Mohanad el-Balal is one of many Sudanese civilians doing everything they can to avoid a devastating famine – and there is one man whose photo he will never forget.
Sadiq, a middle-aged father, grips the arms of his wheelchair tightly to keep himself standing, his painfully thin legs in front of him.
Sadig “is in a wheelchair, but he is not disabled”. Balal says, “He is so malnourished that he has lost the ability to walk.”
UK-based Balal is one of the co-founders of Khartoum Aid Kitchen, which provides food to keep tens of thousands of people alive in the Sudanese capital.
When volunteers found Sadiq, he “hadn’t had a proper meal in over a month,” Balal said, because whatever food he got, he gave to his children.
Unfortunately, right now there are many people like Sadig in Sudan.
The country is being destroyed by a war between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which broke out in April last year.
More than nine million people have fled their homes and everyone in the country has been affected in some way.
Things are about to get worse.
“I expect that by September around 70% of the population will be very hungry,” said Timmo Gaasbeek, a food security expert who has worked in Sudan.
“That could lead to two and a half million deaths, or more. It could be as high as four million. There’s just not enough food.”
He said the way food kitchens distribute food is a big help, but it’s not enough.
“The war has paralyzed the country’s economy, so people don’t have money,” said Amgad al-Farid, a veteran human rights activist who heads the think tank Fikra for Studies and Development.
“In addition, the RSF took over Gezira state, which has the largest agricultural project in Sudan, and produced many of our daily needs.
“And due to huge inflation, food imports have decreased,” Dr. Farid explained.
In short, there is not enough food and what food there is has become terribly expensive.
During the war, the BBC’s Newsday program received regular updates from Ahmed, a resident of Omdurman, one of the three towns that make up the capital.
In a part of Omdurman, controlled by the RSF, prices have increased by 400% in recent times, said Ahmed, whom we call only by his first name.
“My wife came back from that area and told me that most people only eat once a day, and sometimes not even that.
“It wasn’t like this a few months ago, when food looted from factories was sold at low prices.
“Now, in the areas controlled by the RSF, food has become very expensive and rare.
“Hundreds of people line up near where I am to buy lentils for breakfast. Some of them add water to the lentils so that they can eat them at night too,” said Ahmed.
He had to explain to his young children why they can’t eat the cookies they loved and how, although things are difficult for his family, they are much worse for many others.
Ahmed said humanitarian aid rarely arrives and people only survive because of food kitchens. But some of them are running out of money and even running out of food to buy.
Mr Balal from Khartoum Aid Kitchen knows people who have died of hunger.
People are fighting and dying, not only in Khartoum, but also in Darfur, Kordofan, Gezira and other places.
Ayman Musa, from the NGO South Kordofan and Blue Nile Coordination Unit, spoke about people in the Nuba Mountains in the south who had to boil leaves to survive.
Aid workers such as Justin Brady, head of the UN humanitarian body (OCHA) in Sudan, despair at the lack of international attention to the war in Sudan and claim that the international community has simply not provided the necessary funds to help the people who are suffering. need.
More than $2 billion (£1.6 billion) was pledged at a donor conference in Paris in April, but Brady said “this is proving to be a bit elusive”.
“We note that just under a billion of that amount is earmarked for humanitarian action in Sudan, and some of those funds have already been dispersed, and some of those commitments have not yet materialized.”
Many Sudanese believe the world is turning its back on the country’s suffering.
This is not everything.
“Both sides use hunger as a weapon of war,” said Alex de Waal of the World Peace Foundation. He has studied famine and conflict in Sudan since the early 1980s.
The RSF, said De Waal, is “essentially a looting machine.
“They attack the countryside and cities, stealing everything there is, and that’s how they support themselves.”
While the Sudanese Armed Forces “are trying to starve the areas under RSF control” to increase pressure on their rival.
The two sides, De Waal added, “show no signs of any willingness to abandon what is a cheap and very effective weapon.”
Both sides deny the accusation.
But across the country, people go hungry, worry about where their next meal will come from — and, in some cases, die of hunger.
What many agree is that without an end to the fighting and a colossal effort to reach desperate people, things will soon get much, much worse.
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