Sudan Weekly News (54): from Bara and West Darfur

Life has ground to a halt in the city of Bara, North Kordofan’s second most important commercial and economic hub.

The city has been emptied of its residents, who fled across different parts of Kordofan after repeated cycles of advances and retreats between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and its allies and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which have been in control since last March.

The fighting has left behind widespread suffering, mounting security threats and severe humanitarian conditions for civilians who escaped toward the cities of Umm Rawaba and Al-Obeid.

Samira Jamaa Al-Sayer told Atar that she had been displaced to Al-Obeid in North Kordofan since October of last year. Her journey took five days on foot alongside her son, who has a physical disability. She says others reached Al-Obeid in three or four days.

Bara, she says, has become a stronghold for RSF, while residents’ homes have turned into ghost dwellings.

Samira hopes for a formal agreement that would keep the city outside the scope of military operations and place its administration in the hands of its people so they could rebuild what she described as the unprecedented destruction inflicted upon it.

She expressed her desire to return and resume her work in the local market.

If that proves impossible, she says she may relocate again, perhaps to White Nile state or Khartoum.

Al-Obeid in its current condition, she says, reminds her of what Bara looked like before the RSF seized control: siege conditions and drone attacks.

In a scenario increasingly resembling that of Al-Fasher, reports continue to circulate about plans by the RSF to attack Al-Obeid, which they have surrounded from three directions.

Thousands of displaced people from Bara and surrounding villages who are now in the city fear reliving the circumstances that forced them to flee in the first place, and some have already begun leaving Al-Obeid in continuing waves of displacement over recent months.

Ibrahim Wahballah, a former member of Bara’s Emergency Room and a resident of At-Taweel village, about 17 kilometres west of Bara, revealed that 700 people out of the village’s roughly 1,720 residents had been displaced because of severe hardship in accessing food.

The village’s markets and shops had depended heavily on Bara for consumer supplies. Wahballah says goods arriving from neighbouring areas reach the village only with difficulty, especially after the closure of routes through which commodities previously arrived from Khartoum state. Access to essentials such as flour, lentils, rice, soap and cleaning products, he says, has become a distant dream.

Wahballah told Atar that prices of basic goods in the area have surged sharply. A 25-kilogrammeme sack of flour now costs 150,000 SDG, while a kilogramme of lentils sells for 20,000 SDG, a bowl of onions for 20,000 SDG, a bar of soap for 5,000 SDG, a bowl of cowpeas for 50,000 SDG and a bowl of sorghum for 30,000 SDG.

With prices continuing to climb, he says, people have been reduced to eating only one meal a day.

“Everyone in the village is stranded and lacks the means to travel to safer places with better living conditions,” he told Atar.

Tree cutting has become the only available livelihood in villages surrounding Bara, replacing agricultural activity that has largely ceased.

Wood is converted into charcoal for sale, but demand has weakened because of displacement and the continued siege.

Wahballah noted that the deterioration of people’s economic conditions stems from the absence of security, lack of financing and the looting of livestock by the Rapid Support Forces.

Little remains, not even enough to provide children with milk, a reality that has also driven up food prices. A kilogramme of lamb now sells for 90,000 SDG, while a pound of milk costs 5,000 SDG.

Hamed Al-Amin Abu Seif, a resident of Al-Karamsha village, about 4 kilometres north of Bara, told Atar that he was displaced alongside 66 others from the village to Umm Dam Haj Ahmed locality before it fell under RSF control last May, and from there to Al-Obeid.

But now, he said, they fear yet another displacement journey, one they are in no condition to endure.

“We fled Bara to survive, and left Umm Samima to stay alive. But if war reaches the heart of Al-Obeid, where will we go this time?” Abu Seif wonders.

The displaced who arrived in Al-Obeid had barely begun recovering from the shock of being uprooted from their land and losing their primary livelihoods, largely dependent on agriculture, trade and livestock production, before finding themselves trapped in a city struggling for survival under shelling and collapsing services.

Commodity prices have soared at a staggering pace amid weak purchasing power.

A source within Al-Obeid’s emergency rooms, who requested anonymity, told Atar that the suffering of displaced people from Bara in shelter centres has worsened.

Families live in worn-out tents while the city faces a deepening drinking water crisis, compounded by recurring electricity outages and bombardment targeting infrastructure.

The source revealed that displaced residents often stand in line for hours to buy water at prices beyond what they can scarcely afford.

The source told Atar that shelter centres across Al-Obeid are overcrowded with hundreds of displaced families living in conditions lacking even the most basic standards of sanitation and hygiene.

Hospitals and medical facilities in the city are operating below capacity and face acute shortages of life-saving medicines and medical personnel.

The source warned that such conditions leave displaced communities highly vulnerable to outbreaks of diseases linked to malnutrition and contaminated water, including diarrhoea cases that are rising at an alarming rate, particularly among children and older adults.