Omar al Bashir supported the nomads and equipped them with weapons. The consequences were dramatic. The armed nomad riders, the Janjaweed, attacked thousands of villages on horseback and camels, burning them to the ground, killing the inhabitants and looting or destroying the supplies. Almost 400,000 people fell victim to the attacks and half of Darfur’s six million inhabitants were forced to flee. Most of them sought refuge in huge camps within the country. The civil war continues even after more than 20 years. The refugee camps have now developed into ghettos, as there is hardly any prospect for people to return to their villages.

In 2019, the long-term dictator Omar al Bashir was deposed by the military following mass protests by the Sudanese population, and civilian groups and the army formed a transitional government. However, in October 2021, the military under General Abdel Fatah Burhan staged another coup and made him the de facto head of government. Following mass demonstrations and international pressure, a new transitional government was formed between the military and civilian politicians in December 2022, with the aim of holding free elections in 2024.

In April 2023, however, a power struggle broke out between Burhan and his powerful deputy Mohammed Hamadan Daglo, known as Hemeti, the former leader of the Janjaweed.

He is now head of the so-called RSF, a militia of one hundred thousand men, and is fighting with the army, which is roughly as strong in numbers. The power struggle is being fought on the backs of the population.

Saraf Oumra, the small town in the west of the country, and the village of Karakoulle, which is attached to it, are comparatively unaffected by the fighting. Nevertheless, the situation is difficult, contact with the outside world is difficult, telephone and internet connections are repeatedly interrupted or switched off. And now the fear is that the RSF militias will look for new targets after the conquest of El Fasher. At least the children can continue to go to school, 100 girls and boys are being taught. We have even managed to finance the construction of two classrooms for the secondary school in Saraf Oumra. The children need our support more urgently than ever. What we can still do to help is to transfer money so that teachers can be paid and the children can buy books, exercise books and pens. To provide a little normality in the horror of war. At least.