How Sudan's civil war has ravaged millions of people's lives in cities on the front lines

For nearly a year and a half, Sudan’s army has been locked in a brutal civil war with a militia known as the Rapid Support Forces. The conflict has devastated the country and triggered the world’s largest displacement of people. In a rare on-the-ground report, special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen traveled to cities on the front lines to meet the people caught in the middle of the violence.

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Amna Nawaz: We’re going to have much more special live coverage of the convention right here in Chicago throughout this evening, but, first, we’re going to go back to William in Washington.

William Brangham: Thanks, Amna.

For nearly a year-and-a-half, Sudan’s army has been locked in a brutal civil war with a militia known as the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF. That fighting has devastated the country and triggered the world’s largest displacement of people.

The U.N. is now warning of famine in some areas. Sudan is also one of the most difficult places for journalists to enter, but the “News Hour” secured rare access to report what’s happening there on the ground. That work is supported by the Pulitzer Center.

In her second in a series of reports, special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen traveled to cities on the front lines in Central and Southeastern Sudan, where she met the people caught in the middle of this violence.

Leila Molana-Allen: Ravaged. After a year-and-a-half of war, this is what remains of the Sudanese capital Khartoum’s residential suburbs, once home to millions.

The bullet-battered streets tell a story of hand-to-hand combat, craters from missiles fired at close range ripping through walls and rooftops every few yards, a century-old mosque scarred by hails of gunfire, the areas largest bank incinerated. lifesaving hospitals gutted.

So the RSF were using this as a base?

Man: Yes, as a base.

Leila Molana-Allen: Right.

Man: When the army, the staff, liberate this place, so the militia bomb it and destroy it.

Leila Molana-Allen: After months of fighting, the Sudanese army has managed to recapture this area. But danger isn’t far, just across the Nile in Khartoum city, the Rapid Support Forces continue to shell, shoot and raid.

Not a single street is unscathed by the violence. The ache of loss echoes through the eerie silence here. Blocked off from the main cemetery by the constantly moving front lines, civilians have been burying their family members killed in the fighting here in a makeshift cemetery in the grounds of an old football field where kids used to play.

A few former residents wander, shell-shocked, through once familiar alleyways, but one family never left. Maryam Adam is 75. As the RSF swept through town last spring, their neighbors fled in terror. But when militiamen came to their door, the Adams refused to leave.

Maryam Adam, Omdurman Resident (through interpreter): We have seen everything that happened here. We saw the lights of weapons shoot across the sky, we heard all the sounds, and we’re still here. A shell hit the house, shattering the glass and walls. That was the first shell that hit our home, injuring me here and here.

Leila Molana-Allen: Maryam’s brother was killed, but, miraculously, the rest of the family survived. For a year, they lived on almost nothing, sheltering in their stone house as the bombs rained down.

Maryam Adam (through interpreter): When the area was under the control of the RSF, they cut off the water and electricity. Last fall, we had to drink rainwater because there was no other water.

Leila Molana-Allen: Schools have been shut since the war. All 5-year-old Abak wants is to see her friends and teachers. She doesn’t know who’s still alive.

Abak Adam, 5 Years Old (through interpreter): I love studying. They were teaching me the letter A for apple, B for boy and C for chicken. I have friends at school, but the teacher left, and the kindergarten closed its doors.

Leila Molana-Allen: As we embrace, their emaciated bodies tell how these proud elders gave everything they had to the younger family members. There’s more food and water here now, but nothing is guaranteed.

Maryam Adam (through interpreter): This has not exhausted me. I am happy because I am still standing. I am a fighter. We hope to God that Sudan returns to how it was.

Leila Molana-Allen: Just a few streets away, battles rage on. The emergency room is rammed with panicked, injured families. The Ibrahims’ home was just hit by an RSF shell.

Al Kheir Ibrahim, Omdurman Resident (through interpreter): We went to the mosque, and on our way back, shells started falling on us like rain on the streets, and on the houses, and we were running everywhere.

Leila Molana-Allen: All Kheir’s brother Tijani believes nothing is being done to protect civilians in this war.

