Starvation stalking Sudan's Darfur region as fighting intensifies

Emergency food being distributed by the World Food Program and World Relief in Kulbus, West Darfur, Sudan, in March 2024. [AFP]

The World Food Program warned Friday that time is running out to prevent starvation in Sudan's Darfur region, as intensifying clashes in North Darfur's capital are preventing aid deliveries to the wider Darfur region.

"The situation is dire," WFP Sudan spokesperson Leni Kinzli told reporters in a briefing from Nairobi, Kenya. "People are resorting to consuming grass and peanut shells, and if assistance doesn't reach them soon, we risk witnessing widespread starvation and death in Darfur and across other conflict areas in Sudan."

The WFP estimates that more than 1.7 million people across Darfur are experiencing the highest levels of hunger and food insecurity.

The United Nations has been among the voices warning that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have encircled and are poised to attack North Darfur's capital, El Fasher. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have positions inside the city but are besieged by the RSF. So are about 1.5 million residents, including about 800,000 internally displaced persons.

Airstrikes and shelling are exacerbating El Fasher's hunger emergency. The United Nations estimates 330,000 people are facing crisis levels of food insecurity in the city due to a shortage of food items and soaring prices.

Inside North Darfur's Zamzam camp, one of the largest displacement camps in Sudan, Doctors Without Borders said this week that the situation is catastrophic, especially for children. Of more than 46,000 children screened, the charity found 30% suffering from acute malnutrition and 8% suffering from life-threatening severe acute malnutrition.

The two border crossings that humanitarians used to reach Darfur from neighboring Chad have been closed. Aid convoys using the Tine crossing have been suspended because of the fighting in El Fasher, while Sudan's government has stopped aid trucks going through the Adre crossing because it fears the RSF will use the crossing to smuggle weapons into Darfur.

Kinzli said that before the recent fighting, WFP had planned several convoys from Chad with assistance for 700,000 people across Darfur. The delivery would have lasted many of them for two to three months, through the approaching rainy season, she said.

"Beyond that, we were hoping to scale up and ramp up even more, but now with these access constraints, with the security concerns as well as these bureaucratic restrictions, it makes it difficult for us at the moment," she said.

Fears of atrocities

El Fasher is the only city in Darfur that the RSF has not captured. An impending battle could unleash atrocities similar to those of the genocide carried out by Arab Janjaweed fighters against African Zaghawa, Masalit, Fur and other non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur in the early 2000s. Janjaweed fighters make up today's RSF.

Analysts at the Yale University Humanitarian Research Lab are tracking the situation using satellites and other resources. They said in a report Thursday that 23 communities north and west of El Fasher have been intentionally burned to the ground in the past five weeks.

The fate of the residents is not known. The researchers say the location of the communities is consistent with satellite imagery they have analyzed showing that the RSF has advanced in those directions.

"We additionally have evidence they are also in the eastern side of El Fasher, and we are currently monitoring RSF forces moving from the south, from Nyala," Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the lab, told VOA.

Nyala is the capital of South Darfur state.

"At present we are seeing snapshots of their force strength," he said. "In certain cases, we have seen battalion- to regiment-size force massings. In some cases, including over a hundred vehicles."

The fact that the RSF has not yet attacked El Fasher demonstrates that international pressure can be an effective tool, Raymond said.

"RSF could have moved earlier; they have not yet," he said. "We have to use this moment to pull RSF forces back and to create a humanitarian envelope in which aid can be delivered — first in El Fasher and then into the interior of Darfur."

He said time is running out, as the rainy season is about to start.