Sudan, first trucks of food aid enter Darfur: World Food Programme food will reach populations at risk of famine

ROMA – Finally – we read on Blackness – the first, vital food aid has arrived for the tormented populations of western Sudan. On the evening of August 20, the first trucks of World Food Programme (WFP) loads of food and nutritional supplies entered the Darfur region from the border with Chad, through the Adre crossing, closed six months ago by the army who feared that the aid could also include weapons intended for the militias Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a Sudanese paramilitary organization that was part of the country’s regular army.

This moment has been awaited for a long time. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has been calling for access through Adre, the fastest route to reach the capital of North Darfur, El Fasher, for three months. under siegeThe trucks are carrying food – sorghum, pulses, oil and rice – for around 13,000 people in West Darfur, but WFP said it has food supplies ready for around half a million people and aims to support up to 8.4 million people by the end of the year.

The trucks brought only partial relief. A fundamental help after 14 areas of the region and the country were declared a high risk of famine. With trade at a standstill, the inability to cultivate land and heavy fighting that has forced millions of people to flee, the situation for the population is more than dramatic, with over 6 million people facing food insecurity throughout Darfur. The entry of aid can therefore bring at least partial relief.

The turning point came on August 15th. That was when the Sovereign Council – the military government that holds power in Sudan – allowed the use of the Adre crossing, albeit only for three months. The green light then came from the RSF, who control that part of the territory. The reopening of the Adre crossing is “critical to efforts to prevent famine from spreading across Sudan,” said WFP Director Cindy McCain, “and it must now remain in use. I want to recognize all parties involved for taking this critical step to help us bring life-saving aid to millions of people in desperate need.” But now, she added, “we urgently need to reach every corner of Sudan with food assistance, and that requires humanitarian corridors and all border crossings to be open, so that aid agencies can bring supplies every single day. That is the only way to avoid widespread hunger.”

The effects of 16 months of war. Sixteen months of war have caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with 10.7 million people, nearly half of them children, displaced within the country and over 2 million refugees in neighboring countries. “In the next three months,” said the head of the UN mission,International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Sudan, Mohamed Refaat – an estimated 25.6 million people will face severe food insecurity as the conflict spreads and coping mechanisms are exhausted»,

Who are the Rapid Support Forces militiamen. The Rapid Support Forces which, according to some estimates, today would be around 100 thousand fighters throughout Sudan, were born in 2013 daughters of the criminal and bloodthirsty militia of the Janjaweed, which since 2003 has fought in the Darfur region to repress a rebellion of the tribes of black Africans, sedentary, farmers or breeders, against the government of Khartoum. The conflict has assumed dramatic proportions and is essentially attributable to the ancestral rivalry between Arab ethnic groups traditionally dedicated to nomadic pastoralism and, on the other, the black African populations with sedentary, agricultural attitudes. The militiamen have however always constituted a key element in the long permanence in power of the Bashir government.

War crimes. The military actions of the Janjaweed earned then-President Omar al-Bashir and the leaders of the militias face various charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by the International Criminal Court. Several human rights observers say that between 2003 and 2008, in the west of the country, military and paramilitary groups sent by the government looted and burned entire villages inhabited by mainly non-Arab communities. During that period, the regular army attacked the rebels with air strikes and heavy artillery.