Photo courtesy of Khartoum Kitchen
JUNE 19, 2024: In Sudan, a long-building crisis has turned a political dispute between two military generals into a humanitarian catastrophe of unimaginable scale. More than 9 million people have had to flee their homes in what the International Rescue Committee called “the largest internal displacement crisis in the world.” Up to 150,000 are dead, radically more than earlier estimates.
Other wars and crises, particularly in Gaza and Ukraine, have made it more difficult for the urgent calls for international aid in Sudan to break through. With Sudan’s agriculture in ruins, and nearly all of the country’s banks robbed and emptied, famine is a real threat, as the New York Times has reported in disturbing detail. Many have already been dying from starvation, including babies. In many cases, relief efforts have been blocked by fighting, too.
In this chaos, Sudanese locals have taken up initiatives that offer a glimmer of hope. Privately funded community kitchens have sprung up across Sudan since the start of the war to help provide emergency relief to starving people. Many of these kitchens are supported by Sudanese people in the global diaspora, but they could be running out of money soon. Mohanad Elbalal, who is British Sudanese and is based in the U.K., helped to create Khartoum Aid Kitchen in coordination with his extended family members who have been displaced in the Sudanese capital. It now supports many kitchens across Khartoum in serving meals to over 10,000 people a day; out of desperation for funding, Elbalal is reliant on a crowdsourcing campaign to save lives. I called Elbalal to discuss the challenges faced by aid efforts, and how media coverage of other global crises has complicated efforts to publicly fund relief efforts in Sudan. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Aymann Ismail: Can you tell me how this effort has unfolded so far?
Mohanad Elbalal: Every Sudanese person in the global diaspora has a relative displaced or put out of work. So while their primary concern might be to support their relatives within Sudan, or to help them leave Sudan, they’re also seeing that people are beginning to starve. Maybe not immediate relatives, but let’s say the shopkeeper you’ve known all your life, or your neighbor. So what they’re doing is they’re contacting those in their communities and saying, “We’re going to help you. We’re going to fund your community kitchen.” And the community kitchens will provide a simple meal every day, which will consist of something like fava beans or lentils. And if the kitchen has enough money coming in, it might offer rice or bread with that.
Now, after a year of war, what’s happened is the Sudanese people who have been funding kitchens have begun to run out of cash. So the threat of famine is intensifying at the same time community kitchens are closing down. Need is increasing at the same time supply is decreasing. The Khartoum Kitchen raises funds from people without connections in Sudan, who can empathize with people starving.
How did it get to this point?
The war started in Khartoum, which is home to close to 20 percent of Sudan’s population. It’s not only the capital, but it’s the center of economic production. Factories have been put out of service. Most people, especially in Khartoum, have been put out of work, so their means of living have disappeared. A question I get a lot from people is if food is too expensive. I tell them it doesn’t really matter for a lot of people what the price is if they have no money to begin with. They just don’t have any money to buy food.
Another major problem is accessibility. In places in western Sudan, especially in Darfur, it is simply just too dangerous to get aid in. The RSF militia is looting aid that is destined for civilians. In Wad Madani, in central Sudan, the RSF took over the World Food Program warehouse, depriving about a million people of much-needed aid. The unfolding famine is a result of three things: It’s that people simply don’t have income to purchase food, the lack of security has made it hard to get aid into some places, and we have the looting of aid.
How are you keeping your volunteers safe?
Most of our volunteers are from the communities that they are trying to help. So they are willing to take risks that, let’s say, you can’t ask an international aid worker to do. For example, there is a kitchen within Khartoum State, which I can’t exactly specify the location of for security reasons. But the only way we supply this kitchen is by loading up a boat, crossing the river, and then loading a donkey cart that transports the food to that kitchen. In some areas of Khartoum State, it’s very challenging for us to supply, but we have people willing to do it.
The army doesn’t have an issue with us operating our kitchens. The issue with kitchens in RSF territory is, during the revolution, there were resistance committees which existed to oppose the regime. Then they became community activists and are now leading a lot of the volunteer work in support of their communities. In RSF-controlled areas, a lot of these volunteers are being detained or disappeared or even killed.
Have any volunteers gotten hurt yet, so far?
Ours? No. The majority of our kitchens are not in RSF-controlled areas. However, two days ago, our kitchen in Thawra, in north Omdurman, three shells landed on the street that they were serving in. It was decided that for that morning, it’s just too dangerous to continue the kitchen, so the people in the queue were told to go home. The shells were fired by the RSF onto the civilian neighborhoods in Omdurman. And this has been a constant problem for a lot of the war. Omdurman is relatively safe, but occasionally they have shells coming from the other side of the river and landing on civilian neighborhoods. Even in areas which are considered safe, there is danger in running these kitchens.
Do other global crises with more international visibility, like in Ukraine and Gaza, complicate your donations-based operation? A resident of Omdurman recently told Reuters, “The world is busy with other countries. We have to help ourselves, share food with each other, and depend on God.” Does that reflect your experience in trying to raise funds for Sudan?
Yes. I think that quote that you shared perfectly encapsulates how the majority of the people feel. There’s a feeling that prejudices might lead people to care less about what’s happening in Sudan. That this is just Africans killing Africans. Sudanese people do feel forgotten, because most people haven’t seen international aid. They don’t blame aid workers; they just know the funding isn’t there. They feel abandoned.
Do you feel this when collecting donations? Do you feel you need to compete with Ukraine or Gaza in calling attention to the looming famine in Sudan?
We don’t blame individuals. Sudan needs more coverage. You have to go onto major news websites’ Africa page and scroll down and see Sudan; 2.5 million people facing death by famine in three or four months is apparently not front-page news. Media simply isn’t prioritizing it. I do not have a large platform, but with the platform I have, we’re sharing stories of the losses Sudanese people have suffered, children suffering from malnutrition, and people have engaged and have donated. I think if people are made more aware of what’s happening in Sudan, I think few people can fail to empathize with a child that is starving. But the world isn’t being given an opportunity to empathize with the Sudanese in the first place, because the media is heavily focused on what’s happening in Ukraine or Palestine.
And when I say this, I’m not criticizing the attention being given to these people. I am just saying when these people are being covered, Sudanese should also not be forgotten. Sudan should not have attention instead of them. It’s that Sudan should not be forgotten. I think there’s enough space for people to care about more than just one issue.
About 2 billion euros was just pledged by European countries and also the United States. Do you expect that to make a lasting impact?
There was a Paris conference and they pledged 2 billion euros. But there’s a difference between a pledge and actual donations arriving. We’ve seen this in Syria quite a lot, where the pledges do not match up with the actual money that arrives. The humanitarian plan for Sudan requires 2.4 billion. Currently, it’s only 15.8 percent funded; 2.5 million people at risk of dying, and the international community has only raised a couple hundred million dollars. I think if we have more pressure on the international community to actually meet the pledges that they make, that would go a long way to actually helping Sudanese people.
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