(Eric) While Team Zamzam continues its extraordinary humanitarian work in the cross-border city of Tina (Darfur)/Tiné (Chad), the military and security crisis deepens in Darfur. Sudan Tribune reports (September 27):
Idris Hassan, announcing plans to attack the border town of al-Tina. Military sources told Sudan Tribune they have detected large RSF troop buildups in the region, positioning for an offensive against the Zaghawa ethnic group’s territories in al-Tina, Umm Baru, and Karnoi.
Idriss Hassan was one of the RSF commanders responsible for the 2023 genocidal assault on El Geneina, capital of West Darfur (reported by Reuters, December 2023). Today the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) also stand poised to overrun El Fasher, capital of North Darfur and home to some 300,000 starving civilians and defenders. They are primarily Zaghawa and given RSF animosity toward them and all non-Arab tribal groups, it is all but certain there will be a large-scale massacre. Tens of thousands could be slaughtered in the way the Masalit people were slaughtered in El Geneina. The implications for all of North Darfur are dire in the extreme.
Gaffar, who knows the situation on the ground as well as anyone, thinks that the threat from Hassan is likely posturing propaganda. The armed forces on both sides of Tina/Tiné—Chadian and Sudan Armed Forces/Joint Forces—are too large and well-armed, and the Zaghawa population in Chad is at one with the many Zaghawa people who have fled Zamzam, El Fasher, and other parts of North Darfur. But an assault on Zamzam IDP camp once seemed quite unlikely—until April of this year.
More likely are RSF assaults on Umm Baru, and Karnoi, which would have the effect of sending even more displaced persons to Tina/Tiné. Team Zamzam would be more important than ever.
Here it is important to say that the Team has already earned praise and celebration from the local authorities: a leading figure among those authorities told the Team this past month:
“Team Zamzam, you are not only filling the gap that many humanitarian organisations have failed to fill in but you are teaching us and the entire community techniques and possibilities for survival in difficult times.”
(the full monthly report from the counselors of Team Zamzam appears below)
Supporting Team Zamzam is supporting precisely the critical gaps in international humanitarian assistance in the area: providing psychosocial counseling to the huge numbers of women and girls who have been traumatized by ongoing—indeed, accelerating—sexual violence in Darfur; providing food to the most malnourished, especially children; providing medicine and hygienic supplies to those most in need. Team Zamzam has never been in a better position to utilize all the support we can give them. But funds have begun to run low as contributions have slowed. There are still a number of generous contributions, but without a substantial increase in funds, it will be impossible for me to continue supporting Project Zamzam in the way I would wish. Cuts in funds for food will need to be cut in November…
Please make a tax-deductible contribution to our project, using a portal on the website of a 501/c/3 organization operating in Sudan. Operation Broken Silence, working primarily on health and education issues in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan, has created a special site for tax-deductible contributions to our project, and we hope this makes contributing to the health and well-being of for the desperate refugees and displaced persons from Zamzam and other locations in North Darfur.
Recent Sudan News
Coinciding with the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York this month, an unusually large number of news reports on Sudan have appeared very recently. I have created a compendium of these reports—all of them authoritative and thoroughly researched—and edited them for length. They speak to a range of issues: the grave threat to El Fasher; the increasingly sophisticated weaponry provided by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the RSF; the scale of the humanitarian crisis throughout Sudan, including the rapid increase in diseases like cholera, dengue fever, and malaria; the increase in sexual violence after more than two and a half years of war; insecurity for humanitarian workers; the danger to commercial air traffic created by the huge influx of anti-aircraft weaponry. Attention has also been given to the murky and indecisive war between the RSF and the SAF in North and West Kordofan, the region from which any relief for El Fasher must come.
Despite all this news—and the general agreement that war in Sudan has created the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis—the UN and important international actors have failed to act meaningfully. Powerful Western countries refuse to call out the UAE for its violation of the UN arms embargo on Sudan and thus complicity in what the UN calls crimes against humanity on the part of the RSF—and the U.S. calls “genocide.” But the Trump administration agenda in the Middle East, and continuing “military cooperation” with the Emiratis ensures that there will be nothing of significance forthcoming (other than the continuing destructive effects of Trump cuts to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has had a particularly devastating effect on the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees in eastern Chad).
