‘September 10
HUNGER, MALNUTRITION AND FUEL SHORTAGES COMPOUND
HUMANITARIAN CRISIS….as malnutrition among children claims lives in Darfur,
soaring food prices hit families in N Kordofan and fuel shortages disrupt transport and
production. Gen Coordination for Displaced Persons & Refugees in Darfur documented
100 cases of malnutrition among children in Soni, E Jebel Marra, with 30 deaths linked
to complications from malnutrition and lack of healthcare. The coordination reported a
further 100 cases, while 135 people were affected by malnutrition at Liba admin health
centre where 2 deaths were recorded….famine and food insecurity had become among
the most serious threats facing civilians. He said the war disrupted agricultural activity
and forced farmers from their land, while drought and falling production deepened the
food crisis. …the centre had been closed 9 months because of lack of healthcare services
before resuming operations. Since reopening, it received 135 cases, the number
increasing daily. In El Obeid and surrounding rural areas, the price of dairy products has
risen sharply, adding to pressure on families already struggling with the war and
deteriorating economic conditions. Field reports indicate the price of a kilo of powdered
milk reached SDG 55,000, litre of fresh milk is selling for SDG 3,500. The price rises
are adding to severe economic and security pressures… Residents faced repeated attacks
by RSF aircraft, contributing to fears among civilians and disrupting movement of goods
and livestock products to central markets. The rising cost of dairy products is putting
further pressure on children, older people and low-income families who rely on milk as
an important source of food. Residents fear continued insecurity and economic
deterioration could further disrupt supply lines and drive prices even higher. Pt Sudan
and Kassala are facing fuel shortages, with long queues at service stations and repeated
price increases disrupting transport, trade and production. Pt Sudan…shortages shifted
between different fuel products in recent weeks…other products remained scarce, with
black-market petrol prices reaching SDG 50,000 a gal during the peak of the crisis. The
shortages disrupted public transport, freight and factory production, while higher
transport costs pushed up food prices. In Kassala, videos…showed long queues outside
the warehouse fuel station. The price of a litre of petrol rose from SDG 8,048 to SDG
8,84, following earlier increase from SDG 6,622. Dabanga
ADDITIONAL 3 DOZEN HEALTH FACILITIES SERVING 400,000 PEOPLE
CLOSING THIS YEAR DUE TO GLOBAL AID CUTS, worsening a dire humanitarian
situation….The cuts come to a health care system that once numbered 6,500 primary
healthcare facilities and 300 public hospitals, but was decimated in the first year and ½
of war. By Sept 2024, WHO said 70-80% of facilities in worst-hit areas were closed or
barely functioning. The war killed at least 59,000 people, displaced 13 million and
pushed parts of the country into famine. More aid organizations are pulling out as
clinics are left without medicine or funding, forcing patients to face costly transportation
and dangerous journeys to get treatment, Doctors Without Borders. “These cuts are
stripping away what little capacity remains, closing facilities, sending health workers
home, cutting off supply lines for medicines and nutrition treatment. The system is
already stretched past its limit,” Intl Rescue Comm. Fewer health facilities remain open
as aid reaches fewer people. IRC told AP funding cuts are forcing closure of 36
facilities and sites, cutting off access to essential services for 473,700 people: “A small
number of facilities are able to keep running for a short period using other funding
sources, but this bridge support is only expected to last through the end of Sept.”
Healthcare providers couldn’t find alternative funding needed to provide healthcare
services after grants to many organizations in Sudan ended following the announcement
of US aid cuts. Some major European donors also decreased their aid spending. Um
Rakuba Camp in Gedaref which shelters 17,000 displaced people is now served by
fewer than 10 aid organizations in and around the camp, down from 35 in 2021. The
MSF-supported hospital there “is now the only lifeline left” for refugees and residents:
“serious disease outbreaks are already happening” in several parts of Sudan….measles
reached “major outbreak level” in Darfur, with 75% of measles patients unvaccinated.
