Women and children arrive at the soup kitchen in al-Fashir with sunken eyes and swollen stomachs. Hunger is palpable, even after they have received their portion of gruel.
Six months ago, we served two meals a day, but now, due to shortages and depleted markets, only one meal is served, says Magdi Youssef, one of the kitchen's cooks, to AFP.
A plate that was previously shared by three people is now eaten by seven.
Day by day, the situation worsens for civilians in the Sudanese civil war, where a power struggle between two military leaders has triggered the world's worst humanitarian disaster.
For a long time, the city of al-Fashir in Darfur was considered a safe haven. People affected by the notorious Janjawid militia's ethnic violence, which plagued the conflict-ridden region with the then al-Bashir regime's tacit approval, have sought refuge in the oasis city for decades. The city's diversity of different ethnic groups living together has provided a kind of protection in a war where ethnic differences are used to mobilize fighters.
Besieged for over a year
Everything changed when an alliance of local militias in al-Fashir, the Unified Forces of Darfur, which had previously remained neutral during the civil war, declared itself allied with the Sudanese army.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which at that time controlled almost the entire rest of Darfur and to some extent consists of the same armed groups that ravaged the region under the name Janjawid, besieged the city in April 2024. Since then, the population has been more or less trapped. As food stocks dwindle, violence is creeping closer.
In early August, a year after the UN noted famine in the huge refugee camp Zamzam on the outskirts of al-Fashir, an anonymous official at the health department says that more than 60 people have died from starvation-related causes in one week. The majority of the dead are reported to be women and children. The number of unreported cases is feared to be large, as many families have buried their dead without contacting healthcare, due to security conditions and lack of transportation. Hundreds of children have died from starvation this year, according to the Sudanese Doctors' Network, an organization that brings together doctors in Sudan.
Shooting at those who crawl
In 2025, several massacres have also occurred in and around al-Fashir. Hundreds of civilians have been killed.
In the nearby camp Abu Shouk, where around 450,000 displaced Sudanese live, newly taken images verified by a human rights organization affiliated with Yale University in the USA show RSF soldiers shooting at people trying to crawl away, while shouting ethnic slurs at them. At least 40 people were killed on that occasion in mid-August.
"RSF has made civilians trying to leave al-Fashir targets, and claimed that they are fighters, which has forced many to stay despite having to eat animal feed and other things not intended for human consumption," writes Mohamed Salah, Cairo-based press officer at the organization Emergency Lawyers, which documents human rights abuses in Sudan, to TT.
Foreign actors exacerbate
The war in Sudan broke out in 2023, when the former allies Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo clashed over power after a joint military coup. Coup leader and General al-Burhan represents the country's army, while Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, leads RSF. Both parties are accused of a range of war crimes, often committed against the civilian population.
But foreign actors have also entered the conflict. RSF is said to have support from mainly the United Arab Emirates, but also from Kenya, Ethiopia, Chad, and the Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar, who controls the country's eastern parts.
The Sudanese army, in turn, has backing from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran. Russia is said to have interfered in various ways on both sides, according to Redie Bereketeab, senior researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala.
Foreign actors have significant influence. The war becomes more complicated and will likely continue longer, he says.
Sudan's western region has been neglected since colonial times. After Sudan gained independence in 1956, political leaders began to exploit the difference between ethnic groups considered more Arab and those considered more African. A rift emerged and deepened over the coming decades.
When the region suffered from severe drought, the government in Khartoum did not intervene to a sufficient extent to prevent disaster, and up to 100,000 people are estimated to have starved to death in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Around the turn of the millennium, African rebel groups launched an armed resistance against the Sudanese regime, which responded by arming and supporting the so-called Janjawid militias.
Janjawid has been accused of widespread abuses, including systematic rapes against mainly African ethnic groups, and the conflict has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
Despite signed peace agreements, and the fact that Sudan's then-president Omar al-Bashir was indicted for war crimes in the International Criminal Court, the conflict has continued to simmer. In 2013, the Rapid Support Forces, RSF, emerged from Janjawid.
Ten years later, a full-scale and very bloody civil war broke out between RSF and the Sudanese army.
Source: National Encyclopedia (NE)
