Before the conflict erupted, the RSF head, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, and military chief Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan had collaborated to topple Sudan’s former dictator and crack down on pro-democracy protesters, but then turned on each other.
Their fight has leveled the formerly gracious capital city. Hospitals have been shelled, airstrikes have pummeled residential neighborhoods and ravenous fighters have raped, kidnapped and killed countless civilians. In western Sudan, fighting has morphed into ethnic cleansing as militias raze villages and execute families. The RSF has seized four regional capitals in the western region of Darfur in the past month and are encircling the final city.
The United Nations says Sudan faces one of the world’s “worst humanitarian crises,” with more than 6 million people forced to flee, 25 million needing aid and 19 million children out of school. But with international attention focused on Ukraine and now Israel and Gaza, necessary funding is falling far short. Refugees facing disease, hunger and danger are getting little help.
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Nearly 50,000 people have fled into Ethiopia since the civil war started, but arrivals have dwindled in recent weeks after refugees heard there was no food and little assistance. At just one border crossing, nearly 800 Sudanese were recorded crossing back into Sudan in recent months, U.N. officials said.
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Inside Sudan, medical staff are especially at risk of being abducted. Ali Basher, of the Sudanese Doctors Syndicate, said 39 medical personnel had been taken by armed groups. Some had been accused of helping the opposite side and tortured, many forced to treat wounded fighters, he said.
One of Sudan’s most prominent doctors, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, nearly fell victim. An emergency room doctor, she refused to flee as her city emptied. Her first hospital, Khartoum Teaching Hospital, was bombed, so she moved to another, Al Shuhada. The wards filled with girls shot in the stomach and children writhing from burning shrapnel.
In July, the violence was so intense she shut the doors and discharged anyone who was not in danger of imminent death so she could use their beds, she said. Then the RSF arrived. As the fighters began shooting, she said, she ushered female staff out the back, fearing they would be raped.
Militiamen rampaged through the wards, assaulting patients and staff. She was beaten so badly she could not walk. The man running the blood bank tried to barricade the doors; he was shot through the heart. The militia left after a looting spree.
A week later, only five medical staff remained, she said. No aid group would take over the hospital — it was too dangerous — so they decided to stay home and took supplies to treat those injured in their neighborhoods.
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When she and her family got to the Ethiopian border, military police recognized her and stopped her. They also desperately needed doctors, she said. They sat there, her children crying, for three hours before a doctor from the local hospital recognized her and announced he’d go on strike if she couldn’t cross, she said. The police relented.
Now she’s doing her best to treat fellow refugees with no drugs or equipment. She and another woman, a midwife, have delivered 13 babies so far. The night before The Washington Post visited, she said, they performed an episiotomy with a razor blade on a woman in labor by the light of a phone. No gloves. No anesthetic.
“I have to keep working. These are my people,” she said. “If they had not come for my children, I would still be in Sudan.”
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