Sudan's silent suffering, one year into generals' war

Sudan is experiencing "one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent memory" and "the largest internal displacement crisis in the world", the United Nations says.

It is also on track to become "the world's worst hunger crisis".

Aid workers have called it the "forgotten war" affecting a country of 48 million — more than half of whom they say need humanitarian assistance.

"People have been killed and raped and assaulted and detained and beaten and taken away for months at a time. We're used to it," said Mahmud Mokhtar, who helped provide volunteer social services in the Khartoum area during the war before finally fleeing to Cairo.

Experts see no end in sight to the fighting, which began on April 15 last year between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Since then thousands of people have been killed, including up to 15,000 in one West Darfur town alone, according to U.N. experts.

More than 8.5 million have had to flee their homes to seek safety elsewhere in Sudan or across borders in neighbouring countries.

The war "is brutal, devastating and shows no signs of coming to an end", said veteran Sudan expert Alex de Waal.

But even if the violence stops now, "the state has collapsed, and the path to rebuilding it is long and fraught", de Waal said.

Before the bombing and pillaging began, Sudan was already one of the world's poorest countries.

Yet the U.N. says that by January, its humanitarian response scheme had only been 3.1 percent funded and can barely reach one of every 10 people in need.

 'Milestone of shame' 

"Before the start of the war, there were dozens of...