Opinion | The United States is aggravating the world's worst humanitarian crisis
Today, the world's worst humanitarian crisis may be the network of famine, civil war, mass rape and other atrocities in Sudan, a nightmare officially described by the United States as a genocide.
Thousands of people have been killed, 11 million Sudanese have been displaced, and the deadliest famine in decades may be ongoing, UNICEF warns that children under one year old are being raped.
However, the Trump administration is now cutting humanitarian aid, exacerbating hunger. Neither the Trump administration nor the Biden administration had been willing to call the brutal militia of the United Arab Emirates before, called the Rapid Support Force, the claim that its rampage was inflicting massacres and rapes.
Did President Trump and his aides care about suffering in distant land? I don't know, but I think it may be difficult for us to turn around when we hear personal stories.
As refugees poured into the border into South Sudan, I visited two places on the Sudan/South Sudan border and asked refugees about what foreign journalists could not easily reach.
Musa Ali, 32, is an interior designer in Khartoum, who lived a wonderful life until a civil war began between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Force two years ago.
A year ago, an army blew up his house, forcing his legs to amputate, confining him to a wheelchair. Then, the food shortage became so severe that neighbors began to die. Musa's family members in other parts of the country were able to send him money to buy food.
He told me: “If there is no money sent elsewhere, we will die of hunger.”
Moussa and his wife decided to flee to South Sudan. During the 11-day road trip, they were robbed of checkpoints by soldiers who quickly supported the troops, and they saw people killed along the way – mainly those who were suspected of supporting the army. Musa and his wife said they saw more than 100 bodies on the way.
Yassin Yakob and Sabah Mohammed are both teachers and have also recently fled the Khartoum region. They were back on the road, so they largely avoided checkpoints. But they said other vehicles took those roads—trucks that usually carry dozens of refugees—when the trucks collapsed, people in them often starved to death because there was no food to eat.
“People's bodies are next to the truck,” Yasin said. “If your truck breaks, you're dead. No food.”
Over the past few years, American-backed soup kitchens have been open all over the country and have saved many lives from famine. But, according to Sudan’s humanitarian worker Hajooj Kuka, the Trump administration cut funding for these kitchens, called emergency response rooms, and more than 70% of people have been closed. He told me that in an emergency room, four children died of hunger recently. (For those who ask how to help, here is a link.)
Manal Adam, 30, grew up in Darfur, western Sudan and belongs to a ethnic group that began in 2003. Her two brothers were murdered at the time. She wondered if her mother was raped, too. For some time, the attacks have subsided, but in the past few years, the massacres have resumed.
“It’s like history is repeating itself,” Mannard said, stopping the narrative of how a man in a fast-supporting force uniform stopped her on the road, threw her on the ground and raped her.
Afterwards, she fled to South Sudan with her three children, hoping to keep them alive. But her husband was elsewhere, her 9-year-old daughter was with her mother, so she left them behind in panic. Manal doesn't know if her husband, mother or daughter is still alive.
In a refugee camp in South Sudan, Manal is safe but suffered from a pelvic infection when raped. She withered when other women point to her and gossip, she describes her shame.
Multiply by millions of people, you can glimpse the transfer crisis in Sudan. Famine is spreading, corpses have some roads, and the sons of genocide rapists in Darfur are now raping the daughter of a woman who has been attacked in a generation.
UN officials and aid workers said rapid support forces besieged Zamzam refugee camp in Darfur, with half a million people desperate, hungry inside and little medical assistance. In social media posts, the attacker warned: “Zam Zam will turn to the ashes.”
I suspect that many Americans think this is sad but inevitable, and that we can do nothing to see Sudan as a bottomless pit of pain. But this is not very correct.
I don't know if we can end the massacre. But in the early 2000s, the West took action to reduce the death toll, and this time we were worse than passive. Our cuts to humanitarian aid mean More The kids are hungry, our silence to the UAE may mean More Atrocities.
That's the twisting contrast. A generation ago, Americans were angry about genocide and did not always act perfectly, providing assistance and stressing the government in a life-saving way. Now, we are retreating from aid and keeping a largely silent about the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, painfully approaching complicity.
