On the frontline of Sudan’s forgotten war
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2025
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For almost two years, two armies have fought a brutal civil war in Sudan, Africa’s third largest country. Over 150,000 have died, 11 million have been displaced and evidence of genocidal war crimes have emerged. So why has the war in Sudan been forgotten? The Times’ Special Correspondent Anthony Loyd has recently returned from a reporting trip on the frontline and tells The Story about the people he met.
This episode includes descriptions of war and rape.
This podcast was brought to you thanks to the support of readers of The Times and The Sunday Times. Subscribe today: http://thetimes.com/thestory
Guest: Anthony Loyd, Special Correspondent, The Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Producer: Edward Drummond.
Clips: BBC.
Photo: Anthony Loyd/The Times.
Watch Anthony’s video from Sudan
Further reading: Inside Sudan’s forgotten war: 150,000 dead, 11 million displaced
Get in touch: thestory@thetimes.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before we begin, a warning. This episode contains descriptions of war and sexual violence. |
| 0:11.2 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. I'm Manvine Rana. |
| 0:19.9 | For almost two years, a deadly civil war has been raging in Sudan, and yet it's hardly ever talked about. |
| 0:31.4 | A few weeks ago, the veteran war correspondent at the Times, Anthony Lloyd, made his way to the front line. |
| 0:42.3 | So this was the first day that I'd actually reached Ombudsman, |
| 0:46.1 | Ombudsman being the city, the twin city to Khartoum and a butting Khartoum just divided by the Nile. |
| 0:52.3 | And in Ombudsman, there's been a really heavy fighting, particularly |
| 0:56.2 | last year throughout the spring and then again in the autumn. So a lot of the cities in ruins, |
| 1:03.6 | one of the main cemeteries in Ombudsman is called the Ahmed Shafi cemetery. It's one of several, |
| 1:08.9 | but it's the principal one. And the first day I went there, |
| 1:13.6 | because you get in a cemetery, a very good understanding of not just death toll, but what people |
| 1:20.6 | are dying of. In the middle of a funeral service for a guy whose nickname was Bundug, |
| 1:29.3 | he had been a builder and he had been a prisoner. |
| 1:32.3 | And he had died essentially of malnutrition and he'd been really severely tortured. |
| 1:37.3 | He'd died 10 days after getting out of prison. |
| 1:40.3 | And he was being buried. |
| 1:42.3 | Bundug's body was on this improvised bed platform. |
| 1:48.4 | And the duo, the funeral prayers were being recited by the lead undertaker Abdin Dirm. |
| 1:59.0 | And it was quite a dramatic scene. |
| 2:02.7 | The sun was going down. |
| 2:04.0 | There's just graves and graves around. |
| 2:05.4 | This cemetery has been extended three times since the start of the war two years ago to cope with the dead. |
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