Tarasin: The village that vanished in Sudan

The earth gave way in Darfur last week. It swallowed an entire village in the remote Jebal Marra mountains. Rescue teams are pulling bodies from the mud and debris. The official count has reached 100 dead, though the true number may be over a thousand. The landslide destroyed Tarasin village. This disaster shows us a crisis that has been ignored for decades. In Darfur, even the ground beneath your feet has become dangerous.

We need to understand Darfur’s painful history to see why this landslide means more than just bad geology. The genocidal conflict started in 2003. It killed 300,000 people and displaced millions. The world’s attention moved away, but the violence continued. Since April 2023, a new civil war has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. Over 14 million people have been forced from their homes. Many people fled the fighting to the Jabal Marra mountains. They thought this area was safer. They escaped bullets and bombs, but the earth itself killed them.

This tragedy shows how conflict, climate change, and failed government work together. The Jabal Marra range is a volcanic area that has landslides. A smaller one killed 19 people in 2018. This disaster shows how communities have been pushed to dangerous places. They live without safety systems or early warning networks. The heavy rain that caused the landslide shows how climate change is making weather more extreme across the Sahel region. Sudan’s war has destroyed resources for disaster preparation. Roads cannot be used, communication networks have failed, and the institutions that should protect people are causing violence instead.

The humanitarian response has been very poor. Local rescue efforts are led by the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army. This is a neutral group that controls the area. The rescuers are brave but they have very little equipment. They dig with their hands because they do not have machines to move the huge stones and mud that cover their neighbours. International aid organisations cannot reach the area easily. The same security problems and broken infrastructure that make Darfur a humanitarian disaster zone stop them. One aid worker from Plan International said, “The whole humanitarian community is feeling helpless.” Very few survivors can tell their stories. Ahmed Abdel Majeed, who lives in Uganda but is originally from the affected village, told the BBC’s Sudan lifeline programme that he lost his uncle and grandson. The rest of his family is still buried under the rubble. His words show the human cost of this failure. This failure reaches far beyond Sudan’s borders into our global indifference.

This disaster shows we need big changes in how we deal with humanitarian crises. We cannot treat conflict, climate change, and disaster risk as separate problems. They work together to create deadly situations. Darfur is the centre of this problem. The international community must do more than just express sympathy. We need concrete action: investing in climate adaptation, building strong infrastructure, and making disaster preparation better. But we cannot do any of this without lasting peace.

Regional and international powers are fuelling Sudan’s war. They must be pressed to end their destructive involvement. A real peace process is the only way to break this cycle of violence and vulnerability. The UN’s humanitarian response plan has only 33 per cent of the money it needs. Aid workers face extreme danger and many have been killed in Darfur.

The difference with past international involvement is clear. Twenty years ago, the “Save Darfur” movement created global anger and action. Today, an even bigger crisis happens with little attention. According to Harvard experts, over 150,000 people have died in Sudan’s current conflict. Yet international attention remains very low.

The bodies being recovered from Darfur’s earth are landslide victims. But they are also casualties of our abandonment of moral responsibility. We must demand an immediate ceasefire, massive increases in humanitarian aid, and long-term commitment to building a just and strong future.

The people of Tarasin did not have to die. Their deaths were a predictable result of our failure to act. We owe it to them and to millions still at risk to finally do better. The earth in Darfur has spoken. The question is whether the world will listen.