GEDAREF, Sudan: When paramilitary Rapid Support Force fighters closed in on the Sudanese border town and oil field of Heglig, paraplegic Dowa Hamed could only cling to her husband’s back as they fled, “like a child,” she said
Now, the 25-year-old mother of five — paralyzed from the waist down — lies shell-shocked on a cot in the Abu Al-Naga displacement camp, a dusty transit center just outside the eastern city of Gedaref, nearly 800 km from home.
But her family’s actual journey was much longer, crossing the South Sudan border twice and passing from one group of fighters to another, as they ran for their lives with their children in tow alongside hundreds of others.
“We fled with nothing,” Hamed said. “Only the clothes on our backs.”
Hamed and her family are among tens of thousands of people recently uprooted by fighting in southern Kordofan — the latest front in the war between Sudan’s army and the Rapid Support Forces that erupted in April 2023.
Since capturing the army’s last stronghold in Darfur in October, the RSF and their allies have pushed deeper into neighboring Kordofan, an oil-rich agricultural region divided into three states: West, North, and South.
In recent weeks, the paramilitary group has consolidated control over West Kordofan, seized Heglig — home to Sudan’s largest oil field — and tightened its siege on Kadugli and Dilling in South Kordofan, where hundreds of thousands now face mass starvation.
On the night of Dec. 7, the inhabitants of Heglig — many of them the families of oil technicians, engineers, and soldiers stationed at the field — got word that an attack would happen at dawn.
“We ran on foot, barefoot, without proper clothes,” said Hiyam Al-Hajj, 29, a mother of 10 who says she had to leave her mother and six siblings behind as she ran around 30 km to the border.
“The RSF chased us to the border. The South Sudan army told them we were in their country and they would not hand us over,” she said.
They were sheltered in South Sudan’s Unity State, but barely fed.
“Those who had money could feed their children,” Al-Hajj said. “Those who did not went hungry.”
They spent nearly four weeks on the move, trekking long distances on foot and spending nights out in the open, sleeping on the bare ground.
“We were hungry,” she said. “But we did not feel the hunger; all we cared about was our safety.”
Eventually, authorities in South Sudan put them in large trucks that carried them back across the border to army-controlled territory, where they could head east, away from the front lines.
Hamed, who was paralyzed during childbirth, said that “during the truck rides, my body ached with every movement.”
But not everyone made it to Gedaref.
Between the canvas tents of the Abu Al-Naga camp, 14-year-old Sarah is struggling to care for her little brother alone.
In South Sudan, their parents had put them on one of the trucks, “then they said the truck was full and promised they would get on the next one.”
But weeks on, the siblings have received no word as to where their mother and father might be.
Inside the tents, children and mothers sleep on the ground, huddled together for warmth, while outside, children dart across the cracked soil, dust clinging to their bare feet.
According to camp director Ali Yehia Ahmed, 240 families, or around 1,200 people, are now taking refuge at Abu Al-Naga.
“The camp’s space is very small,” Ahmed said, adding that food was in increasingly short supply.
Food is distributed from a single point, forcing families to wait for limited rations.
Some women haul water from a single well, pouring it into plastic buckets to cook, wash, and clean with, while others wait in a long line outside a makeshift health clinic, little more than a large canvas tent.
Asia Abdelrahman Hussein, the minister of social welfare and development of Gedaref State, said shelter was one of the most urgent needs, especially during the winter months.
“The shelters are not enough. We need support from other organizations to provide safe housing and adequate shelter,” she said.
In one of the tents, Sawsan Othman Moussa, 27, said how she had been forced to flee three times since fighting broke out in Dilling.
Now, though she might be safe, “every tent is cramped, medicine is scarce, and during cold nights, we suffer.”