The Current - ‘Surviving Sudan’ from journalist Michelle Shephard

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

The war in Sudan continues to rage. It’s a power struggle between the country’s military and the paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces or RSF. The U.S. has labelled it a genocide. The ICC is investigating reports of war crimes. It is widely considered the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Humanitarian organizations are struggling to keep up and refugees feel forgotten.Journalist and filmmaker Michelle Shephard recently returned from Chad, on the border with Sudan. This is her documentary, Surviving Sudan.

This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always over-delivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors, all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough. Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing.

Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. The war in Sudan continues to rage. It is a power struggle between the country's military and the paramilitary group, the rapid support forces, or RSF. The United States has labeled the conflict a genocide. The international criminal court is investigating reports of war crimes.

And what's happening in Sudan is widely considered to be the world's worst humanitarian crisis. And yet, War receives little attention in the media or in the corridors of power. Humanitarian organizations are struggling to keep up and refugees feel forgotten. The journalist and filmmaker Michelle Shepard recently returned from Chad on the border with Sudan and just a warning that the stories she heard from survivors include accounts of violence and sexual assault. Here's Michelle's documentary, Surviving Sudan.

At the border where Sudan becomes Chad, hundreds of refugees stream in daily by horse, donkey cart, or motorcycle. Many just walk, sometimes for weeks to reach here. They're heading to Audrey, the sprawling camp that has sprung up less than five kilometers from the border. It's a makeshift city with temporary shelters, an improvised mark. and as the sun sets, there's often an impromptu kids' soccer match at the edge of the camp. The stories from those who have made it here offer a rare window into the war in Sudan. My name is Abdul Ahmed. I'm accompanied by Abdul Ahmed, Abdul-Ramann.

Medesant Sans Frontier or Doctors Without Borders. Abdul-Ahmad is a refugee himself. So in Sudan, I am from west, therefore, he arrived in the first wave of life. of people who escaped when the war broke out in 2023. The war began in Sudan, I think everything was damaged. I think nobody's not been affected. His family split up. The road to get here was patrolled by the paramilitary group

known as the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF. It was dangerous to travel by day, so they traveled at night. It took Abdul Ahmed and his older brother and his mother nine hours to reach the camp. Three of his other brothers came on a different road. They encountered the RSF who started shooting at them. The two of them, the place that they've been shot, it was a little bit okay, so it was so dangerous.

But my sir brother, the place that he's been shot, it was so sensitive, what it called in English? Abdallah Ahmed points to his collarbone. Then he's been killed there. In the two and a half years since the war began, almost 12 million Sudanese citizens have been forcibly displaced. 200,000 of them, including Abdul Ahmed, live here in this makeshift camp in Audre. It's known as a transit camp where people stay until they can be moved to a more permanent shelter. The refugees live in homes of sticks that have been bound together and covered with plastic cloth. We're invited into one and sit on mats as hot tea is brought in on a tray.

Cell phones are going off and people are talking and coming and going. Abdallah Ahmed switches between Arabic and English. Thanks for talking with me. He introduces us and explains that we'd like to document what they've been through. Please just answer whatever you're comfortable. We assure them there's no pressure to talk. But they want to. Having lost almost everything, their stories are what they have left.

Israel-Din is 20 and lives here with nine of her relatives. She was a teenager and in school when the war broke out two years ago. Her family lived in Darfur in a town called Al-Fashir. When the war started in Fashir, they left Fashir going to Zam-Zam. Zamsam is a massive IDP, an internally displaced person's camp inside Sudan. At one point, the population was over-eastern. 700,000. And for a year, Isra sheltered there. The camp was dangerously overcrowded. The UN World Food Program officially declared a famine in the region in 2024. Then, on April 11th of

2025, a massacre. The RSF seized control of the camp on Sunday, after a four-day assault that government and aid groups said left hundreds dead or wounded. Isra and her family knew they'd have to find shelter elsewhere. She's saying that the road was really difficult. They find many people are being beaten in front of their eyes. Some of women are being rape, abuse, harassment. Like, everything was really so worse in the world. Her father being killed in front of her eyes.

Was it in their home or in the streets? It was in the road when they were coming from Zam-Zam to Tovila. This detail is sadly not uncommon. The population of Adre camp is predominantly women and children. So many survivors have stories of watching their husbands, male friends, or brothers killed, suspected of being fighters themselves. And after the soldiers killed her father, what did they, what did they do?

