'All we can do is pray': Sudanese on brink of starvation at Darfur's Zamzam camp

Displaced people speak of living off tea and peanuts, drinking contaminated water and new arrivals being the worst off

Women and babies at the Zamzam displacement camp in Darfur, Sudan. Reuters

It took Nafeesa Nafar and her children two days to walk from the embattled city of El Fasher in Darfur to Zamzam, a famine-stricken camp where about 500,000 displaced people have taken refuge.

“We survived on dates, biscuits and little water. My children were crying all the way because they were hungry and thirsty. I was crying too, but from the uncertainty that awaited us,” said Ms Nafar, whose husband died in the early days of the war between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. “God has willed it that we survived the fighting in El Fasher, but we may perish here in Zamzam.”

Speaking to The National by phone, Ms Nafar complained of the scarcity of food and the often contaminated water available to her and her sons, aged eight and 13.

“All we can do is pray to God that the war ends and we have a stable and quiet life again,” she said. “Now we are here in Zamzam, we need so much. Firstly, we need to feel safe, and secondly, we need medical care. My main worry is if the children are sick and I cannot find anyone to treat them.”

Sudan has endured strife since independence 68 years ago. Although resource rich and with great agricultural potential, food has often been weaponised in Sudan's civil wars, leading to pockets of famine, as experienced through the 1980s in the now-independent south of Sudan.

Sudan is also home to the world's single biggest displacement crisis, with more than seven million people forced to flee their homes since the latest war began 17 months ago. They joined another three million displaced during previous bouts of strife, mostly civil wars in Darfur and South Sudan.

Fighting between the army and the RSF for control of El Fasher has forced tens of thousands to seek refuge in Zamzam, long viewed as a symbol of the tragedy that has for decades beset the Darfur region. The camp was created in the 2000s to accommodate those who fled fighting between government troops and ethnic African rebels seeking equality in a country long dominated by an Arabised elite in Khartoum. About 300,000 people perished in that civil war and 2.5 million were displaced, the UN said.

Fast-forward to this year, and Darfur is living a replay of the grim and tragic practices that defined the earlier bout of strife, from ethnic cleansing and hunger to displacement and the weaponisation of rape. Neither side in the war between the army and the RSF is doing enough to alleviate the suffering of civilians across Sudan, where more than half the population, about 25 million people, are facing hunger. Both are suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In Zamzam, where a famine was declared in August, a child dies of malnutrition-related causes every two hours, the international medical charity Doctors Without Borders has said. Darfur as a whole has the unenviable distinction of being the most hunger-hit region of Sudan.

“About 34 per cent of the children [in Zamzam] are malnourished, including 10 per cent who are severely malnourished,” the UN's undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, Joyce Msuya, said on Wednesday.

Almost 1.7 million people face acute food insecurity in northern Darfur region alone, she said. Besides Zamzam, 13 other sites across Sudan are at risk of famine, she added.

“Be in no doubt, without safe and predictable access and a steady supply of food and humanitarian supplies, we will see a dramatic spike in mortality – including children – in Zamzam and in other areas around El Fasher. The same goes for the situation across Sudan,” Ms Msuya added, especially Khartoum and the states of Sennar and Al Jazira south of the capital.

The RSF, which controls most of Darfur, has in recent weeks allowed some humanitarian assistance into the region from neighbouring Chad, but the rainy season was reducing the flow to a trickle. The paramilitary force has fought its way into El Fasher, pushing back army troops and their allies from the city's south-eastern districts. But the group has been unable to overrun the heavily fortified local garrison that continues to be resupplied from the air.

Fighting in El Fasher has significantly intensified in recent days, with the RSF apparently determined to capture the rest of the city – the only one of five provincial capitals in Darfur it does not control – threatening to worsen the situation in both El Fasher and Zamzam. Senior UN officials have warned that hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk in El Fasher.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is “gravely alarmed” by reports of a full-scale assault on El Fasher by the RSF, and has called on its leader, Gen Mohamed Dagalo, to immediately halt the attack. Mr Guterres warned that any further escalation threatens to spread the conflict throughout Darfur, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Saturday.

Already, little food or medicine is reaching Zamzam due to the fighting and the rainy season, which has flooded roads or washed them out altogether. An escalation of the fighting would inevitably send thousands, if not tens of thousands, rushing out of El Fasher to seek refuge in Zamzam, 15km from the city, stretching to breaking point the already thin food and medical care available in the camp.

It is a nightmare scenario for the residents of Zamzam surviving on a minimum of calories and little water.

Moamer Ibrahim, a camp resident, paints a grim picture of life in Zamzam. New arrivals, he said, survive on a handful of peanuts and sweet black tea as their main intake of the day. Others sleep outdoors because there are no tents available. Representatives of NGOs or UN agencies are making fewer and fewer visits to the camp as the RSF blocks most supplies from reaching Zamzam, he said.

“The army must start dropping food for us from the air, much like what was done in Gaza,” he told The National. “There are committees on the ground with volunteers who can collect and distribute the supplies.”

Like most adults living in Zamzam with their children, Alam Eldeen Hassan, a 34-year-old father of two, is mostly concerned about the health and education of his children. Hailing from a small village in north Darfur that was engulfed in fighting, they came to Zamzam seeking safety and food. They found very little of both, but plenty of diseases and a dangerously polluted environment.

“We live in a UN-provided tent, but we don't have enough water and food. My children have been deprived of education and the environment here is poor and diseases are widespread. I fear for my children because there is no medical care here,” Mr Hassan said.

“We eat a single meal every day. We get wheat-flour, lentil, cooking oil and some cereals, but my children need dairy products and clean water. We have nowhere else to go. We want to return to our home although it has been looted, but home is where we feel safe.”