Enlarge image
Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock visits the Gorom refugee camp
Photo: Florian Gaertner / photothek / IMAGO
Muna Mahadi has prepared for the visit from Germany. Even before Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock's (Greens) entourage arrived at the Gorom refugee camp on Friday afternoon, she made a small cardboard poster with a felt-tip pen. The entire desperation of the 33-year-old Sudanese woman is captured in a few words in broken English. “I fled from Sudan with my two daughters to this camp,” it says, “now we are dying a slow death here.”
When the minister arrives at the camp of tents and makeshift shelters, Mahadi and dozens of other women scream loudly. They have formed a kind of trellis for the guest. Every woman wants to speak to the minister from faraway Germany, everyone wants to tell the guest their story. Baerbock stops briefly and greets the refugees from Sudan, but the bodyguards are already pushing. The minister disappears into a shed to talk to some women, without cameras.
The young mother Mahadi is not part of the group. With tears in her eyes, she tells us outside how she fled the capital Khartoum with her two small daughters in May 2023, a good month after the outbreak of war in Sudan. How she eventually lost her husband in the chaos. To this day she has no contact with him. The fact that a German minister is coming here gives her a bit of hope. “Without help from abroad they would be lost here,” she says through tears.
Failed attempts to end the war
The camp in Gorom seems like a sad example of the upheaval that the war in Sudan has caused throughout East Africa. The rival generals Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo have been fighting there since April 2023. Their troops spread fear and terror, murder and pillage. Since the start of the war, seven million people have fled within Sudan and across its borders. The war triggered one of the largest refugee crises ever.
But you rarely read about Sudan in Western media. After many nations rescued their citizens from Khartoum with military aircraft, the brutal conflict is hardly reported anymore; despite the dramatic figures, it is a forgotten war. Several neighboring countries such as Kenya, Egypt and Ethiopia had announced that they wanted to end the brutal power struggle. So far, however, all attempts to calm the war between the two generals' troops, which have been heavily armed over the years, have failed.
That's exactly why Baerbock decided to travel to the region for a few days. Even if German influence is not great in East Africa, she wanted to at least raise awareness of the forgotten war. Europe in particular should not turn a blind eye to what is happening here. "The feeling that no one is looking anyway creates a climate of impunity and thus further increases the atrocities," she says in the refugee camp in South Sudan.
Baerbock also campaigned for more commitment in her political discussions. In Kenya, she encouraged the local president to get more involved in possible negotiations. During their three-day trip, however, new negative news came from Sudan. There were new confrontations between the troops of the two rival generals, especially in West Kordofan state on the border with the neighboring state of South Sudan.
The minister had little choice but to appeal to everyone involved not to forget Sudan. After her visit to the refugee women, she said, visibly moved, that the states in the region, but also the Gulf states, should not turn a blind eye to the humanitarian suffering. What is needed first is quick financial help, especially for the many women and children among the refugees. Baerbock emphasized that sexual violence and rape were “systematically used as a weapon of war” in Sudan.
Baerbock: The West must not leave East Africa alone
The young mother Mahadi knows these atrocities. As she fled, she says, she was repeatedly attacked and raped by armed men. She and her two children are also not safe in the camp in South Sudan. “Thieves often come through the camp at night, they cut up the tents and steal from us,” she says. A UN aid worker confirms that the security situation in Gorom is more than precarious. Armed soldiers occasionally patrol the camp, but the refugees have no trust in the men.
In East Africa, the minister never tired of emphasizing that the West should not leave East Africa alone. After the visit to Kenya, she called for the first step to be to ensure that international aid is better coordinated. In order to prevent the collapse of Sudan from destabilizing the entire region, the supply of weapons to the generals' troops would have to be cut off. Nevertheless, the minister is also aware that none of the major players such as the USA currently want to actively intervene in the conflict.
As a result, she had no choice but to appeal to the two generals to finally sit down at the negotiating table. Refugee Muna Mahadi has little hope that this will happen soon. "The generals' troops have been fighting each other for a year now, neither side has won anything," she says, "so why should they negotiate?" Behind her, the drivers of the armored minister's jeep are getting ready to leave; further political talks in the capital are on the schedule.