Two years ago, fighting broke out in Khartoum between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group that had grown wealthy and powerful during the years of Omar al-Bashir's rule. The battle for the capital lasted weeks. Then it spread. By the end of 2023, it had become a civil war of a scale and ferocity that the region had not seen since Darfur.
The numbers are difficult to comprehend. More than ten million people have been displaced — the largest displacement crisis in the world, surpassing Ukraine at its peak. Famine conditions have been declared in parts of Darfur and Kordofan. The UN's humanitarian coordinator for Sudan has described the situation as "the worst humanitarian crisis on earth." International coverage has been intermittent at best.
I spent three weeks in Port Sudan and the surrounding camps in May. The scale of suffering is not something that translates easily into the formats that dominate international news. There are no dramatic front lines accessible to cameras, no single atrocity that concentrates attention. There is instead a grinding, distributed catastrophe: displacement camps without adequate water, children with acute malnutrition, a healthcare system that has largely ceased to function in the conflict zones.
The diplomatic picture is no more encouraging. Peace talks have stalled repeatedly. Regional powers with interests in the outcome — Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia — have been unable or unwilling to exert decisive pressure on either side. Western governments, preoccupied with other crises, have engaged sporadically. The people of Sudan are paying the price of that inattention.