Team Zamzam monthly update report
(from Team Counselors, translated by Gaffar Mohammud Saeneen)
Received, September 28, 2028
This monthly report is for the period from late August through September 26, and highlights the work that has been completed as well as the current humanitarian and health conditions of refugees and IDPs in the joined town of Tina (Sudan) and Tiné (Chad).
As people continue to flee from the hell of besieged El Fasher and the fighting in areas surrounding Tina, Team Zamzam continues to provide them with food, water, and critical counselling for victims of sexual violence. With our modest budget, we have managed to feed more than 11,000 people, mostly young children, women, and disabled people. Those fed were among the most impoverished and are typically suffering from severe malnutrition; many are victims of diseases related to severe malnutrition.
The humanitarian situation in both Tiné and Tina is dire, with hundreds of families pouring in on a daily basis, and little has been provided by local humanitarian NGOs who are struggling for lack of funds. In addition to this, it should be noted that larger international NGOs are absent from this area, which is in need of urgent attention.
Previously, Team Zamzam along with those local charities have made several appeals to local authorities of both Tiné/Chad and Tina/Darfur to intensify their efforts on behalf of these desperate people: to urge their respective governments and international organisations to pay some attention to the plight of those fleeing. Little has been done in this regard.
During the heavy rainy season from early July through mid-September, the movement of people and flight towards Tina/Tiné slightly decreased, but from the third week of September many people have again been arriving on a daily basis. The most urgent priority for most local charities and for Team Zamzam will be to try to provide for all at least the minimum aid that will help families avoid death from hunger—and in this regard much more food is needed.
In addition to providing food aid to these refugees, there is also an urgent need to provide psychological counselling to victims of sexual violence, whose numbers have increased dramatically, especially as a consequence of the siege of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur. Over the past five months, coinciding with the fall of Zamzam camp in April, we have noticed an increase in the number of victims of sexual violence among adolescents. These teenage adolescent victims are in need of special attention and care, and Team Zamzam’s counselors are doing everything in their capacity to provide essential support in light of their needs.
Work accomplished during this reporting period:
• Cooking large communal meals: from the first week of September to the second week, the Zamzam team organised a communal kitchen to feed over 11,000 people. This collective meal consists of meat cooked in a pot served with rice rich in protein, as many families haven’t eaten this kind of meal for months.
• During the cooking process and during the distribution of food, a large delegation of officials from local authorities visited the shelter to witness for themselves and they praised what Team Zamzam is doing on the ground. The local prefect said: “Team Zamzam, you are not only filling the gap that many humanitarian organisations have failed to fill in but you are teaching us and the entire community techniques and possibilities for survival in difficult times.”
(Eric: this guidance and teaching derive from the extensive experience Team Zamzam has acquired over the past five years. They are particularly valuable humanitarians in this context)
- In addition to this communal cooking, there is also a children’s morning breakfast consisting of hot milk, and milk cooked with zalabia. The children’s breakfast program was able to save more than 18,000 children, many of whom were close to death from severe malnutrition; these breakfasts continue twice a week. This morning breakfast program is loved very much by children and their families.
Total number of beneficiaries from communal meals:
215 households
11,227
(18,000 children fed in weekly breakfasts)
Distribution of some foodstuffs and health necessities to those most in need:
Food:
Sugar: 425 kilos
Flour: 300 kilos
Red lentils: 150 kilos
Rice 150 kilos
Sanitary cleaning materials:
72 tubes of toothpaste
12 dozen razors
Total number of beneficiaries:
92 families (416 individuals)
Counseling Sessions:
Individual counseling sessions: 52
Group counseling sessions: 12
(Eric: It should also be said that the two large tents that have been constructed on the Darfur side of Tina/Tiné have begun to serve as crucial communal space—for storage (for both Team Zamzam and other, small local NGOs), for sheltering the newly arrived, for meetings, for the provision of some privacy for nursing mothers who have no other shelter, and a host of other uses.
Additional tents are a high priority in an area that has a large population without any shelter. The heavy seasonal rains may have ended, but extreme temperature variations, insect swarms, and simple privacy make shelter exceedingly important to displaced persons.
The members of Team Zamzam remain understandably proud to have been recognized by the Humanitarian Affairs Commission of North Darfur as a “non-governmental organization:
