Hat tip and thanks to Eric Reeves @sudanreevesHunger in W #Darfur: people are eating tree leaves, raiding anthills for food, and eating imbaz - waste from milled oilseeds, usually for animals. Govt official says 22 children have died of malnutrition in Mornei, 83km south of WD capital Geneina https://t.co/T3kJJ75tyu
— Eddie Thomas (@eddiethomas88) March 10, 2024
"This article is a month old and the situation is worse with telecoms internet network outages continuing in Khartoum, Gezira, White Nile, South Kordofan and all 5 Darfur states.
People have a problem obtaining money due to suspension of banking applications and many are unable to travel long distances to get money.
The network outages are also compounded by the longstanding ability of international agencies to gain access to neither RSF nor SAF controlled areas. The situation is desperate and further aggravates the war’s direct toll on lives and livelihoods.
There is a massive scale of suffering and inability of communal kitchens, emergency resistance committees or ordinary Sudanese people to provide food, medicines and essential services to people trapped in those locations.
Khartoum is in blackout for 27th day. Who knows what's going on in the blackouts? The silence from Khartoum is deafening.
Although the UN and all mediators are fully aware, those concerned can see no action to at least the network outages and other life-saving services.
Who helps and protects the people in those locations? What about the elderly, infirm, sick needing healthcare, what will become of them? Has the state collapsed?"
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PORT SUDAN – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) urgently calls on Sudan’s warring parties to provide immediate guarantees for the safe and unimpeded delivery of humanitarian food assistance to conflict-hit parts of Sudan, especially across conflict lines where hungry displaced civilians are trapped and cut-off from life-saving humanitarian assistance.
The situation in Sudan is dire. Despite WFP's efforts to provide food assistance to millions of people across the country since the war broke out, almost 18 million individuals across the country are currently facing acute hunger (IPC3+).
WFP has repeatedly warned of a looming hunger catastrophe in Sudan and people must be able to access aid immediately to prevent a crisis from becoming a catastrophe. Shockingly, the number of hungry has more than doubled from a year ago, and an estimated five million people are experiencing emergency levels of hunger (IPC phase 4) due to conflict in areas such as Khartoum, Darfur, and Kordofan.
WFP is the logistics backbone of the humanitarian response in Sudan and has ramped up lifesaving assistance in response to the deepening crisis, assisting over 6.5 million people since the war broke out. To reach families in Darfur, WFP established a cross-border route from Chad, through which over 1 million people have received food assistance. Other agencies have also used the route to deliver other much needed support.
However, WFP is currently only able to regularly deliver food assistance to 1 in 10 people facing emergency levels of hunger (IPC phase 4) in Sudan. These people are trapped in conflict hotspots, including Khartoum, Darfur, Kordofan, and now Gezira, and for assistance to reach them humanitarian convoys must be allowed to cross the frontlines. Yet it is becoming nearly impossible for aid agencies to cross due to security threats, enforced roadblocks, and demands for fees and taxation.
“The situation in Sudan today is nothing short of catastrophic. Millions of people are impacted by the conflict. WFP has food in Sudan, but lack of humanitarian access and other unnecessary hurdles are slowing operations and preventing us from getting vital aid to the people who most urgently need our support,” said Eddie Rowe, WFP Sudan Representative and Country Director in Sudan.
A vital humanitarian hub in Gezira state – which previously supported over 800,000 people a month - was engulfed by fighting in December and a key WFP warehouse looted. WFP is trying to obtain security guarantees to resume operations in the area to reach vulnerable families who are now trapped and in urgent need of food assistance.
Over half a million people fled Gezira in December. For many it was the second or third time they have been displaced in this conflict, which has sparked the world's largest displacement crisis. But just 40,000 of the newly displaced have so far received WFP assistance because 70 trucks - carrying enough food to feed half a million people for one month – were stuck in Port Sudan for over two weeks in January waiting for clearances, which were only secured last week. Now, distributions are ongoing in Kassala, Gedaref and Blue Nile states.
Another 31 WFP trucks, which should have been making regular aid deliveries to the Kordofans, Kosti and Wad Madani, have been parked empty and have been unable to leave El Obeid for over three months.
“Every single one our trucks need to be on the road each and every day delivering food to the Sudanese people, who are traumatised and overwhelmed after over nine months of horrifying conflict. Yet life-saving assistance is not reaching those who need it the most, and we are already receiving reports of people dying of starvation,” said Rowe.
“Both parties to this gruesome conflict must look beyond the battlefield and allow aid organisations operate. For that, we need the uninhibited freedom of movement, including across conflict lines, to help people who so desperately need it right now, regardless of where they are,” he warned
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The United Nations World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters, and the impact of climate change.