So when he'd been killed, they just left him like this there. They didn't bear him because the time was so hard and even you can't have minutes. So they just left him like this. Did the soldiers say anything to them? So when they find them, they used to gather them in one place and they say you are the wives of the military and then they told them that you have.

have to stand up and run, and when we shoot, the one that being killed is finished, and then the others who are survived, they can go. So when they're one, they shoot behind them. Isra describes how the RSF soldiers began shooting from their trucks. As she tells the story, her little brother doesn't say a word. He's sitting next to her. Their arms are touching. His face is frozen in an almost vacant expression.

She later tells me it's just at night when he cries. We leave Isra and her family and walk a short distance to another shelter. Hello, al-salam. It's late afternoon, and the punishing sun is starting to soften. On a mat, under a tarp, two little girls are asleep on their stomachs. So those are the daughters of his sister. One of them snores, not waking up as their uncle, Ali Abkar Zakari, pulls up a plastic chair. Thank him very much for speaking with us today.

Ali leans his crutches behind him. He's lost his leg. Like Isra and her family, he fled here after Zam Zam was attacked. His home had been bombed. His wife and three of his daughters died immediately. His leg was injured and later had to be amputated. As we begin to talk, three of his surviving children come and sit at his feet. His 12-year-old daughter has had her left arm amputated. His eight-year-old twins, a girl and a boy, show the scars of the bombing two on their legs and backs.

Again, Abd al-Ahmad helps us with translation. So those curdling, their mother and the three of their sisters are being killed. They've been died because of that event. I'm so sorry. How did he leave after that to get here? Abdullah Ahmed listens carefully to the whole story. But he pauses and takes a deep breath before translating. You're okay?

He's nice for you to break. He's saying that the situation of the road that they were coming. it was so difficult. He has witnessed many types of rapes, killing, stealing, every kind of horrible thing that you can imagine. It's been happening. He tells me they couldn't walk because they were also injured. And the only vehicle Ali could get was a donkey and a cart.

Even that became a target for thieves. They come and even when they find the donkey that you carry a child dealing, it's okay. They're going to get the donkey and left you with nothing. As we have money, they get, if you have good clothing, they took, like, everything that you have. If it's good, they get from you. As we're leaving, Ali asks if anyone will help him. He says he's thankful for the support he has had so far, but he doesn't know what to do, where to go now.

Thank you again. Thanks. He's saying that you see that we are really a big family. I have no leg to stand up and hold my family in my shoulders and no one can help because really I want my family to be in a good situation. This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always over delivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors all doing so much with so little.

You've got to be Scarborough Defined by our uphill battle And always striving towards new heights And you can help us keep climbing Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo.ca. Are your pipes ready for a deep freeze? You can take action to help protect your home from extreme weather. Discover prevention tips that can help you be climate ready

at keep it intact.ca. Understanding Sudan's current crisis is a history lesson of discrimination, colonization, and proxy wars. Sudan matters on the global stage because of its location on the Red Sea, its sheer size, and its many resources, gold, oil, and agriculture. President Omar al-Bashire ruled the country for near, nearly 30 years. He was the first sitting president to be indicted by the International Criminal Court for the genocide in Darfur in the early 2000s. Over 300,000 people died, and the world paid

attention. But President Elbashir wasn't ousted until 2019 after a popular uprising. The country's two most powerful generals, known as Hametti and General Burhan, agreed to join forces to push him from power. Hametti had led the notorious John Jouid that carried out President al-Bashir's war in Darfur. Now, he leads the group known as the RSF. There were hopes at first that the generals would help usher in a civilian government. Instead, in 2023, they turned on each other. The fighting began in the capital of Khartoum, then quickly. engulfed the country. Civilians aren't only just casualties caught in the middle of this bloody conflict.

They're also targets. And the weapons of war being used here are horrific. Mass slaughter, starvation, and sexual violence. In another tent, sit about two. dozen women. They're chatting and laughing, passing around their babies to play, and distributing wrapped candies and bowls of nuts. The women here are supported by a Sunnis organization called Safe Space for Women and Girls that coordinates with MSF. They're making jewelry, bags, juices, and food that will be sold to help provide for their families. Everyone here

in this room is a survivor of sexual violence. And how did her husband die? The deputy director of the center is helping us with translation, and we're not naming the women to protect their identities. The woman I'm talking to tells us how, after her husband had been killed, she was assaulted, and it wasn't until she had the help of this center that she began to heal. You're not going to talk about you. Yes?

