Five food aid workers were killed this week, a state sanctioned military force claimed control of a major city, and in just the past two years, nearly 4 million people have fled their homes and becomes refugees. You might think I’m describing events in Gaza, but you’d be wrong. I’m talking about what’s been happening in Sudan.
It’s the humanitarian crisis that almost no one wants to talk about.
It’s the humanitarian crisis that almost no one wants to talk about despite several global powers exacerbating the civil war and trying to use Sudan for their own advantages.
We need to talk about why that is, why 4 million people fleeing their homes — a number roughly equivalent to the population of Oklahoma — hasn’t garnered more attention. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a background beat in the cadence of American news; while people disagree on whether starvation is being used as a weapon of war, the details and images of the conflict are readily available in our devices, and we experience a type of unfiltered access to what’s happening there. People pore over every aid convoy movement and military strike launched since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, using those details to analyze what should, can or will happen to the more than 2 million residents of Gaza. We should care about what’s happening to humans in Gaza, whether they be Palestinian or Israeli.
We should also care what’s happening in Sudan. We are objectively not seeing the same level of online discourse or public empathy for the people living in unspeakable conditions there. It’s not that Sudan lacks national security or global trade importance; world and regional powers like Russia, China, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are deeply involved in the current conflict. It is fair to look at this dynamic — and our individual consumption of global news — and ask if the relative lack of concern about this crisis unfolding in Africa is because the people at the center of it are Black.
Though the narrative about Sudan’s civil war isn’t framed in biblical terms, its people have experienced apocalyptic conditions. Two brothers in arms worked to overthrow a harsh, autocratic leader, leading civilians to victory in 2019. But the two brothers, paramilitary leader Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo and the army chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, could not resist the lure of earthly power. Falling victim to the sin of pride, they turned against each other and set their armies to burning villages, taking conscripts and razing the land. Men, women and children were not spared the brutal fighting; many had already experienced similar horrors before they escaped Syria.
Famine, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, was declared a reality in North Darfur last year. According to the United Nations, on Monday night, 15 trucks carrying food had traveled more than 1,110 miles from the Red Sea toward the famine area. The World Food Programme and UNICEF insist standard protocol had been followed and all parties in the area had been made aware of the convoy. Still, it was attacked approximately 50 miles from the destination, leaving five people dead. This would have been the first convoy of food aid to reach the area in more than a year, the U.N. reports.
In addition to statements of outrage from the WFP and UNICEF, U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said the United Nations condemns the “horrendous attack in the strongest possible terms.”
Sudan is attractive for trade and security reasons because of its location connecting the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.
Still, the attack on humanitarian workers and the overall crisis itself have drawn minimal concern from inside the U.S.
Sudan is attractive for trade and security reasons because of its location connecting the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa. When the fighting escalated in 2023, U.S. special operations forces dramatically airlifted 70 Americans to safety, then quietly stopped engaging in negotiations or diplomatic outreach. By 2024, the embattled Biden administration likely didn’t find political sense in investing more resources into a region that Donald Trump had lumped together as “s—hole countries,” especially given the focus on a post-Oct. 7 Middle East.
Meanwhile, Russia remains keen on establishing a Port Sudan naval base, its first on the continent, so it stands firm behind the current military dictator in Khartoum. The United Arab Emirates is accused of doing China’s dirty work by supplying gold, bombs and howitzers to the opposition paramilitary group. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, picks around the edges of both groups to recruit for its never-ending war in Yemen.
Major world powers are openly using military power and massive economic investments to twist Sudan’s crisis to their advantage, while the United States withdraws from the region. Even in a power dynamic calculus, humanitarian aid is widely seen as having a soft power that extends beyond the most immediate need. But under the Trump administration and the auspices of the Department of Government Efficiency, the United States has callously zeroed out aid and refugee programs that otherwise could save millions of lives while also advancing American interests. That’s all the proof we need that the United States, as a government and a public, is no longer even pretending to care about what happens to people in the Sahel and the least among us.
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