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You couldn't make these things up. I'm thinking about Oxfam's recent 66-page report on Israel's devastation of Gaza's water supplies. As Julia Conley of Common Dreams reported, "Israel has systematically reduced the water available in Gaza by 94%, with just 4.74 liters per resident obtainable each day -- less than a third of the recommended minimum amount in emergencies." Or consider the accounts of how, in one 10-day period, Israeli forces attacked six U.N.-run schools (most of which are now housing refugees from elsewhere in the devastated Gaza Strip). Or the U.N. report suggesting that the rebuilding of all the homes destroyed in the last nine-plus months of Israel's war on that 25-mile strip of land could take (and this is not a misprint) 80 years if the pace were the same as after the two previous wars there!
And that's just to choose almost random information among all the horrific news that's been pouring out of Gaza over the last months. But here's the truly strange thing, a war -- a civil war, in fact -- no less horrific has been going on in Sudan for five months longer than in Gaza and when was the last time you read anything about it? What information could you cite about it? Just think about that for a moment. Had I not read today's piece by TomDispatch regulars Stan Cox and Priti Gulati Cox before writing this introduction, I don't think I could have offered you any similar examples of the nightmare that is now Sudan. As they label that conflict today, it's the missing war.
And think about that, too, for a moment. We're talking about a war more than a year old that's devastated the civilian population of that large African country, sent millions fleeing from their homes and farms and now, as they report, could lead to a truly devastating famine, a subject that, when it comes to Gaza, has gotten a fair amount of attention. Yet my guess is that you knew no more about it than I did before I read this piece.
How strange for a major war to be underway in such a catastrophic fashion for so long almost without attention amid all the attention that has (quite justifiably) gone to Gaza and the Ukraine. So do take a moment and let yourself be led through the missing war on planet Earth. Tom
Starvation in Sudan
As in Gaza, the Deprivation Is Deliberate
By Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox
For months, we've all been able to stay reasonably informed about the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. But there's another horrific war that's gotten so little coverage you could be excused for not knowing anything about it. What we have in mind is the seemingly never-ending, utterly devastating war in Sudan. Think of it as the missing war. And if we don't start paying a lot more attention to it soon -- as in right now -- it's going to be too late.
After 15 months of fighting in that country between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), experts in food insecurity estimate that almost 26 million people (no, that is not a misprint!), or more than half of Sudan's population, could suffer from malnutrition by September. Eight and a half million of those human beings could face acute malnutrition. Worse yet, if the war continues on its present path, millions will die of hunger and disease in just the coming months (and few people in our world may even notice).
By now, those warring armies have driven Sudan to the brink of all-out famine, partly by displacing more than a fifth of the population from their homes, livelihoods, and farms, while preventing the delivery of food to the places most in need. And you undoubtedly won't be surprised to learn that, with their foreign-policy eyes focused on Gaza and Ukraine, our country's government and others around the world have paid remarkably little attention to the growing crisis in Sudan, making at best only half-hearted (quarter-hearted?) gestures toward helping negotiate a cease-fire between the SAF and RSF, while contributing only a small fraction of the aid Sudan needs to head off a famine of historic magnitude.
From Emergency to Catastrophe
In late June, the U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system, which monitors regions at risk of starvation, reported "a stark and rapid deterioration of the food security situation" in Sudan. It noted that the number of people suffering hunger severe enough to qualify, in IPC terms, as Phase 3 ("Crisis") or Phase 4 ("Emergency") has ballooned 45% since the end of last year. In December 2023, no Sudanese had yet made it to Phase 5 ("Catastrophe"), a condition characteristic of famines. Now, more than three-quarters of a million people are in that final phase of starving to death. Indeed, if the conflict continues to escalate, large parts of Sudan may spiral into full-blown famine, a state that exists, according to the IPC, when at least 20% of an area's population is suffering Phase-5 hunger.
Until recently, the worst conflict and hunger were concentrated in western Sudan and around Khartoum, the country's capital. Now, however, they've spread to the east and south as well. Worse yet, the war in Sudan has by now displaced an astounding 10 million people from their homes, more than four million of them children -- a figure that looks like but isn't a misprint. Many have had to move multiple times and two million Sudanese have taken refuge in neighboring countries. Worse yet, with so many people forced off their land and away from their workplaces, the capacity of farmers to till the soil and other kinds of workers to hold down a paycheck and so buy food for their families has been severely disrupted.
Not surprisingly, 15 months of brutal war have played havoc with crop production. Cereal grain harvests in 2023 were far smaller than in previous years and stocks of grain (which typically supply 80% of Sudanese caloric intake) have already been fully consumed, with months to go before the next harvest, a stretch of time known, even in good years, as the "lean season." And with war raging, anything but a bumper crop is expected this year. Indeed, just as planting season got underway, fierce fighting spilled over into wheat-growing Gezira, one of Sudan's 18 "states" and renowned as the nation's breadbasket.
Sudan desperately needs food aid and it's simply not getting enough. The U.N. High Commission for Refugees has received less than 20% of the funds necessary to help feed the Sudanese this year and has had to "drastically cut" food rations. As Tjada D'Oyen McKenna, head of the aid nonprofit Mercy Corps, told the New York Times, "World leaders continue to go through the motions, expressing concern over Sudan's crisis. Yet they've failed to rise to the occasion."
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