Sudan: Is the World’s Food Basket eating itself as it edges towards civil war?

Arwa Elshaib

In pre-emptive strikes, Sudan’s China-backed Al-Burhan led Military Dictatorship derails the march to democracy by waging war on Saudi-UAE backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) leaving Sudan’s civilian population in fear for their lives during the last week of the holy month of Ramadan.

The resource rich nation remains one of the poorest in Africa with up to 18 million people facing acute food shortages according to a “World Food Program” Report released in March 2022.

On 5 December 2022, opposing Sudanese factions signed a Framework Agreement for the transition of Sudan from military to civilian rule, it would seem that the first phase of the transition has led to ambushes and murders that have so far left 100 dead and many more wounded.

Tragically, among the dead were also World Food Program (WFP) workers who were there to help feed the third of the population who are suffering from hunger.

Their killing led to the halting of WFP work in Sudan, of course this will be followed by the looting of their stores and without doubt the deprivation of those in need.

I write this as Sudan teeters towards a civil war and I receive news of my extended family being devastated by the murder of 9 young men and the wounding of more than ten others, most ambushed, most in their twenties.

Their lives snatched from their families leaving behind grieving parents, widows and orphans. I have lost uncles, cousins and more relatives in earlier attacks by the military against the RSF.

Civil wars are especially ugly in the way they divide a nation

Wars are ugly, they devastate and leave behind much loss of lives and destruction of livelihoods, crops and infrastructure. They lead to starvation, malnutrition, deaths, ignorance and massive displacement of people.

Civil wars are even more ugly, because they pit citizens of the same nation, people with the same hopes and aspirations, against each other.

They all become tools used by those who encourage and fund, and thereby control, the varying factions. The pawns fight and kill each other in the name of defending the nation and will continue until the foreign war-profiteers (and warlords) realise their goals.

Watching from Australia, I want to act away from politics, I want to speak in the name of the daughters who like me have lost their father, or in the name of all those who have lost or will lose a loved one if this war does not end.

I empathise with these children as I lost my father, but I live in peace knowing that he was taken peacefully and not shot in the head or hit by a missile like many of my uncles and cousins.

I live in a country that became my backbone when I lost mine, this is a far cry from the situation in Sudan when families lose their only hope in life, a country with no discernible welfare system, a country where one third of the population are suffering food shortages.

I write this article and I pray to Allah, on this Holy Night of Qadr to bring peace to Sudan and to our world, to help all people in all conflicts find a path to peace and harmonious coexistence.

Please let this article to be an open letter to the Honourable Prime Minister of Australia, the Honourable Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Honourable Secretary General of the United Nations, please do what you can to save the people of Sudan.

Arwa Elshaib is a year 12 student of Sudanese parents, she is also a member of the Australian Sudanese Welfare Association.