ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
War and famine have displaced more than 10 million Sudanese people. Sudan is the largest displacement crisis in the world. Some refugees have made it as far as Europe. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley met a few who fled to France.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: For decades, the French seaside town of Calais has been a microcosm of the world's conflicts. Migrants here hail from Afghanistan, Syria, Ethiopia. What's new is the Sudanese are now the majority of those here trying to cross the English Channel to Britain, according to Doctors Without Borders.
Hello. Hello.
With my Arabic interpreter, we meet several men sitting under a bridge next to a pup tent.
SOFIANE AHMED: My name is Sofiane Ahmed.
BEARDSLEY: Thirty-year-old Ahmed is from the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. It took him months to get to France via the lawless North African country of Libya.
S AHMED: (Through interpreter) Yeah. It was really dangerous. I spent six months in Libya before coming here.
BEARDSLEY: Ahmed has a distant look in his eyes. He got separated from his wife and 7-year-old son over a year ago and has heard nothing since.
S AHMED: (Speaking Arabic).
BEARDSLEY: He says he joined pro-democracy demonstrations that swept his country at the end of 2018, when young, educated Sudanese rose up, demanding an end to the 30-year dictatorship of strongman Omar al-Bashir. After months of unrest, the military stepped in and ousted Bashir in a bloodless coup. But any hope of transition to civilian rule ended when the military seized control once more, cutting short the revolution. Soon, two military factions began fighting each other, remembers Ahmed.
S AHMED: (Through interpreter) Yeah, I did participate in the demonstrations, but after seeing what the war has done to my country, I would rather, you know, have never demonstrated and just stay there under this authoritarian regime.
BEARDSLEY: Another man, 45-year-old Youssef Ahmed, says Sudanese society is being destroyed.
YOUSSEF AHMED: I have more than five person from my family dead there in Khartoum.
BEARDSLEY: He says they were killed by the paramilitary rapid support forces, or RSF, the mostly Arab militia fighting government troops for control of Sudan and targeting Black non-Arab populations. The International Criminal Court says both sides are committing war crimes. The fighting has set off the world's biggest famine. Before, Sudan's wars were in periphery regions. Elites in the capital weren't affected. The refugees were mostly poor. Not this time, says Jerome Tubiana with Doctors Without Borders.
JEROME TUBIANA: There are basically every Sudanese from all walks of life. Many of them are well educated. They are students with universities where - destroyed. They are doctors. They are lawyers. They are human rights defenders.
BEARDSLEY: Really nice to meet you.
ELMOIZ SIDDIG: Me, too.
BEARDSLEY: I meet Elmoiz Siddig in a cafe in Paris. He ran a travel agency in Khartoum. Then one day in April 2023, war shattered his life.
SIDDIG: It was Saturday. At 9 o'clock a.m., I heard some noise. I saw a lot of people running and shooting, the airplanes and (inaudible). We stay in the house without electricity, without water for three days. I was sure it will not stop.
BEARDSLEY: So he fled to France, a country he had visited many times with his job. Siddig had never known war.
SIDDIG: I lost my life in the second, all my life. I lost my home. I lost my car, lost my work. I lost everything I was preparing for all my life.
BEARDSLEY: He feels empty knowing he can never live in Sudan again but also lucky. With an EU visa in his passport, he came to France by plane. That's not the case for millions of other Sudanese refugees who flee in perilous journeys a war that is devastating their country and any hope of returning home. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Calais. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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