Sudan is also experiencing cholera and malaria outbreaks. Africa News
August 29
SUDANESE NATIONALS LIVING IN US PREPARING CLASS-ACTION LAWSUIT
AGAINST UAE SEEK CIVIL DAMAGES OVER…FINANCIAL AND LOGISTICAL
SUPPORT FOR RSF. The planned litigation aims to hold Abu Dhabi legally liable for
aiding and abetting RSF combat operations against Sudanese armed forces. Plaintiffs
plan to claim legal precedents established under US civil liability frameworks, drawing
on a landmark verdict against French lender BNP Paribas…finding the bank liable for
providing financial services that sustained the regime of Al-Bashir during atrocities in
Darfur. That verdict followed the guilty plea and $8.9bn settlement with US DOJ for
violating economic sanctions against Sudan, Iran and Cuba. Sudan Tribune
August 28
CIVILIANS BUILDING PEACE AL-BURHAN CAN’T….Sudanese Declaration of
Principles, Popular Congress Party, Umma Party, women’s and youth networks, a long
list of academics and civil society figures signed a joint position paper rejecting
al-Burhan’s call for Sudanese-Sudanese dialogue and offering 3-track alternative around
ceasefire, humanitarian relief and political process among equals….The timing lands…
after al-Burhan’s unannounced consultations with political blocs, Sufi leaders, native
administrations and resistance committees on an agenda he alone controls, 2 days after
AU Peace & Sec Council visited Khartoum, rejected parallel entities and foreign
interference,…this document is a direct attempt to deny the de facto govt of Pt
Sudan …Al-Buran’s strategy, which could be termed consolidation dressed as dialogue,
holds a history. Al-Bashir ran a similar experiment…boycotted by most credible
opposition and later assessed by Intl Crisis Group as an exercise that produced
legitimation on paper long after it lost the room. Burhan’s version follows a familiar
script: reversible inducements, suspension rather than dismissal of prosecutions against
Somoud-aligned figures…and a preparatory committee of unverified independence.
1st, (the position paper) reaches for the one formula that historically held Sudan’s
divergent civilian space together: unconditional exclusion of dissolved NCP and its
Islamist apparatus. …the same premise that put a wide normally divided coalition,
professional syndicates, resistance committees and established parties on the same side
of the street in 2019 and forced Bashir out. The signatories span real ideological
distance….What unites them is precisely what united the street 6 years ago. The 2nd
thing the paper gets right…is equal footing. …what actually distinguishes the plan, aimed
at status rather than sequencing. By confining SAF and RSF to ceasefire and
humanitarian tracks, keeping both out of the political track except on matters that
concern them directly, the paper strips each side of a story it wants to tell. SAF loses the
posture of incumbent govt negotiating down an insurgency. RSF…loses the posture of
competing state. What remains, once both fictions are stripped away, is what each is:
belligerent in a civil war, with no claim to write constitutional rules. (The war is the
latest expression of a bargain the country never closed, over who the state is for, how
power moves between center and periphery, what a security sector answerable to no
civilian authority is allowed to become. RSF is not an aberration; it is a direct product of
it, a paramilitary force the state built for its own protection that has grown large enough
to contest the state. The paper’s list of principal questions: govt, religion and state,
citizenship, dismantling old regime’s structures, one professional army, transitional
justice, land and displacement, shape of a transitional constitution, …finally negotiate the
settlement…. Its insistence on binding outcomes, declaration of principles, full peace
agreement, transitional constitution, defined mechanism for choosing civilian authority
answers the reversibility built into al-Burhan’s offer. It says nothing about verification or
enforcement, no monitoring architecture, no named consequence for violation, the same
gap that has undone every ceasefire and same flaw it identifies in al-Burhan’s
confidence-building measures. The paper’s call to fuse the Quad, Quintet and Troika
into 1 framework is its boldest idea and least worked out.
Sudan’s mediation landscape is fragmented for reasons rooted in Gulf rivalry: Saudi
Arabia’s tilt toward SAF, accusations against UAE over arms reaching RSF, Egypt’s
alignment with SAF and wider tangle of calculations over Red Sea security, gold,
migration routes and politics of Islamism that rarely line up across capitals. The
document says almost nothing about external financing sustaining both belligerents.
Unifying mediators without addressing what divides their patrons doesn’t seem
sustainable. Still, the document changes the diplomatic terrain in one concrete way. It
gives the Quintet, AU and Western govts a dated civilian baseline to measure any Pt
Sudan-endorsed process against, at the moment some were leaning toward premature
endorsement. Sudan’s civilians have shown twice they can agree on what they refuse.
