Forgot Your Password?

New to The Nation? Subscribe

Print subscriber? Activate your online access

.nation-small__b{fill:#fff;}

At 3 Years of War, North Darfur Is an Open Graveyard

As Rapid Support Forces cut off the flow of resources to western Sudan, hunger, cholera, and violence abound.

Cholera infected patients receive treatment at a refugee camp in Tawila city, Darfur.

“Everyone left in El Fasher has changed,” said Ahmed Suleiman, who has seen more than 260 Rapid Support Forces (RSF) attacks since the paramilitary laid siege to North Darfur State’s capital. Three blood-soaked years after Sudan’s civil war broke out in April 2023, rates of infectious disease, displacement, and malnutrition have reached a fever pitch in the Darfur region—now a critical battle zone.

Suleiman, the program manager of the Darfur Organization for Development and Human Resources, has grown numb to the continuous artillery shelling and drone strikes, but he describes the ache of watching people die of hunger as cholera tears through an already weakened population. “There is a huge number of bodies,” he said, “scattered in open air, homes, inside water tanks within houses, and some bodies were not properly buried.”

Without any meaningful way to tamp down the spread of disease, the fighting in Sudan has created a perfect storm for cholera outbreaks, exacerbated by the severe lack of access to clean water and food for most residents of North Darfur. The region forms part of Sudan’s western frontier, known for its vast plains, jagged volcanic peaks to the south, and arid savannahs which blend into Libyan deserts to the north.

Since the fighting began, the number of cholera cases has risen at an alarming rate. Worsening famine, intensified by USAID cuts in a region where up to half of all international aid was American, have accelerated infection rates. The intestinal disease is marked by a severe and total depletion of salt and water in the body, and is called the “unrelenting killer” for its ability to spread rapidly, most often through contaminated water sources.

“Patients die of severe, unstoppable dehydration; there are tons of fluid in their bodies that they must expel with diarrhea. These are lives which can and should be saved with proper rehydration salts,” said Dr. Manal Shams Eldin, an epidemiologist and researcher with Doctors Without Borders. “It’s a sad disease, a disease of poor hygiene and no access to clean water.”

In 2003, rebels attacked the Sudanese government, protesting the marginalization of non-Arabs and launching the modern Darfur conflict. The Khartoum government’s response was to deploy the Janjaweed, an Arab militia that steamrolled Darfur. A ceasefire agreement in 2004 and international peacekeeping missions in 2008 and 2010 did little to slow the carnage. By 2014, the United Nations reported that more than 3,000 villages in Darfur had been razed and that rampant sexual violence, among other human rights........

© The Nation