PORT SUDAN: Sudan entered its second consecutive Ramazan this week in the throes of a deadly war that has left much of the country gripped by the specter of famine.
“They serve it to us in a soup kitchen organized in the mosque.
Before the war broke out on April 15, towards the end of Ramazan last year, Idriss ran a small grocery store.
Ever since the fighting between the rival generals turned the streets of the capital into a bloody war zone, he had not been able to return to the shop or the quarter of the capital where he once stood.
The nearly 11-month war, which pits the regular army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against the paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF) of his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagl, has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and laid waste to much of the country. infrastructure to rubble.
In RSF-ruled North Kordofan state, Mohammed Soleiman insists on keeping his shop open in the town of Al-Rahad, even though there are few customers.
The paramilitaries “are charging taxes on all the trucks, so prices are going up and less and less product is coming in,” Soleiman told AFP.
Until recently, Imad Mohammed could use a banking app to receive money transfers from relatives abroad to help feed his family.
But weeks ago, even that last financial safety net was lost when telecommunications were suddenly cut off in several states and cities.
Like all civil servants in combat zones, Mohammed has almost no income.
Some employees received part of their wages sporadically, others got nothing at all.
“We are starting Ramazan and we are already hungry,” he said.
The United Nations estimates that 18 million of Sudan’s 48 million people are acutely undernourished, five million of whom have reached their last pre-famine level.
According to MSF, a child dies of malnutrition every two hours in the Zamzam camp for displaced people in North Darfur state.
“The humanitarian organizations left with the war, the odd jobs we managed to find before disappeared, so we ate only one meal a day for months and often did not give it to the children,” he told AFP. .
This sense of abandonment is echoed by Sudanese specialists who warn that the conflict has been forgotten.
British researcher Alex de Waal said that while a decade ago any UN emergency could be expected to receive two-thirds of the funds requested, in recent years this has fallen to 30 percent.
“Currently, Sudan’s funding request is funded at a maximum of three percent,” de Waal said.
“That’s a really deeply alarming scenario.”
According to the humanitarian group Save the Children, almost 230,000 children and new mothers in Sudan are “likely to die of starvation” without urgent intervention.
But after RSF forces swept through the state in December, there is no mood for celebration and the rich aromas of Ramadan specialties are gone, replaced by the smell of gunpowder.
“This year Ramazan has no flavor,” Al Jazeera resident Nahed Mustafa said.