That is a real achievement, but not yet a peace process. What would make it one is
unglamorous: a monitoring body with mandate to name violators, timeline for extending
accountability track for both belligerents, Pt Sudan defacto govt to RSF-aligned political
forces, a single interlocutor authorized to negotiate talks with SAF and RSF. Until the
current civilian convergence closes that gap, its position paper will remain a powerful
statement of refusal rather than workable architecture for peace. Horn Review
RUSSIA AND CHINA’S OBJECTIONS TO BOULOS RESOLUTION GO BEYOND
SUDAN. The proposal…would extend existing Darfur arms embargo to cover entire
Sudan….Boulos emphasized the profound human cost…scale of violence undermined
both parties’ claims to legitimate governance, and external financial, political and
military support from multiple actors sustain a stalemate. The statement offers insight
into UAE’s approach the Sec Council’s remaining coercive instruments, illustrating
contrasting preferences of other permanent members including the Russian Fed and
People’s Rep of China…This difference intersects directly with the deeper dispute over
how main armed actors should be characterized. Sudan’s amb to UN made the objection
explicit, arguing that applying uniform restrictions nationwide would equate state
institutions with a rebel militia and calling instead for technical extension of the existing
Darfur-only regime. His govt’s position rests on the premise that formal equivalence
between the forces amounts to substantive equivalence in intl standing…. Boulos
anticipated this…telling the Council the proposed measures sought no advantage or
disadvantage between parties and no equivalence beyond a shared obligation to pursue
peace and accountability. A nationwide embargo would land differently on the main
armed forces because of how each sourced weapons.
Russia’s amb used the word “equivalence” but from the opposite angle. He rejected any
suggestion of moral equivalence between the 2 sides’ use of weapons and drones. In his
view, the army was fighting groups trying to destroy the state, RSF were using strike
drones indiscriminately against civilians….argued that formal symmetry limits the
army’s options while leaving the paramilitary’s smuggling networks largely untouched.
China urged caution, warning that wider sanctions risked undermining stability and
economic recovery. Russia went further…characterizing existing Western measures
including EU ban on Sudanese gold imports and American restrictions on intl financial
institution lending to Sudan a policy of economic strangulation that punished ordinary
Sudanese rather than belligerents. Sudan’s govt aligned with Moscow and Beijing in
substance while framing objection around sovereignty rather than sanctions relief.
Sudan occupies a secondary position in both capitals’ strategic ledgers, precisely what
makes it useful as leverage. Both weigh it against the cumulative state of contests that
matter more to them, and both extract value regardless of how the vote ultimately falls.
Moscow’s central preoccupation remains sanctions relief and battlefield sustainability in
its own war, conceding ground on a Western-drafted enforcement mechanism in Sudan
without compensation elsewhere would function as an unrewarded gift to the same
enforcement architecture Russia is fighting to blunt. Russian-linked networks used
Sudanese gold-trading channels to help offset the effects of Western sanctions, while
long-running discussions with Pt Sudan kept alive the possibility of a permanent Russian
naval facility on Red Sea. Preserving the army’s freedom of action advances Russian
interests. Russia’s veto functions as a standing bargaining instrument: it can be withheld
or deployed if Washington later seeks Moscow’s agreement on Sudan and is prepared to
offer reciprocal concessions in other negotiations.
China’s stance on Sudan is best understood as the intersection of doctrinal consistency
and concrete material interests. China treats any expansion of the Darfur arms
embargo…as a potential precedent. Once the Sec Council normalizes intrusive controls
over national defense supply chains under the banner of conflict management, the same
logic can be invoked against other states whose military-industrial relationships Beijing
values. Resisting expansion protects not only the specific Sudanese file but the broader
principle that external regulatory regimes should not be allowed to penetrate sovereign
defense and commercial channels. This is why Chinese representatives repeatedly frame
sanctions as “a means, not an end” and insist on respect for Sudan’s institutions and
ownership of any political process. Sudan sits on a Red Sea corridor relevant to Chinese
maritime trade security and logistics. Even after disruption of earlier oil operations,
Beijing continued to deepen economic engagement with Pt Sudan, extending $50mn
loan waiver, ongoing discussions on copper concessions, expanding involvement in gold
sector,…port rehabilitation and possible new facilities. These secure preferential access
to resources and infrastructure when Western capital is largely absent. A broad embargo
that constrained dual-use flows or complicated commercial channels would raise cost
and risk. China opposes measures that would equate the armed forces in a single
restrictive regime because such symmetry threatens the formal principle of state
sovereignty it defends elsewhere and practical access it cultivated with 1 of the parties.
Public calls for ceasefire and inclusive dialogue sit alongside continued economic
engagement that privileges institutional continuity and predictable commercial partners.
Beijing’s resistance to expanded coercive instruments is a defense of its preferred intl
legal order and protection of economic and logistical positions it built along the Red
Sea.
