Imprecise news out of the State Department indicates that the regional bureaus will likely gain added power and scope. Rumors that the Bureau of African Affairs will be closed are false. USAID will probably be folded into the State Department, but not wholesale as the U.S. Information Agency was in 1999. Instead, the aid function will be attached to the regional bureaus. It is highly possible that embassies in Africa will be closed, including in South Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Central African Republic, and Lesotho.
In late March the SAF ousted the RSF from the Khartoum-Omdurman area in central Sudan. On April 13 the Rapid Support Forces seized the Zamzam IDP camp near El Fasher in Darfur, after a four-day assault, killing an estimated 400 civilians and scattering people toward El Fasher and nearby Tawila. On April 16 RSF leader Gen. Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti) announced the creation of a parallel Sudanese government, a “government of peace and unity” to include a wide range of ethnic groups reflecting “the true face of Sudan.” The RSF began air attacks on Port Sudan May 6. The State Department denounced the slaughter at Zamzam, but otherwise the Administration has indicated little interest in the Sudan catastrophe. Our British friends report that, of the eight bishops in Sudan, three are active in their dioceses and three others are displaced but active in neighboring dioceses. Church women come together on Tuesdays to pray in all the dioceses.
In the April 20 New York Times Declan Walsh wrote:
“The children died one after the other. Twelve acutely malnourished infants living in one corner of Sudan’s war-ravaged capital, Khartoum. Abdo, an 18-month-old boy, had been rushed to a clinic by his mother as he was dying. His ribs protruded from his withered body. The next day, a doctor laid him out on a blanket with a teddy bear motif, his eyes closed. Like the other 11 children, Abdo starved to death in the weeks after President Trump froze all U.S. foreign assistance, said local aid workers and a doctor. American-funded soup kitchens in Sudan, including the one near Abdo’s house, had been the only lifelines for tens of thousands of people besieged by fighting.”
AFRECS has transmitted some funds to Archbishop Ezekiel Kondo in Port Sudan. We suggested he seek to put Episcopalian churches in Khartoum/Omdurman in contact with the emergency soup kitchens .
The cancellation of US visas for South Sudan has not been reversed. The South Sudan Embassy on April 15 advised its citizens:
- South Sudanese nationals residing in the United States can continue to stay legally under the terms of their current immigration status.
- However, if you depart the United States, you cannot re-enter on a revoked visa.
- Citizens under Temporary Protection Status will not have a pathway to regularize their status.