Okay, okay. Another girl comes forward. She's incredibly young and shy, and in her lap is a baby girl, gurgling happily. Five months. Oh, he's so cute. Her infant daughter is grabbing anything that is around her, reaching for my microphone,

cups on the floor, the candy wrappers. She's 13? She's only 13. and as she talks, she nervously pulls at a thread on her dress. She goes on to tell me she was living in Elginina in the Darfur region. One day, when she visited a market, she was pulled into a stall by a group of RSF's soldiers. And they raped her. At that time, she said, one of her from him has a knife and Arsuf have gun.

And after that, he said, if you are, As we talk about anything about this, told your mom or something, I can kill you. As we talk in the background, the other women continue to work, beating necklaces and bracelets, their chatting and showing each other clips of videos or songs on their phones. The girl's voice is so quiet, tentative. And I worry about the fact that I'm interviewing a minor.

I ask if perhaps anyone there knows how to reach her mother or a guardian. The woman I had just interviewed speaks up. She's mother. This is your daughter? Yeah. She is her mother. Two generations of sexual assault survivors. You don't have to ask her this, but I'm just asking you.

Yeah. Is the baby from the sexual assault? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I changed this subject and ask her about life in Sudan before the war. When she tells me her favorite subjects in school,

religion and English, there's finally a small smile. I bet her English is better than my Arabic. I'm the Eastme, Michelle. Listening to this litany of trauma is difficult. But these women and others say they want their stories told. And every tale of suffering is also a story of survival and strength. Understanding how cruel the attacks are that civilians aren't so-called collateral damage,

but intentional victims of a war is also essential to understanding the conflict. It was street protests that helped oust President al-Bashir. The people had the power. Both the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces seem intent on keeping the masses weak by design, and both sides have been accused of war crimes against civilians. But it's the RSF with the UAE backing

who have also been accused of an extermination of a people, of non-Arab ethnic groups, like the Maselite. Those killings have forced thousands of Masali people to flee, people like Dr. Jude. Now she lives in a refugee camp and works in the MSF-led hospital there. We're not using the doctor's real name or revealing her location because she still fears she'll be targeted for her ethnicity. No, I really want to...

You want to share this. Share this to the world. To talk, we sit in a quiet office, a fan hums, trying to keep the room cool. Dr. Jude tells the story of how she ended up here. She had been moving around inside Sudan to avoid being discovered by the RSF. They were living with another family in a house with their kids that they thought was safe. The army started to search for us. How was my house? The family she's staying with urges her to leave. They're worried they can't.

protect her and the children for much longer. So they said you have to follow the instruction of this driver and not to say anything. So she packed up the kids, some clothes and a bit of food, and headed out on the road. Okay, in the road, I keep playing all the roads. And the driver is noticing me. And he's trying to say, don't worry, it's okay. I will take you and your family and safe.

They passed through many checkpoints, faced by RSF fighters pointing guns at them. The driver keeps offering bribes for safe passage. He's saying to them that those people, I guarantee they do not do any problems, and they are not massality. He's saying that. So, and they give them some money. They give us a permission to go to other point like this. When they finally made it to Adre and safety.

The driver said, hey, madam, we are in Adre. She broke down and cried. I can't imagine what you must have seen. And how you ever forget. My story is just a simple story, by the way. You can make a lot of patients that you can't even cry when you hear their stories for the rape, for the assaults. I asked Dr. Jude if she has any message for the international community, for people outside Sudan, who may be learning about this conflict for the first time or have been turning away,

and for the leaders who are complicit. I know that we are living in a world that the strongest one, get what he wants. But we are all in this world with different colors, with different beliefs, with different culture. Nobody except to kill someone, to rape someone, to bury someone. Nobody accepts this. So please, we are a human being. Let's be human being. Let's be human being.

And let's support Sudan. Michelle Shepard is a filmmaker and journalist. She traveled to the region with the help of Medcin-Saint-San Frantier, her Doctors Without Borders. You could read more of her stories from Chad in the Walrus magazine. This documentary was produced with help from Liz Hoth at the CBC Audio Documentary Unit. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway.

Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to CBC. slash podcasts.