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CHANTILLY, Va. — The indoor basketball court at a Northern Virginia fitness center echoes with a familiar chorus of cheers and groans punctuated by a blaring buzzer. Gihad Salih watches from the sidelines as two teams face off.
The event, a fundraiser on an August weekend for local Sudanese aid organizations, feels a long way from the corpse-strewn streets of Khartoum, where some of his extended family remain.
The Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group battling Sudan’s military since April, had moved deeper into the neighborhood where Salih’s uncles live, they had said in a conversation by WhatsApp the week before. A home nearby had been hit, killing a neighbor’s daughter.
Sweat drips down Salih’s short beard. He tries to stay positive.
The casual tournament — Slam Dunk for Sudan — is one of many grass-roots humanitarian fundraisers Sudanese immigrants and their descendants in the West have led since the war began. From North America to Australia, Sudanese people have raised money for emergency medicines, food and rent; lobbied officials to ease entry for refugees; and crowdsourced information about road safety, medical care and getting money into the country.
With the conflict grinding into its sixth month, many Sudanese people and their supporters around the world are growing frustrated as the East African nation struggles for its share of international relief budgets and to remain on the global aid agenda.
Last week, representatives from the United Nations, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, European Union and African Union met in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly to discuss the spiraling humanitarian crises.
But the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, has received 27 percent, or $266 million, of the $1 billion it requested for its emergency response. “Despite the urgency of the crisis,” the agency warned in early August, “funding has trickled in.”
Sudanese diaspora initiatives, while small, could become increasingly important as other aid channels and international promises fall through or fail to materialize.
“We just want this war, this violence to end,” Salih said. “Then we will be able to seek progress again for Sudan.”
Two years ago, the Sudanese military and RSF temporarily joined sides to oust the country’s first civilian-led government in decades. In April, the two forces were supposed to sign a power-sharing deal. Instead, fierce fighting broke out.
What’s behind the fighting in Sudan, and what is at stake?
Outside of Africa and the Middle East — home to several million Sudanese refugees — the United States, Canada, Britain and Australia have among the largest Sudanese populations. About 70,000 Sudanese people live in the United States, according to the World Population Review. After the Midwest, some of the largest communities are in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.
For decades, Sudanese immigrants and refugees fled Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist military dictatorship. Some were survivors of the Darfur genocide, led by Bashir and the RSF’s predecessor in the mid-2000s. Then in 2019, pro-democracy protests led by civil society ousted Bashir. Young Sudanese people living abroad reconnected and reengaged. Hope was high.
The 2021 coup, led by Sudanese General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, stopped democratic reforms.
More than 5.4 million people have fled or been displaced internally since April, UNHCR estimates. The bulk of refugees have gone to neighboring Chad or Egypt. More than 1,500 others have been killed, according to the Sudanese Health Ministry, though the true death toll is probably much higher. The country’s health-care system has collapsed.
The United States earlier this month announced more than $130 million in additional assistance for Sudan. But that same day, more than 50 human rights and humanitarian organizations issued a joint statement calling for more immediate international aid and action. “The country is no longer at the precipice of mass atrocities — it has fallen over the edge,” they said.
The West’s muted response is not unusual for political and humanitarian crises in the Global South, said Paul Asquith, research and advocacy director at Shabaka, a London-based think tank focused on migration and humanitarian issues.
Major international aid organizations have set up inside Sudan or along its borders. But Sudanese civil society organizations still run much of the humanitarian response, said Kholood Khair, 38, founding director of the Khartoum-based think tank Confluence Advisory. “A lot more diaspora remittance is going to these groups rather than traditional routes of humanitarian organizations.”
From Baltimore, Bayadir Mohamed-Osman, 27, said she often feels that Sudanese groups “have been doing the work of global organizations.”
Her family fled to Northern Virginia in 2000 to escape al-Bashir’s persecution, though her father was back in Sudan when the latest war began.
Sudanese stuck in war zone after U.S. destroyed their passports
Early on in the conflict, she lost hope that the United States would make Sudan’s plight a priority. Western embassies closed after the first day of fighting. Countries organized evacuations for their citizens but left many dual citizens behind — in her view, a jarring contrast to the West’s reception of Ukrainian refugees.
If the United States treats “their own citizens as second-class citizens, why would I expect them to care about some random Sudanese people in a small village?” she said.
Mohamed-Osman, who is finishing her master’s degree in public health, volunteers for Sustainable Development Response Organization, a Washington-based group providing Sudanese people with online medical classes and consultations. When a friend told her he would be traveling from Saudi Arabia to Port Sudan the next day, within hours she raised money and gathered a list of emergency medicines doctors needed him to deliver.
Likewise, Houston resident Yasir Yousif Elamin’s phone has not stopped buzzing. The president of the Sudanese American Physicians Association (SAPA), Elamin said he met with a Syrian counterpart for advice on the war’s second day.
“One of the first things he said is that it is going to be overwhelming,” said Elamin, an oncologist with two young children. “He said you have to remember that you have a family and a job.”
Elamin said the advice is sound — though nearly impossible to follow. “It’s such an experience that shakes you to the core.”
In Sudan, SAPA runs free mobile medical clinics, offers consultations and is paying the salaries of about 2,000 medical professionals, among other initiatives.
Early in the war, SAPA saw an influx of donations, but “unfortunately, the world is a place full of tragedy,” Elamin said.
Veterans of violence, Sudan’s weary doctors brave another crisis
Sudanese organizers in Britain, Canada and Australia also reported drops in donations.
“The war has affected every Sudanese family here,” said Mohamed Salah, 43, president of the Sudanese Community Association of Victoria, Australia. “Everyone is financially supporting their families in Sudan.”
The association advocated for visa extensions for Sudanese people in Australia, he said. But it’s frustrating not to be able to do more.
“I’m disappointed with Canada and with the international community because the disaster is so huge,” said Imad Satti, 55, the Alberta-based director of the Sudanese Canada Community Association. “It’s a real human crisis.”
The father of three said he often can’t sleep. Every day brings “news of a disaster” of someone being killed or dying without medicine, he said.
Last month’s basketball tournament in Virginia raised about $3,500 — a respectable sum, Salih said.
Who won is disputed: Two teams claimed victory after the tournament’s complicated scoring process.
“At the end of the day, Sudan wins,” Salih said.