“On the morning of April 15th last year, my neighbors and I were abruptly awakened by the deafening sounds of artillery fire and explosive bombs. The sky above us was filled with chaos and destruction. For five consecutive days, I lived in a state of panic. The situation grew increasingly dire as the shops closed down, leaving us with nothing to eat. The once bustling streets now lay deserted, with only stray cats and dogs roaming about. To compound the distress, the internet abruptly went offline, severing my communication with my family. In that moment, the harsh reality of war in Khartoum became painfully clear to me. Determined to save my own life, I made the decision to escape. As I rode my moped through the streets, a heart-wrenching sight greeted me: thousands of women and children walking towards the outskirts of the city. The cacophony of war pierced my ears, while the stench of corpses littering the streets made it difficult to breathe.
While fleeing and abandoning the tumultuous conflict, heading towards eastern Sudan, then crossing into Ethiopia, I had never expected my displacement would have taken long. I had assumed perhaps a month. The harsh reality of existing outside my homeland for a year and following on day-to-day basis news on Sudan my heart and mind ache. I pity the condition of the neighbors and family I left behind. I already lost my nephew in crossfire. I read reports of massacres being committed against my people in El-Geneina, in west Darfur. For the last two months I lost communication with my siblings due to the internet blackout. As every day I surf the internet and getting the bad news on Sudan, my life is disturbed heavily. I am a body in exile with my mind and heart in my country of birth.”
With your country on fire, you expect the world to care. Bu news of my country was sparing. As there were few news stories in the media on Sudan in the last year, there will be many in the coming days. Because there is a “anniversary” to mark: one year of pain and agony for millions of Sudanese, who saw their country falling apart, unable to stop it.
It has largely been a war behind closed doors, as far as the mainstream media is concerned. While bombing in Gaza or Ukraine gets daily media footage, these images are lacking from Sudan. But that does not make it a forgotten war, it is not because of the media that this war is raging on without the similar international disgusts that these other two wars generate. It is the lack of high diplomatic attention that is missing.
The world order has dramatically changed. America used to be the policeman in the region. It put pressure that helped South Sudan to succeed, it was a moving force behind the fall of president Numeiry, it worked on a regional military coalition to oust president Bashir, it made the evacuation of Falasha’s out of Ethiopia via Sudan possible. But in the present crisis no strong diplomats were send to the region to pressure the warring parties to stop the madness. That is why the Sudan war of destruction is not high on the international agenda, not so much because we journalists did ignore it.
