the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Mar 25, 2024
In its March 6 report on Sudan, the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) reported that only five percent of the country’s population could afford “a square meal a day.”
That’s a truly shocking figure: it means 46 million Sudanese are facing hunger!
The immediate cause of this crisis is a barbaric war raging for 10 months. Two generals, one heading the country’s regular army (SAF) and the other the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), united to put down the popular movement that threw out Sudan’s former dictator in 2019. Now, they have been fighting each other for power.
Both generals have been targeting the population, bombing and machine-gunning people and committing ethnic cleansing. The war has killed tens of thousands, destroyed infrastructure and crippled the economy. Millions of people go hungry as the warring armies block passage to aid workers and seize aid supplies.
More than 8 million people, forced to flee the violence, are trying to survive in camps in Sudan and neighboring countries. They also have no food to eat, and their water is totally polluted. In the absence of health centers and medication, diseases such as malaria and measles are taking their toll, particularly among children.
Like other civil wars, regional as well as bigger powers are taking sides and supplying arms: Egypt, Iran and Ukraine have been said to back the SAF, while the UAE (an ally of Saudi Arabia, which in turn is an ally of the U.S.), Kenya, and Russia have been named as supporters of the RSF. But it’s also common for alliances to shift in such local conflicts. In any event, there is no end in sight to the brutal war.
The world has forgotten the Sudanese people, said Cindy McCain, the director of the World Food Program. And while the U.S. has been backing Israel and Ukraine with billions of dollars in two other bloody wars, Africa—a continent brutally plundered by imperialism for centuries—has not been a focus of U.S. imperialism lately, nor its capitalist news media.
Ever more destructive wars, poverty and starvation: the world is thrown more and more into barbarism. This is the world that imperialism—an outgrowth of capitalism—has made.