Follow us on Twitter @WFP_Media, @WFP_Sudan
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Sudan Watch - March 01, 2024
UN experts: Sudan’s paramilitary forces carried out ethnic killings and rapes that may be war crimes - Darfur is experiencing “its worst violence since 2005”
The report to the U.N. Security Council, obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, paints a horrifying picture of the brutality of the Arab-dominated Rapid Support Forces against Africans in Darfur. It also details how the RSF succeeded in gaining control of four out of Darfur’s five states, including through complex financial networks that involve dozens of companies.
https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2024/03/un-experts-sudans-paramilitary-forces.html
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Sudan Watch - March 02, 2024
Sudan: In Zamzam camp, North Darfur, the death rate is catastrophic. At least 1 child dies every 2 hours
Malnutrition and disease are rife at the ‘overwhelmed’ Zamzam camp, a host to 300,000 internally displaced people, one of hundreds in Sudan, where war has displaced nearly 8 million people. The scale is simply terrifying. Zamzam is just one camp. There are hundreds of others in Sudan.
https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2024/03/sudan-in-zamzam-camp-north-darfur-death.html
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UN experts: Sudan’s paramilitary forces carried out ethnic killings and rapes that may be war crimes
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Paramilitary forces and their allied militias fighting to take power in Sudan carried out widespread ethnic killings and rapes while taking control of much of western Darfur that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, United Nations experts said in a new report.
The report to the U.N. Security Council, obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, paints a horrifying picture of the brutality of the Arab-dominated Rapid Support Forces against Africans in Darfur. It also details how the RSF succeeded in gaining control of four out of Darfur’s five states, including through complex financial networks that involve dozens of companies.
Sudan plunged into chaos in April, when long-simmering tensions between its military led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, broke out into street battles in the capital, Khartoum.
Fighting spread to other parts of the country, but in Sudan’s Darfur region it took on a different form: brutal attacks by the RSF on African civilians, especially the ethnic Masalit.
Two decades ago, Darfur became synonymous with genocide and war crimes, particularly by the notorious Janjaweed Arab militias against populations that identify as Central or East African. It seems that legacy has returned, with the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor Karim Khan saying in late January there are grounds to believe both sides are committing possible war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in Darfur.
The panel of experts said Darfur is experiencing “its worst violence since 2005.”
The ongoing conflict has caused a large-scale humanitarian crisis and displaced approximately 6.8 million people — 5.4 million within Sudan and 1.4 million who have fled to other countries, including approximately 555,000 to neighboring Chad, the experts said.
The RSF and rival Sudanese government forces have both used heavy artillery and shelling in highly populated areas, causing widespread destruction of critical water, sanitation, education and health care facilities.
In their 47-page report, the experts said the RSF and its militias targeted sites in Darfur where displaced people had found shelter, civilian neighborhoods and medical facilities.
According to intelligence sources, the panel said, in just one city — Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state near the Chad border — between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed.
The experts said sexual violence by the RSF and its allied militia was widespread.
The panel said that, according to reliable sources from Geneina, women and girls as young as 14 years old were raped by RSF elements in a U.N. World Food Program storage facility that the paramilitary force controlled, in their homes, or when returning home to collect belongings after being displaced by the violence. Additionally, 16 girls were reportedly kidnapped by RSF soldiers and raped in an RSF house.
“Racial slurs toward the Masalit and non-Arab community formed part of the attacks,” the panel said. “Neighborhoods and homes were continuously attacked, looted, burned and destroyed,” especially those where Masalit and other African communities lived, and their people were harassed, assaulted, sexually abused, and at times executed.
The experts said prominent Masalit community members were singled out by the RSF, which had a list, and the group’s leaders were harassed and some executed. At least two lawyers, three prominent doctors and seven staff members, and human rights activists monitoring and reporting on the events were also killed, they said.
The RSF and its allied militias looted and destroyed all hospitals and medical storage facilities, which resulted in the collapse of health services and the deaths of 37 women with childbirth complications and 200 patients needing kidney dialysis, the panel said.
After the killing of the wali, or governor, of West Darfur in June, the report said, Masalit and African communities decided to seek protection at Ardamata, just outside Geneina. A convoy of thousands moved out at midnight but as they reached a bridge, RSF and allied militias indiscriminately opened fire, and survivors reported that an estimated 1,000 people were killed, they said.
The panel stressed that disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians — including torture, rapes and killings as well as destruction of critical civilian infrastructure — constitute war crimes under the 1949 Geneva conventions.
The RSF was formed out of Janjaweed fighters by Sudan’s former President Omar al-Bashir, who ruled the country for three decades, was overthrown during a popular uprising in 2019, and is wanted by the International Criminal Court for charges of genocide and other crimes during the conflict in Darfur in the 2000s.
According to the panel, the “RSF’s takeover of Darfur relied on three lines of support: the Arab allied communities, dynamic and complex financial networks, and new military supply lines running through Chad, Libya and South Sudan.”
While both the Sudanese military and RSF engaged in widespread recruitment drives across Darfur from late 2022, the RSF was more successful, the experts said. And it “invested large proceeds from its pre-war gold business in several industries, creating a network of as many as 50 companies.”
The RSF’s complex financial networks “enabled it to acquire weapons, pay salaries, fund media campaigns, lobby, and buy the support of other political and armed groups,” the experts said.
United States Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who visited Chad in September, called the report’s findings “horrific” and expressed “deep disappointment” that the U.N. Security Council and the international community have paid such little attention to the allegations.
“The people of Sudan feel that they have been forgotten,” she said.
In light of the humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan and the broader region, Thomas-Greenfield demanded that the Sudanese military lift its prohibition on cross-border assistance from Chad and facilitate cross-line assistance from the east. She also demanded in a statement Wednesday that the RSF halt the looting of humanitarian warehouses and that both parties stop harassing humanitarian aid workers.
“The council must act urgently to alleviate human suffering, hold perpetrators to account, and bring the conflict in Sudan to an end,” the U.S. ambassador said. “Time is running out.”
END
ELON MUSK sent a post to X yesterday that says: "This post was made from a normal mobile phone straight to a SpaceX satellite, with no special equipment in between!" The historic post dated 6:33 AM Feb 26, 2024 has 25.4M views as at 21:28 GMT Tue Feb 27, 2024.
This post was made from a normal mobile phone straight to a SpaceX satellite, with no special equipment in between! https://t.co/rjry9vr5zj
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 26, 2024
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Note, SpaceX sent a post to X yesterday (33 minutes earlier than Mr Musk's) saying: "This post was sent through a SpaceX Direct to Cell satellite in space." The historic post dated 6:00 AM GMT Feb 26, 2024 has 27.3M views as at 21:29 GMT Tue Feb 27, 2024.
This post was sent through a SpaceX Direct to Cell satellite in space 🛰️
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 26, 2024
POSTSCRIPT from Sudan Watch Editor
Warmest congrats to all involved. Now people in Sudan need to know how they can get the exciting new service on their existing mobile phones, how much it costs, and how and where, and to whom, to pay.
Right now, in some areas of Sudan civilians are charged extortionate prices to make calls using a Starlink device set up by rebels at illegal checkpoints.
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Further Reading
IMAGE and caption by RichQuack@RichQuack 6:04 AM · Feb 26, 2024:
See original (92.8K Views so far): https://twitter.com/RichQuack/status/1761995521692987792
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Copy of a post at X by El-Mahdi @arelmahdi 8:13 PM · Feb 27, 2024:
“I just spoke to someone on WhatsApp who's in an RSF controlled area and she tells me they can access the internet at some of the RSF checkpoints which have a Starlink connection and get access for 1 hour for a fee of 5000 SDG (approx. 4USD).
So apparently, Starlink is becoming a source of supplementary income (besides looting and salary) for soldiers at RSF checkpoints. Doubt they'll want to see the telecoms networks back up and running in areas under their control.”
See original: https://twitter.com/arelmahdi/status/1762571749596504390
H/t Cameron Hudson @_hudsonc Feb 8 2024:
“Network blackout cuts communications for millions in war-torn Sudan. Of course, RSF are getting around internet cutoffs by using Starlink, procured in Chad and Libya. Im detecting a pattern…”
See original: https://twitter.com/arelmahdi/status/1762571749596504390
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Copy of a post at X by Sadeia @sadiea8 2:51 PM · Feb 27, 2024:
“The local authorities in El Geneina - West Darfur impose fees on satellite internet devices (Starlink) of 150,000 pounds on everyone who owns a device and uses it for commercial purposes, in addition to service fees of 50,000 pounds annually.
Anyone who violates the provisions of this decision will be subject to a fine of 500,000 pounds, or one month in prison, or both.”
See original: https://twitter.com/sadiea8/status/1762490632654684535
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Sudan Watch - February 10, 2024
URGENT MESSAGE to Sir Tim Berners-Lee: The internet belongs to everyone including the Sudanese
People in Sudan are suffering after decades of war. Now their internet has been shut for several days. It was hard enough for them to keep going during bombings while managing patchy electricity.
In most parts of Sudan, banks, shops, businesses, churches and infrastructure have been destroyed. The Sudanese depend on the internet to receive money for food, medicine, electricity, calls for news and help.
Full story: https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2024/02/urgent-message-to-sir-tim-berners-lee.html
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Sudan Watch - November 20, 2023
SpaceX is advertising a position for growth manager of its Starlink Internet service in Sub-Saharan Africa
SpaceX is advertising a job vacancy for a manager to boost Starlink growth in Africa. The role will be based in Nairobi, Kenya, from where the growth manager will report to a team at Starlink’s Hawthorne, California headquarters.
Full story: https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2023/11/spacex-is-advertising-position-for.html
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