The Council’s experience with Libya hardened Moscow’s and Beijing’s view that
Western-sponsored embargoes function as the opening move in a sequence that erodes a
govt’s capacity, deepens humanitarian crisis, invites further intervention. Both govts
treated sunset clauses, panel funding fights and evidentiary disputes as tools for keeping
enforcement architecture perpetually renegotiable, which is why specific facts of any
one conflict carry less weight in their calculations…. Horn Review
US PROPOSES EXPANDING ARMS EMBARGO TO ENTIRE COUNTRY…urges Sec
Council to extend Darfur arms embargo across Sudan….US envoy…Boulos called…to
curtail external support for the conflict that “risks drawing more regional actors…deeper
into Sudan’s conflict. The measure would bring drones under the arms restriction and
increase experts scrutinizing the existing embargo. The sophisticated weaponry
continues to point to ongoing external support to both parties.” UN humanitarian chief
Fletcher… “in recent weeks, fighting has been characterized by heavy use of drones and
localized ground combat in areas less affected by rainy season conditions.” Darfur, a
vast western region…the size of France, faced some of the worst violence, with
displacement camps invaded and repeated ethnic massacres killing thousands at a time.
Peace-building activist Eva Khair told Sec Council…external actors are enabling this
catastrophe. The role of multiple actors in supplying weapons, mercenaries, other forms
of military assistance and diplomatic cover to RSF on one hand, military, logistical,
financial assistance to SAF on the other illustrates the increasingly globalized nature of
the war. Arab News
August 25
SHAMEFUL MILESTONE: SECY-GEN GUTERRES CHARACTERIZED…
FAMINES IN SUDAN AND GAZA AS SHAMEFUL MILESTONE DURING
SECURITY COUNCIL SESSION ON GLOBAL FOOD INSECURITY, Anadolu
reports. …record levels of global hunger, with 266 million people facing acute
instability…violence remains the primary driver in 12 out of 13 most critical hunger
hotspots. “An oil tanker anchored in Strait of Hormuz can mean 1 less meal a day for a
child in Sudan,” WFP…basic food costs surged nearly 40% since Feb. …a “triple choke
point” involving Strait of Hormuz, Red Sea and Black Sea. …restrictions in (the) Strait
which carries 1/3 of global fertilizer trade, caused availability to plummet while oil
prices surged 36% since the war in Iran began….grain shipments through Istanbul Strait
are down 40%, leaving import-dependent nations…highly exposed. Action Against
Hunger reported 900 attacks on food systems since April 2023, including market
bombings and livestock looting. …being a woman in Sudan is a “statistically significant
predictor of starvation….children begin experiencing organ failure and severe wasting
within 3 weeks of losing food access.” Guterres….proposed full implementation of UN
Resolution 2417 to prevent deprivation of food and water for civilians…safeguards for
farms, ports and market storage facilities while suggesting sanctions against those who
unlawfully deny humanitarian access.
SUDANESE POUND ALL-TIME LOW TOUCHING 6,400 PER $US AFTER
CENTRAL BANK GRANTED COMMERCIAL LENDERS LEEWAY TO SET
EXCHANGE ROUTES. The currency’s slide deepens Sudan’s economic crisis, driven
by wide disparities between official and unofficial rates, dwindling foreign reserves and
economic fallout of the ongoing civil war. …some traders temporarily halted sales of
foreign banknotes, anticipating further declines in the pound’s value. Central Bank
issued a policy circular repealing previous rate restrictions to allow commercial banks to
adjust declared rates and purchase export revenues according to supply and demand. The
bank said the measure was intended to advance the managed float policy and bridge the
divide between formal banking channels and parallel market. Sudan’s economy has been
in freefall…destroying infrastructure, disrupting agricultural output and choking trade.
RSF DEFEAT WILL NOT END SUDAN’S WAR BUT MERELY FRAGMENT IT.
SAF leaders are speaking more confidently of defeating RSF entirely, rather than merely
containing it. RSF and ally SPLM-Al Hilu retook Kurmuk and seized Geisan within
days, in attacks…launched from…Ethiopia. Drone attacks on army-controlled cities
showed RSF’s reach extends well beyond Darfur, its main territorial stronghold. The
lesson of the summer is not that SAF is on the verge of decisive victory. It is that
military victory and political resolution are becoming very different things. The antiRSF coalition is…led by SAF, but the army also relies on allied armed movements,
including Darfuri factions…JEM and SLM-Minnawi. RSF’s own coalition…is actively
fragmenting. A string of senior figures…defected, amid reports of Saudi financial
inducements as well as tribal grievances. RSF is a franchise more than a unified fighting
force, defections should worry SAF: defectors often arrive as intact forces loyal to their
commanders, not soldiers used to reporting to a chain of command. SAF inherits RSF’s
structural weakness with each defection. Brigades like al-Baraa ibn Malik,…supplied
thousands of fighters in retaking Khartoum. Amid intl pressure and SAF battlefield
gains, some Islamist fighters and leaders have begun pulling back…. But retreating from
battlefield is not the same as retreating from politics. Chairman of NCP told Reuters the
Islamic Movement could support an extended period of army rule, with an eye towards
returning to govt through the ballot box. Indeed, another potential flashpoint for SAF is
that the war has given fighters in Islamist brigades…years of battlefield experience.