Tijani Ibrahim, Omdurman Resident (through interpreter): Children, women, and the elderly unarmed. They have nothing to do with the SAF or RSF, nothing to do with politics. Every home has become a grave. Why? Why all this? For democracy?

Overseas, they announce democracy and human rights. They speak beautifully, while acting despicably. And here we are in Sudan dying by the weapons they provide while they say no more war.

Leila Molana-Allen: Even here, they’re not safe. The hospital has been hit five times already in as many months. Targeting hospitals in a conflict is a war crime. All of Omdurman’s hospitals have been hit multiple times by shelling and small-arms fire throughout the course of the war. Most of them aren’t functioning anymore.

Here at Al Nao Hospital, the only surgical hospital still working, each time there’s a strike, they patch up the damage and carry on.

Four days after the “News Hour” left, Al Nao also was hit again. Omdurman’s largest private hospital already lies in ruins. The Al Buluk children’s hospital has only just managed to reopen after being shelled last month. Here, overstretched doctors work to save young lives under the constant threat of attack.

Dr. Musaddal, Sudan: I don’t — I can’t even find words to describe this. Hospitals are some — are places where people to come to find sanctuary. I myself have been a victim of a stray bullet two months ago while I was working.

Leila Molana-Allen: Dr. Musaddal specializes in infant malnutrition, a brutal side effect of the war, which is devastating Sudan’s children.

Mugahed is just 10 months old. He has acute malnutrition.

Dr. Musaddal: We get a lot of new admissions, a lot of cases under the age of 5, under the age of 6 months. Some cases come in from RSF-controlled areas, which come in very bad shape, severe — cases of severe, severe malnutrition.

Leila Molana-Allen: Mugahed’s little body can’t cope. His lungs are failing. He weighs just half what he should at this age.

Dr. Musaddal: It’s heartbreaking. Really, it’s heartbreaking.

Leila Molana-Allen: The hospital sees more than 100 cases like this each month. Families like Mugahed’s are trapped behind fluid front lines, with little access to food and water. Undernourished mothers can’t produce the breast milk their babies need. Risking the journey to get them here is the only chance to save them.

But they don’t always make it. Nine-month-old Ukrain, named for another bitter war of survival, has had so little nutrition in her early life that her organs are failing.

Zakya Abdelrahman, Displaced (through interpreter): We fled here. Most of us walked on foot. It was very tough. Some people couldn’t walk, and others couldn’t find food. We left everything behind, even my children’s birth certificates.

Leila Molana-Allen: Zakya’s husband was killed in an attack. If Ukrain survives, Zakya must she must now raise her and her three other children alone, with no home and no breadwinner.

The level of need across the country is staggering. With little government or international aid, Sudanese communities are rallying to provide. Each evening, these displaced women in Omdurman gather to bake sorghum bread, much cheaper than wheat. The next morning, eager lines down the block to collect rations of bread, lentils, rice and broad beans, all paid for by donations from locals and Sudan’s diaspora.

This will be the only meal many of these families eat today. If nothing is done, by fall, millions of people will be starving to death. Qadarif’s rolling green hills and idyllic pastoral scenes belie the growing threat. This region is Sudan’s bread basket. But the RSF has already captured the neighboring agricultural states.

Home to Sudan’s largest grain reserve stockpiling thousands of tons of food, Qadarif’s farmers are terrified that they’re next.

Fadol Hassan, Farmer (through interpreter): Yes, people are talking. They even tell me not to plant, asking: “Why are you planting? The RSF will take all the crops. They won’t leave anything, and people will starve and die.”

Leila Molana-Allen: RSF forces are closing in on Qadarif in a pincer movement. An RSF victory here would be nothing short of catastrophic for the country’s dwindling food supply.

As hundreds of thousands of the elderly, the injured, the desperate mothers and their weary children search in vain for a safe place to wait out this war and enough food to survive it, international leaders meet this week promising to find solutions. Few here believe that help is coming.

For the PBS “News Hour,” I’m Leila Molana-Allen in Qadarif, Sudan.