What to know as Sudan war enters its first month

Sudan’s capital is a desolate war zone where terrified families seek refuge in their homes as gun battles rage in the dusty, deserted streets outside, one month after the conflict began.

Those who are still alive in Khartoum are still surrounded by barricades, hoping to avoid stray bullets while also dealing with severe food and supply shortages.

Runaway inflation, cash shortages, power outages, and communication problems exist.

Even during decades of sanctions against former strongman Omar al-Bashir, the city of five million on the Nile River had long been a place of comparatively good stability and wealth.

It has now reduced to a mere shell of what it once was.

Foreign embassies are closed, there are burned-out airplanes on the airport tarmac, and hospitals, banks, stores, and wheat silos have all been robbed by robbers.

While the generals battle, the remnants of the government have fled to Port Sudan, located 850 kilometers (528 miles) away, which serves as the focal point for large-scale exodus operations of both Sudanese and foreign residents.

According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, more than 750 people have died in the battles. With lengthy refugee convoys traveling to Egypt, Ethiopia, Chad, and South Sudan, thousands more have been injured and nearly a million people have been displaced.

The cost of some foods has quadrupled, and gasoline is now 20 times more expensive than it was before the war.

A number of truce agreements have been reached and swiftly broken, and prospects for an end to the fighting that has caused more suffering for the 45 million citizens of one of the world’s poorest countries are dim.

According to Alex Rondos, a former special envoy of the European Union to the Horn of Africa, both sides “violate ceasefires with a regularity that demonstrates a sense of impunity unheard of even by Sudan’s standards of civil conflict.”

– Coups in history

Although Sudan has a long history of coups, optimism increased after large-scale pro-democracy demonstrations resulted in Bashir’s removal from office in 2019 and the shaky transition to civilian rule that followed.

Prior to the generals’ coup in 2021, Sudan was gradually reintegrating into the international community as Washington and other foreign powers lifted sanctions.

Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the army, and Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, the commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), erupted into a conflict over the integration of paramilitaries into the army on April 15.

Since then, both sides have been unable to gain the upper hand on the battlefield despite numerous bullets, aerial bombardments, and anti-aircraft fire.

The army, backed by Egypt, theoretically has the advantage of air power, while Daglo is reportedly supported by the United Arab Emirates and foreign fighters, according to experts. He oversaw the notorious Janjaweed militia, which was blamed for atrocities during the 20-year-old Darfur conflict.

According to Cameron Hudson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Russian mercenary group Wagner has “technical advisers” in Sudan but is not actively engaged in combat.

According to US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, “both sides believe that they can win militarily” for the time being, at a Senate hearing in early May.

In Sudan, where one in three people already depended on aid before the war, the fighting has made the humanitarian crisis worse.

Since then, aid organizations have been looted, and at least 18 aid workers have been killed.

According to the UN, up to 19 million people could experience food insecurity in the next six months.

‘Poorer for Longer’

Representatives from both sides are in negotiations across the Red Sea in the Saudi city of Jeddah.

By May 11, they had agreed to uphold humanitarian principles, such as the protection of civilians, as well as a commitment to generally allow for the entry of desperately needed humanitarian aid.

However, “it is hard to see that commitments on paper will be fulfilled, absent a significant change of mindset from the warring parties,” said Aly Verjee, a Sudan researcher at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg.

Sudan has a long history of war, particularly in the western region of Darfur, where Bashir, beginning in 2003, armed and unleashed the Janjaweed to put down a rebellion that the insurgents claimed was being led by Arab elites who were monopolizing Sudan’s wealth and power.

At its height, the scorched-earth campaign may have claimed the lives of 300,000 people and uprooted more than 2.7 million, according to the UN.

The health ministry reports that Darfur has seen the majority of the fighting’s fatalities.

The ministry listed 199 fatalities in Khartoum, but claimed that by May 10 at least 450 people had died in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state, and its environs.

Mohamed Osman, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, told AFP that snipers are still present in the area and shooting at people who are leaving their homes.

He continued, “There are also reports of people dying from the injuries they sustained in the early days of fighting” due to the destroyed hospitals.

According to the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, “people have gone from three meals a day to just one” due to food shortages in the displacement camps in Darfur.

The fighting throughout the nation, according to Verjee, has destroyed factories and workshops and led to “the partial deindustrialization of Sudan.”

Therefore, any future Sudan will be significantly poorer for a much longer period of time.