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Smoke rises during clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Khartoum, Sudan on April 19, 2023Credit: Omer Erdem/Anadolu Agency/Getty
Sudan’s academics and students have been forced to abandon universities and residential campuses following two weeks of heavy artillery and aerial bombardment in the capital Khartoum and other major cities, as clashes have erupted between warring military factions.
The violence began on 15 April between members of the country’s national army, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and a rival paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Although a temporary ceasefire is in place, street battles and explosions are still being reported in Khartoum.
The conflict has killed more than 400 people and injured 3,700 others, according to the United Nations. Thousands more are on the move, looking to find a safe place. Most of the injured are without medical attention. Nearly two-thirds of hospitals in Khartoum are out of service, says the World Health Organization.
“This was an unexpected conflict,” says Deen Sharp, an urban geographer at the London School of Economics. Sharp is compiling a list of academics in Sudan who need money, food, water and medicines. “No one was really prepared.”
Sudan’s people have lived mostly under military rule since they gained independence from Britain in 1956. A popular revolution in 2019 overthrew a previous 26-year dictatorship, but the army remains the most powerful institution.
Nature spoke to three researchers in Sudan who are among the millions of people caught up in the turmoil.
Hisham Bilal is a researcher in the department of sociology and anthropology at the University of Khartoum.Credit: Courtesy of Hisham Bilal
Anthropologist at the University of Khartoum
I woke up in the morning of 15 April to a phone call from my sister. I was planning to go to the university that day, but she told me she had heard the sound of clashes.
The University of Khartoum is close to both SAF headquarters and RSF headquarters. Almost 90 students and faculty living on the university campus were stranded. They moved to the basement where they hid with some staff members for days. They were freed three days later, but one of the students died from gunfire and had to be buried on the grounds of the engineering campus.
I was living on another university campus with my wife and children, close to a military base. I remember when the electricity went off and we didn’t have water. Nobody has been able to leave the campus to go anywhere to get any supplies, including food.
My apartment was hit by many bullets. I counted four and they entered from the balcony and the windows. At that point, we decided to leave no matter what might happen.
Shahinaz Bedri, director general of the national public health laboratory in Khartoum and a pathologist at Ahfad University for women in Omdurman, Khartoum state, Sudan.Credit: Nayef Kheyri
Pathologist and director-general of the National Public Health Laboratory in Khartoum
I left Khartoum yesterday with my mother, who has dementia and is bedridden and whose health has deteriorated. We headed to Port Sudan by the Red Sea, 800 kilometres away from Khartoum because it’s safer and my mother can have access to health services.
I run the National Public Health Laboratory in Khartoum, which is the national reference regulatory laboratory for infectious diseases with over 500 staff. On site, we have samples for COVID-19, influenza, measles, polio, tuberculosis and cholera among others. We also have a biosecure unit. Specimens are in a secure place, but we’re worried that they may be mishandled by armed groups entering health facilities.
Several days ago, armed groups entered the lab, ordered our security staff who are trained to handle emergencies to leave. We are worried that there might be a bio-risk for them if they open fridges, because they go in and they sabotage. They have been known to enter health facilities.
Power has been cut in several hospitals and in our lab. There are always electricity shortages in Sudan — that’s why we have power from diesel generators. But now because of this war, we can’t refuel them.
By now, most of the unrefrigerated samples would have died. But we need to get people to come in and safely assess what’s happening, deal with issues, and do bio and chemical waste management.
The other thing is that we have very sensitive analytical chemistry equipment like gas chromatography. Some are attached to gas cylinders like helium and hydrogen, so we don’t want somebody going in and shooting. That’s a worry for us.
Social and medial anthropologist at the Centre for Economic, Legal and Social Studies in Khartoum
The situation at the University of Khartoum has left people traumatized but this is a general trauma since the violence has left bodies strewn across different parts of the city.
Forced to stay at home, academics are turning to social media to write analyses of the situation. But there’s also a lot of propaganda — unidentifiable people who are just writing and spreading misinformation.
This is a challenge for academics working on the ground to counter. We have a problem here with the military overturning democracies in the post-colonial era. It’s always the Sudanese state not accepting alternative ideologies.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01478-z
Readers seeking to support Sudan’s academic community can contact Scholars at Risk, a New York-based charitable organization that helps threatened scholars worldwide.
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