In Sudan, the war that broke out two years ago has caused the most serious humanitarian crisis in the world and in recent decades. 30 million people out of a total population of 50 million are in dire need of aid, suffering hardship and hunger. The most desperate are the more than 12 million displaced people who have lost everything - homes, material goods, livelihoods... - often fleeing after weeks and months of tribulation, many forced to move more than once as the fighting has encompassed new territories, extending to those in which they had found refuge.

Hostilities were opened in April 2023 by two generals, authors of the coup by which they had seized power in 2021, until then allies: Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the armed forces and de facto head of state, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, until then his deputy. Al-Burhan has more than 120,000 military personnel under his orders. Dagalo is the head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary body of at least 100,000 men. They include the Janjaweed, the devils on horseback, who between 2003 and 2008 in the province of Darfur slaughtered the population of non-Arab origin, armed by the then President Omar al Bashir against whom the International Criminal Court issued an international arrest warrant in 2009, which was, however, disregarded.

Both generals are determined to fight to the bitter end, until the total defeat of the adversary, in order to remain alone at the head of the country. They do this completely indifferent to the consequences for the population. The water, electricity and other infrastructures have suffered enormous damage as a result of the bombing. Some 70-80% of the hospitals are no longer operational either because they have been irreparably damaged or because, even if they could still provide services, they lack medicines, equipment, personnel, and electricity. Both have repeatedly refused to open humanitarian corridors to bring relief and to rescue communities trapped in dangerous areas. They have refused to suspend the fighting even when it came to moving from the capital Khartoum, where the war began, several hundred children abandoned in an orphanage where they were dying of hunger and lack of care. Both, on the contrary, use hunger as a weapon of war by denying foreign humanitarian convoys permission to reach enemy-controlled territories and then, once they are allowed to proceed, allowing them to be plundered by soldiers and armed gangs.

The people of Darfur are the worst affected. There, civilians not only, like everyone else, are exposed to crossfire, shelling, and suffer from lack of food, infrastructure and services: the side effects of any war. As at the time of the Janjaweed, those belonging to ethnic groups of African origin are deliberately attacked by the RSF with an extermination intent that deserves them, in addition to the accusation of committing war crimes levelled at the government army, that of genocide and ethnic cleansing. It is in Darfur that towns were besieged and then devastated, that sexual violence became systematic, that the worst massacres of civilians took place.

And it was there, in North Darfur, that the unimaginable happened a few days ago, just when the international community was hoping to persuade the contending parties to enter into negotiations and at least agree to a ceasefire. Starting on 11 April, the RSF attacked Zamzam Camp, a refugee camp established in 2004 that now houses civilians, mostly women and children, who have fled from nearby al-Fasher, besieged for months in 2024 by the RSF, and from the surrounding territories. At the time of the attack, some 700,000 people were in the camp in extremely fragile conditions due to acute malnutrition, poor housing and hygiene conditions, and insufficient health care due to the restrictions imposed on relief efforts, which were often blocked for days and weeks. Médecins Sans Frontières reported a high mortality rate, especially among children: at least one death every two hours.

On this suffering and desperate humanity, completely defenceless, the RSF pounced, which had already raided the camp in February, causing numerous casualties. Now hundreds are dead and as many injured.

The further damage is that hundreds of thousands of people - an estimated 400,000 - have fled Zamzam, now in the hands of the paramilitaries, and are deprived of even the little that was still keeping them alive, the strongest seeking help even tens of kilometres from al-Fasher, walking while carrying what was left of their belongings. Many arrived severely dehydrated in Tawila, a town 70 kilometres away where there is a Médecins Sans Frontières garrison. Children died of thirst on the journey. One of the survivors recounted that when the shelling started he and his neighbours sought out and rounded up the older people and ran away with them: “The shelling was intense,” he told his rescuers, “people started running, south, east, west. They used all kinds of heavy weapons and the shelling was so intense that we couldn't even talk to each other. We went on foot: it was tiring and difficult. We would stop to sit down and sometimes people would fall to the ground".

On 13^th April, the camp was in the hands of the RSF. On 15^th April, a conference convened in London by the United Kingdom, the African Union and the European Union to set up a contact group to mediate between the parties ended in a deadlock. The representatives of the two contending parties did not even show up. On the same day, the leader of the RSF, General Dagalo, announced that he had formed an alternative government to the incumbent one. “We are building the only realistic future for Sudan,” he said and assured - but one can imagine how little credibility this statement appeared - that his was “a government of peace and unity, the true face of Sudan.”

See, Sudan, la guerra ad oltranza dimenticata più grave del mondo

Listen also to the podcast Après deux années de guerre, le Soudan proche de la partition ?

In April 2023, a devastating war broke out between the Sudanese army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces of Lieutenant-General Mohamed Hamdan Hemedti Dagalo. To analyse the root causes of this conflict, Enrica Picco and Rinaldo Depagne interview Suliman Baldo, director and founder of the Sudanese Observatory for Transparency and Governance. Together, they examine the economic issues behind the war and the growing polarisation in the country. They describe the disastrous humanitarian situation and consider the challenges posed by the return of millions of internally displaced persons and refugees to totally destroyed towns. They also analyse the support of foreign powers for the belligerents and the failure of diplomatic initiatives to achieve a ceasefire. Finally, they explain the destabilising effect of this war on neighbouring countries and the role of civil society in this crucial phase of the conflict.