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Floods flood Sudan amid escalating economic crisis
By Jean Shaoul
September 14, 2020
A month of torrential rains has caused unprecedented flooding in Sudan, killing at least 100 people, injuring 46 and destroying more than 100,000 homes. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost everything they owned.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that more than 557,000 people had already been “affected” by this year’s floods. As Sudan’s rainy season lasts from June to October and always brings floods (last year’s floods affected 400,000 people), the country is likely to face more rain and displacement.
OCHA warned that the humanitarian situation in Sudan is worsening and supplies needed to respond to the crisis are running low, while the destruction of roads has made it difficult to deliver aid to communities in need. Access to clean water has been affected, with around 2,000 water sources broken or contaminated, increasing the danger of waterborne diseases.
The most affected has been the capital, Khartoum, where the Blue and White Nile rivers meet, when the Nile overflowed and demolished everything in its path. The Blue Nile and River Nile states have suffered similar devastation, while the Gezira, Gadarif, West Kordofan and South Darfur regions have reported damage. At least 16 of the 18 states of Sudan have suffered some damage from floods.
The level of the Blue Nile reached a record 17.58 meters due to heavy seasonal rains in Sudan and Ethiopia, the source of the Blue Nile that accounts for about 80 percent of its waters. It is the highest since the 1912 flood in Sudan, when the level reached 17.14 meters. New heavy rains are forecast for neighboring Ethiopia and parts of Sudan.
The volume of rainfall has been the highest on record. Marwa Taha, an expert on climate change, said Al jazeera, “But this year we have seen an increase in the amount of rain due to climate change and that is why the Nile has been flooded more than before. In addition, many trees have been cut down to make way for residential areas near the Nile, which affects the valleys through which the water would flow ”.
The rising waters of the Nile could also flood one of Sudan’s ancient archaeological sites at Al-Bajrawiya, the capital of the 2,600-year-old Kushite Kingdom that also includes the famous Meroe pyramids, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Marc Maillot, head of the French Archaeological Unit at the Sudan Antiquities Service, said: “The floods have never affected the site before.”
Crews are building sandbag walls and pumping water to prevent damage to the site, which is generally about 500 meters from the river.
Sudan has declared a national emergency for three months and has designated the country as a natural disaster area.
While some tents have been erected to house the displaced, many families have had to sleep outdoors on whatever dry land they could find in Khartoum. Ezz Aldin Hussein, an engineer whose home in southern Khartoum was badly damaged, blamed the government. He said Al-Jazeera, “It is known that the rainy season comes every year, but we do not see that the government is seriously preparing for it.”
Successive governments not only failed to take preventive measures to minimize flood damage, but also failed to make basic preparations to help affected people.
As Hussein explained, when he called the police and civil defense authorities for help, “no one came to help us.” People have had to depend on neighbors and charities for help.
The government’s inability to help people who have lost everything in the floods has added to the growing perception that Sudan’s military-dominated new “technocratic” transitional government, led by Dr. Abdalla Hamdok It differs little in substance from the regime of former President Omar al-Bashir. Al-Bashir, who came to power in an Islamist-backed coup in 1989, was overthrown in a pre-emptive coup by the Sudanese army, with the support of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, in April of the year. passed after months of protests against the government.
In practice, the country is governed by the Vice President of the Transitional Military Council (TMC), Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who heads the paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF), widely hated for its brutal operations in the Darfur conflict. The RSF, more powerful than the Sudanese army, controls most towns and cities in Sudan.
On June 30, tens of thousands of Sudanese protesters took to the streets of Khartoum and other major cities to demand change, including a full transition to democracy and civil rule.
The government’s handling of the pandemic has been widely criticized. As cases emerged, believed to have been transmitted by the hundreds of Sudanese migrant workers who returned from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates in March due to the outbreak, the government sent them to quarantine centers. Conditions were so bad that many left prematurely. Students returning from Wuhan, where the virus was first detected, protested at the airport when the government tried to quarantine them, forcing the government to let them go home.
The government imposed a nationwide lockdown in April. The police beat and arrested the doctors, including the head of Sudan’s largest maternity hospital, on their way to work despite the fact that they had travel permits.
Dozens of health centers, including hospitals, closed after the outbreak of the pandemic and many doctors refused to work due to a lack of protective equipment.
Since the government lifted the blockade and reopened its borders, the number of cases and deaths has doubled to just under 13,500 cases and 833 deaths.
The shutdown left millions of Sudanese day laborers without income, as the government failed to provide a safety net. Inflation at 100 percent and unemployment at 25 percent aggravated their plight. Sudan’s $ 34.5 billion economy shrank 2.5 percent in 2019, and an additional 8 percent is expected this year, exacerbating a fiscal crisis that has skyrocketed living costs and led to massive protests that led to the removal of Bashir.
Sudan is seeking a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that involves persuading the Trump administration to drop its long-standing list of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism, although most of the long-standing US sanctions were lifted in 2017, and resolve or reschedule its $ 1.3 billion of arrears with the IMF and $ 57.5 billion of foreign debt. The $ 3 billion pledged by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi last year comes nowhere near solving Sudan’s economic crisis and has not been followed up by more aid.
The Hamdok government is considering removing subsidies for fuel products that would cut about $ 2.5 billion from the budget and recover the assets, believed to be worth $ 3.5 to $ 4 billion, illegally stolen by al-Bashir and his buddies.
The key to obtaining US consent for an IMF loan is agreeing to pay around $ 826 million (versus a previous deal of $ 300 million) to the families of the 200 or more people killed in the bombings. from the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania by al-Qaeda in 1998, allegedly with the support of the al-Bashir regime. While the new government agreed to pay compensation, it is unclear how it will raise the money to do so. This follows Sudan’s payment in February of $ 30 million to the families of 17 US Navy sailors killed in the USS Cole suicide bombing in 2000, although the Sudanese government “explicitly denies” any involvement in the attack. .
Last month, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Khartoum to lobby on US demands, including strengthening Sudan’s relations with Israel following the UAE’s “normalization” of its relations. with Israel as part of its closer alignment with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates against Iran. . It follows the February meeting between General Abdul Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s de facto head of state, and Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Uganda. This is in contrast to the al-Bashir regime that was aligned with Qatar, Turkey and Russia, although more recently it had sought to gain the support of the United States.
Sudan is under pressure to resolve multiple long-standing armed conflicts that threaten further disintegration of the country following South Sudan’s secession in 2011. The government has signed a peace agreement, covering issues such as land ownership, shared power and the return of the millions displaced by the fighting, with five of the seven rebel groups in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, aiming to end 17 years of conflict in the western region of Darfur and the southern states.
