SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Over 15 million people in Sudan have been displaced by the more than two-yearlong civil war between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary group. The U.N. says a famine in Sudan is the worst in the world for decades, and nowhere in the country is the situation worse than the western region of Darfur, where genocide 20 years ago has repeated itself, and there are daily reports of children dying from starvation. NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu was in Sudan earlier this year and has been following the story. Emmanuel, thanks for being with us.
EMMANUEL AKINWOTU, BYLINE: Thanks. Good morning.
SIMON: What is the latest in Sudan?
AKINWOTU: Well, the dynamics in the war are changing. There's now a slow, sustained return of displaced people coming back to cities that were heavily damaged by the fighting, like the capital Khartoum, where the war erupted. And we reported from there in April, and large parts of the city were totally destroyed. But there were also growing signs of revival. That capital region was occupied by the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF. But that's been recaptured by the army. But now the fighting, and really the worst of the devastation, has shifted westward towards the strategic oil-producing region, but particularly Darfur, where the RSF remains mostly in control.
And what's emerging from there is absolutely horrific. There's one main city in Darfur that the RSF have not yet taken over, El Fasher, and it's been under siege. In April, the RSF took over the largest displacement camp in the country, held in this city, which hosts about half a million people or more. And it was also where a famine was declared earlier this year, and most of those people have now fled.
SIMON: People who were already starving have had to escape. Where are they going? Do they get any help?
AKINWOTU: Well, many of them have trekked about 40 miles through desert-like conditions in about 110 degrees heat, to remote towns where there's virtually no help. About 230,000 people are in a town called Tawila. I spoke to Kholood Khair. She's the founder and director of Confluence Advisory, which is a think tank that was formerly based in Khartoum.
KHOLOOD KHAIR: The situation is very desperate. We haven't seen famine figures like this for decades in Sudan. And some hunger experts also say the scale of the famine that we're seeing in Sudan is amongst, if not, the highest and the biggest that we have seen in the world for about 40 years or so.
AKINWOTU: I also spoke to a doctor in the region, Dr. Salwa Mohktar (ph), and in Arabic, she told me that the situation was overwhelming.
SALWA MOHKTAR: (Speaking Arabic).
AKINWOTU: She said displaced people, including children, have been dying from starvation each day, that there's no food or shelter. People are basically sleeping underneath trees. There's barely any aid in Tawila. And the U.N. dropped some aid last month, but I spoke to NGOs there this week, and they said that none's expected for the next few months, in part because the rainy season is just making conditions there treacherous to navigate. And they're urging the U.N. to take this much more seriously because deaths from starvation are expected to really mount.
SIMON: Emmanuel, you said that the army had regained control of key areas. Does it seem that the war itself is reaching any end?
AKINWOTU: Yes, the army has the upper hand, but really, we're still at an impasse. What we're seeing is the war is continuing, and the country is appearing to formally divide and fracture. Last week, there was a new parallel government that was announced, led by the RSF and including civilian politicians. The army-led government is widely seen as a de facto government internationally and has a lot of support in Sudan. And the army has dismissed this parallel government as a sham. But in reality, the army itself also has real questions of legitimacy that this announcement really exploits.
SIMON: NPR's West Africa correspondent Emmanuel Akinwotu. Thank you so much.
AKINWOTU: Thank you.
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