There is little reason to think fighters who helped recapture the capital will disarm and
disband the moment the war is over…without a political settlement….This is the context
in which al-Burhan’s recently announced national dialogue should be read, less as a
comprehensive resolution…than as a political process that could convert the army’s
wartime alliances into post-war influence.
Burhan explicitly ruled out return of RSF leaders to power…. Given RSF’s abysmal
human rights record, the exclusion is defensible, but the broader armed-group problem
remains unresolved: how RSF’s remaining forces would actually be dismantled or
integrated…how SAF’s own allied militias would be brought under a single chain of
command. Under al-Bashir, the govt relied on Janjaweed militias to help the army fight
the rebellion in Darfur. In 2013 Janjaweed fighters were brought into newly created RSF.
There is little reason to think a hollowed-out, cash-poor SAF, dependent on volunteer
recruits, Islamist militias and Juba Peace Agreement signatory forces, can now succeed
where the pre-war state repeatedly struggled: in Darfur where RSF continues to use
cross-border supply routes. Even if RSF is eventually broken, its weapons and fighters
will not simply disappear. They will pass to whichever political entrepreneur is best
positioned to pick them up. Al Jazeera
August 22
ALONG BONE-DRY RIVERBANKS OF NILE FARMERS STRUGGLE TO WATER
CROPS. Others gather to pray for rainfall over cracked earth. Across the country,
farmland that could feed the world’s largest hunger crisis many times over lies fallow, as
weary farmers find themselves in the crosshairs of faraway destruction. …distant conflict
between Iran and US crippled fuel and fertilizer supply…causing costs to soar. And now
the powerful El Nino climate pattern…in the Pacific which impacts winds and rains
across the world delayed crucial rains and led water levels in the life-giving Nile to drop
precipitously. Through Sudan from northern fields near Egypt to the Ethiopian border,
farmers told AFP the water they need is not rising from riverbanks nor falling from the
sky. UN food and agriculture org says the season “is unfolding under heightened climate
risk” including delayed and below average rains, long and frequent dry spells. Farmers
say it is one of the hardest seasons in recent memory, but MIT studied the link between
El Nino and Nile 30 years. …El Nino is closely associated with low Nile flow and when
it begins in late spring, brings a high probability of drought in SE Sudan and NW
Ethiopia, where Blue Nile originates.
Water levels at the reservoir behind Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance dam…was 6m
lower…more transparency and cooperation are needed between Ethiopia, Egypt and
Sudan over management of the reservoir, especially as climate change brings more
extreme floods and droughts. This summer Blue Nile basin has seen…1/2 its usual
rainfall,…forecasts predict below average rainfall the rainy season. Farmers in
Dagaref…where the bulk of staple crops sorghum and sesame are planted, are feeling it.
When usually-verdant fields were still dull brown, frustrated farmers gathered behind
local imams for rain-invoking prayers. “We need these rains for our crops and our
livestock, and they’re late,” local farmer. Agriculture min told AFP farmers are being
told to choose drought-resistant crops and delay planting. Yaacoub, 75, planted sesame
for decades, including 3 wartime growing seasons each harder than the last. Now,
standing sentinel over cracked earth, he wonders if he will make it through the next,
with land costing “4 times as much to plant.” Downstream in Sudan’s other breadbasket
Al-Jazira, Ahmed stares out at the farm in his family 100 years….ransacked by looting
paramilitaries, trees stood wilting in the sun: “I’m 63 and I have never seen the Nile this
low in Aug. …low water, soaring costs and crippled market many farmers abandoned
their lands, when 65% of vast arable land is out of commission. Some farmers…“planted
crops but left them to die because it just wasn’t worth the harvest.” Sudan imports all its
fuel and most fertilizer, costs multiplied by 5 as a result of war in the Gulf. Arab News