History was repeating itself in Sudan, the head of the Red Cross said recently as reports of mass killings in the Darfur region emerged last week.
Sudan was among the earliest African countries to gain independence from colonial rule. It participated in the landmark Bandung Conference in 1955 (of 29 Asian and African nations, including India), and was Africa’s largest country till South Sudan broke away in 2011.
On April 15, 2023, Sudan was plunged into its worst crisis in decades when violent clashes broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a powerful paramilitary group under General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti).
What began as a power struggle between two rival generals has evolved into a brutal civil war that has devastated the nation’s economy, fractured its society, and triggered one of the largest displacement crises in the world.
The staggering losses
Two years into the conflict, over 150,000 people are reportedly dead. Thousands of children have perished due to malnutrition; nearly 13 million people—one in three Sudanese—have been forced from their homes. Of these, 8.8 million are internally displaced, while 3.5 million have fled across borders. Egypt hosts the largest number (1.5 million), followed by Chad (over 770,000), South Sudan, Libya, Uganda, and Ethiopia.
This makes Sudan the single-largest source of displacement in the East and Horn of Africa, accounting for nearly half of the region’s forcibly displaced population.
In August 2024, the Famine Review Committee, an independent expert panel, officially confirmed famine in parts of Darfur, particularly in the Zamzam IDP camp, where thousands are dying from hunger and disease.
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The scarcity of food, water, fuel, and medicine has reached catastrophic levels. Hospitals have been destroyed or abandoned, and medical supplies are nearly impossible to obtain. Over 70% of hospitals in conflict areas are nonfunctional. Schools have shut down, depriving millions of children of education and stability. The breakdown of sanitation systems and health infrastructure has led to outbreaks of cholera, malaria, and measles across the country.
Even before the war, over 3 million women and girls in Sudan were at risk of gender-based violence. The current chaos has deepened their vulnerability: reports of mass sexual violence, forced marriages, and child recruitment have become alarmingly frequent. Many displaced women, particularly in Darfur, face exploitation and abuse in camps where aid and protection are scarce.
The recent violence
Only a few years earlier, Sudan had stood at the threshold of democratic change. The ouster of long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019 ignited optimism that a new era of civilian-led governance was imminent. But those hopes collapsed after a military coup in 2021, which dissolved the fragile transitional government and returned power to rival factions within the security establishment.
The SAF and RSF, allies in maintaining the coup, turned on each other as negotiations over integration of forces and control of key institutions broke down.
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The fighting began in Khartoum, quickly spreading to Darfur, Kordofan, and Gezira, engulfing major cities and rural communities alike. Both sides have committed grave human rights abuses, including airstrikes on civilian neighbourhoods, ethnically targeted massacres, sexual violence, and widespread looting. The result is not only a military stalemate but also a total collapse of state authority and services.
Ethnic rivalries, competition for resources
The SAF-RSF rivalry is deeply rooted in Sudan’s historical regional, ethnic, and economic divides. The RSF traces its origins to the Janjaweed militias that fought in the Darfur conflict of the early 2000s — armed Arab groups mobilised by the Bashir regime against non-Arab communities, like the Massalit, Fur, and Zaghawa.
That conflict left deep scars of ethnic mistrust, displacement, and injustice, which the current war has reignited.
At the same time, Sudan’s vast geography, stretching from the Sahel to the Red Sea, has long been a site of competition for arable land, water, and resources. Climate change has intensified these pressures. Repeated droughts and floods have eroded livelihoods, forced pastoralists and farmers into confrontation, and driven migration from the countryside into contested territories.
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Control over fertile land, gold mines, and Red Sea trade routes has become a strategic prize in this war.
The RSF’s stronghold in Darfur gives it access to lucrative gold fields and cross-border trade networks, while the SAF controls strategic ports and central agricultural zones.
International actors, including regional powers, have stakes in the outcome. The United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Russia (through the Wagner Group’s remnants) have all been accused of providing covert support to one side or the other, turning Sudan into a proxy arena for competing interests.
Life in conflict zones
Behind the staggering statistics lie individual stories of loss and resilience. In the displacement camps of White Nile State, families live under plastic tarps, surviving on meagre rations of sorghum and lentils. Children scavenge for firewood and water while their parents queue for hours to receive aid that rarely arrives. In Darfur, witnesses describe entire villages burned to the ground and survivors trekking for days across the desert to reach safety in Chad.
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Aid workers on the ground report that access remains perilous, as warring factions routinely loot convoys and obstruct humanitarian corridors. Despite repeated international appeals, funding remains desperately short: the UN’s 2025 Humanitarian Response Plan is less than one-third funded, leaving millions without assistance.
Yet amid the destruction, Sudan’s people continue to show extraordinary courage: volunteers running makeshift clinics, teachers holding classes in camps, communities sharing food when aid doesn’t come.
As the world turns its gaze elsewhere, Sudan is becoming a prolonged humanitarian black hole, its people forgotten amid global crises. Ending this suffering requires sustained diplomatic engagement, humanitarian access, and a renewed commitment to civilian-led governance.
The human impact of Sudan’s war is immense, but so, too, is the possibility of recovery, if the world chooses not to look away.
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Gurjit Singh is Former Ambassador and authorof The Harambee Factor
