Famine rages as peace talks fail again

Famine is ravaging Sudan.

The Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) – which identifies itself as the Sudanese government – took a small step towards alleviating famine earlier this week by allowing 15 UN aid trucks to cross the border from Chad to bring food to starving people.

Aid agencies hope this will open the door to a comprehensive relief effort that could save millions of lives.

But they fear this is a largely symbolic concession – too little, too late.

Four weeks ago, the United Nations-recognized Integrated Food Security Classification (IPC) system said famine conditions were occurring in some areas of Darfur, Sudan’s westernmost region.

This is not surprising.

The humanitarian disaster in Sudan is the world’s biggest in months. More than half of Sudan’s 45 million people need urgent relief aid.

More than 12 million people have been displaced, including nearly two million refugees in neighboring countries – Chad, Egypt and South Sudan.

Some food security experts fear that as many as 2.5 million people could die of hunger by the end of the year.

While the cause of Sudan’s famine lies in decades of economic mismanagement, the legacy of devastating wars and droughts worsened by the climate crisis – the cause of today’s famine is the use of hunger as a weapon.

War broke out in April last year between the SAF, under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, also known as “Hemedti”.

The war soon devastated the Sudanese community.

Like a swarm of human locusts, RSF militias have rampaged through the capital Khartoum, stripping it of anything it can loot and resell. They have also destroyed vital infrastructure such as hospitals and schools.

The same story repeats itself wherever RSF goes.

The Gezira and Sennar wheat fields along the Blue Nile, home to vast irrigated farms, were devastated.

People there are facing poverty for the first time in generations.

The famine is worst in Darfur, especially in el-Fasher, the only town in the region still controlled by the army and local allies.

Surrounded by RSF, the city relies on precarious supply routes across the front lines. It was at the Zamzam camp for displaced people near el-Fasher that the aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) first reported the extent of malnutrition caused by famine.

For its part, the army has fallen back on its tried and tested strategy of cutting off rebel-held areas. Its logic is that if it can cut off external supplies, local RSF supporters will become disaffected and some of its units may defect.

That tactic worked when they waged a protracted war in southern Sudan from 1983 to 2005. Their generals regretted allowing the United Nations to send in aid, which they believed sustained the rebellion long enough for the southerners to declare independence.

The SAF controls Port Sudan, the country’s only port and a major import route. More importantly, the United Nations recognizes the SAF as a sovereign government.

Although there are no SAF troops within 100 miles (160km) of the Chadian border – where arms smugglers can cross at will – UN lawyers have insisted that World Food Programme trucks must have official government permission to drive the few miles from the Chadian border town of Adré along sandy roads into Darfur.

And SAF has used the sovereignty card most effectively.

In June, Sudan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Al-Harith Idriss al-Harith Mohamed, denounced talk of famine as a plot by the country’s enemies to justify intervention.

He threatened a “Biblical apocalypse” if the United Nations declared a famine.

IPC experts evaluated the data, called him, and declared a famine.

Sudanese armed forces backed down and opened the Adré border crossing – but only for three months.

And they allowed only 15 of the 131 UN aid trucks waiting at the border to pass, before demanding to begin negotiations on an inspection regime.

Relief veterans hope that the generals will use every trick in the administrative books to slow down the approval process.

And Darfur needs thousands of food trucks every week, not a single convoy.

Transporting food to Chad from the nearest ports on the West African coast takes weeks.

To feed the starving people, it is necessary to open all roads – from Port Sudan, from South Sudan and across the desert from Libya and Egypt.

Sudan’s local relief committees are also in dire need of money.

A comprehensive aid effort requires the warring parties to agree to a ceasefire and an end to looting and extortion.

But there is no sign that they are willing to do this.

Peace talks in Geneva ended without significant progress on Friday. Held in Switzerland, they were jointly convened by the United States and Saudi Arabia.

US special envoy Tom Perriello planned the meeting with high hopes. He wanted the two warring generals to meet face to face and sign a ceasefire.

But SAF chief General al-Burhan refused to attend or even send a high-level delegation.

He argued that the RSF must first evacuate its forces from residential areas – essentially requiring them to withdraw from territories they have captured – as a precondition for negotiations.

Mr Perriello has lowered his expectations and decided to pursue in-person talks and phone calls — including from US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken — in the hope of paving the way for humanitarian aid access.

He achieved enough to confirm that the matter was not settled and that talks would continue at an unspecified future date.

But diplomats know that no progress will be made until the main backers of the two sides – the RSF is the United Arab Emirates, and the SAF is Saudi Arabia and Egypt – reach an understanding.

So far, the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the UAE over who will lead the region has scuttled peace efforts.

Despite denials, there is evidence that the UAE has supported the RSF with money and guns, while Saudi Arabia has leaned towards the SAF.

The UAE did not want to attend the talks at the previous venue of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, hoping that any breakthrough would be credited to their Saudi rivals.

Meanwhile, the Saudis do not want to see the UAE deciding who will run Sudan’s next government.

Representatives from the two Arab states sat in as observers at the Geneva talks. But until the top Arab decision-makers met, it was just a diplomatic courtesy.

Meanwhile, the war continued and famine became more severe.

Sudanese people remain hopeful that, unlike previous civil wars that lasted years if not decades, this one can end quickly and peacefully.

But the signs are not encouraging.

Alex de Waal is executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the United States.