New York — The United States announced Friday more than $315 million in additional humanitarian assistance to Sudan, where 14 months of war between rival generals has left nearly 25 million people in need of aid.
"This is the single largest humanitarian crisis on the planet," USAID administrator Samantha Power told reporters on a conference call announcing the funding.
The United Nations warns that 5 million Sudanese are on the brink of famine.
Power expressed concern that the situation could be as bad as or worse than the 2011 drought-induced famine in Somalia that killed around 250,000 people, half of them children.
"The most worrying scenario would be that Sudan would become the deadliest famine since Ethiopia in the early 1980s," she added.
Around 1 million Ethiopians perished over a two-year period in that historic famine. Millions more were displaced, and hundreds of thousands left Ethiopia.
Power said the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) which are fighting each other, are actively blocking aid deliveries.
"It is obstruction, not insufficient stocks of food, that is the driving force behind the historic and deadly level of starvation in Sudan," Power said. "That has to change immediately."
Of the 25 million Sudanese in need of humanitarian aid and protection, the United Nations says 18 million are facing acute hunger, and that number will likely grow with the onset of the lean season this month.
The U.N. has been asking for months for both cross-border access from Chad and access across conflict front lines. It has also urged authorities to remove administrative barriers, including delays in travel authorizations for aid convoys.
Access impediments have made it almost impossible to move humanitarian supplies to parts of Darfur and Khartoum.
The situation in North Darfur's capital city, El Fasher, is especially dire. The RSF has surrounded the city, burning and looting communities in its vicinity. They have advanced on the city, where an SAF infantry division is outnumbered and surrounded.
On Thursday, the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution demanding the RSF halt its siege and de-escalate the fight for El Fasher -- where more than 800,000 civilians are sheltering -- and allow aid in.
The World Food Program said Friday that a convoy carrying aid for about 160,000 people crossed into Darfur this week from Chad. It is only the third convoy to enter Sudan via the Tine border crossing from Chad in the past two months. The aid it is carrying is headed for people in Central, East and West Darfur.
Battle for El Fasher
Power said Washington is concerned about what will happen to the civilians in El Fasher, especially ethnically non-Arab communities, if the city falls to the RSF.
"Clearly the RSF is on the march," she said. "And where the RSF has gone in the Darfur area historically, and this conflict, mass atrocities have followed."
Arab Janjaweed fighters who carried out the genocide against African Zaghawa, Masalit, Fur and other non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur in the early 2000s, make up elements of today's RSF.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters on the call that there is no military solution to this conflict, and she criticized countries that are supporting the rival generals with arms and ammunition.
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"We have been very, very clear with those actors, that they should cease their support for this war," she said. "It is only exacerbating and prolonging the conflict, and it is making the situation more dire for the people of Sudan."
She said the U.S. has spoken with the United Arab Emirates, which was implicated for sending military support to the RSF in a U.N. expert report earlier this year. The UAE denies it, saying it sends only humanitarian aid.
"We have engaged with the UAE; we have engaged with others," Thomas-Greenfield said. "We know that the Russians and the Iranians are also providing support for the SAF. Both sides are getting this outside support, and we are pressuring all sides to discontinue."
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has also expressed his concern about the fighting in El Fasher and across Sudan, saying a cease-fire is urgently needed to alleviate civilian suffering.
