Dubai: Sudanese freelance photographer Faiz Abubakar has been documenting the crisis in his home country that began in April 2023, when violence erupted between rival military factions.
The Sudanese armed forces, led by Sudan's de facto president Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, have been locked in a battle with the paramilitary Rapid Support Force under Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly known as Hemedati.
Despite the great danger, Abubakar felt compelled to take to the streets with his camera to record the disaster unfolding in his home city of Khartoum and capture the effect of the generals' bitter rivalry on its suffering citizens.
“Many questions arose in my mind about the lives of these residents who fled the ravages of war every day, whose houses and belongings were burnt down and who died in tragic ways,” Abubakar told Arab News. “These questions how they spent their days in the roar of planes and explosions, which forced them to abandon their homes and tormented by the curse of displacement.”
According to the United Nations, Sudan is now in the grip of the world's worst internal-displacement crisis, with millions forced to flee their homes, including Abubakar, who initially sought refuge with his family in Egypt.
A few months later, he returned to Sudan to work for several news agencies until he was wounded, he said, by an RSF gunman. When he recovered, he and his family moved to Kassala, east of Sudan, on the border with Eritrea.
Abubakar's clients included AFP, Le Monde and The New York Times. Before the conflict, he was the recipient of the 2022 World Press Photo Award in the “Africa, Single” category. Now he is trying to survive.
“The situation is worse than before,” Abubakar said. “Life is difficult due to lack of food and livelihood. There is danger of starvation in all parts of the country.
Even in displacement, Abubakar continues to photograph the conflict unfolding around him, particularly its impact on civilians forced to flee their homes.
“I try to document their stories, but it's very difficult to take photos for security reasons,” he said. “I lost everything during the war, including most of my photography equipment. My psychological condition is deteriorating.”
INnumbers
• 1 million According to the United Nations, internally displaced people in Sudan.
• 25 million More than half of the population is in need of humanitarian assistance.
Abubakar is not alone. The conflict has taken a devastating toll on the health and well-being of Sudanese civilians, according to a new report by Medicines Sans Frontieres, whose staff is based in eight Sudanese states.
The population has faced “horrendous levels of violence, widespread fighting and repeated attacks, abuses and exploitation by warring parties to survive,” the report states.
“The violence in Sudan shows no signs of abating,” MSF UK executive director Vicky Hawkins wrote in the report. “In fact, it is accelerating at a pace that outstrips our ability to process, document and respond to the daily events that our team and patients experience in Sudan.”
The report draws on medical and operational data collected by MSF from April 15, 2023, to May 15 this year. It notes the patterns of violence and abuse observed by MSF teams and the devastating impact of combat on public health.
In the report, an unnamed health worker from Al-Nao Hospital in Omdurman, west of Khartoum, described the aftermath of recent shelling in a residential area of the city.
“About 20 people arrived and died immediately. Some arrived already dead,” said the health worker. “Most of them came with arms or legs hanging, already cut off. Some just put two hands together on a small area of skin.
“A patient came in with an amputated leg, followed by their caregiver with their missing limb in hand.”
According to MSF, Al-Nao Hospital has treated 6,776 patients injured in armed violence between August 15, 2023 and April 30 this year – an average of 26 per day.
“After 15 months of conflict, the warring parties show a complete disregard for the lives of any civilians,” Kyle McNally, MSF's project coordinator who was recently deployed to Sudan's southwestern city of Nyala, told Arab News.
“These are the people they claim to represent and fight for. Instead, this is really a war on the people of Sudan as they conduct their hostilities. We see very serious violations of civilian security and attacks on civilians as well as civilian infrastructure.
“Hospitals and medical staff have not been spared. We see many attacks against health services. Hospitals and health services have been completely destroyed due to fighting.”
According to the United Nations, Sudan is facing a severe food crisis, with nearly 25 million people – including more than 14 million children, of whom 3 million are under the age of five, suffering from acute malnutrition – in dire need of humanitarian assistance.
At least 10 million people have been forced to flee their homes to escape violence, according to recently released figures from the United Nations' International Organization for Migration.
“The conflict in Sudan has become one of the biggest displacement crises in the world,” Alona Sinenko, spokeswoman for the Africa region at the International Committee of the Red Cross, told Arab News from Nairobi.
“We are talking about a quarter of the country's population who have fled their homes. People have lost their homes and lost access to the means they need to survive. “
Displacement of farmers, in particular, has led to the collapse of Sudan's agricultural sector, leading to increased food insecurity. “Food production has been greatly affected, and we are seeing a worsening food crisis,” Sinenko said.
“We have hundreds of people who call us desperate, because they don't know what happened to their loved ones. We have more and more families who are separated and have lost any means of contacting each other.”
In the first half of 2024, the ICRC worked in partnership with the Sudanese Red Crescent to provide emergency assistance and essential services. However, its efforts have been frustrated by the security situation, administrative challenges and difficulties in reaching the community.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, where allegations of ethnic cleansing and attacks on hospitals have emerged.
“We saw complete devastation across the city of Nyala, which was the second most populous city in Sudan,” said MSF's McNally.
“The northern half of the city is almost completely destroyed. You see a complete lack of basic services anywhere. There has been virtually no international humanitarian response in this part of the country.
“You see people really struggling. You have residents who are left, and then you have IDP camps in the surrounding area with millions of people. You see a lot of people who are incredibly desperate and very little aid is getting to them right now.”
According to Abubakar, Sudanese civilians are suffering particularly badly in areas controlled by the Rapid Support Force. The paramilitary group now controls Khartoum, Al-Jazirah, Kordofan and the vast western region of Darfur.
Of particular concern are reports of sexual and gender-based violence emerging from across the country, but particularly from Darfur.
An MSF survey of 135 survivors of sexual violence treated by MSF teams in refugee camps in Chad between July and December 2023 found that 90 percent had been abused by armed criminals. Fifty percent were abused in their own home and 40 percent were raped by multiple attackers.
Abubakar remembers feeling terrified at the sight of his neighbors in Khartoum abandoning their homes – leaving behind places and belongings integral to their identities, not knowing if they would ever return. She also did not believe that she would leave the city of her birth and run away.
Now, all that remains are memories and photos of the home he hopes to reclaim someday.
Abubakar said, “I see that a person does not live in a place as much as they live in it.” “The images and scenes of my home never left my mind. I want to come back to it again. “
