26/4/2022: World Peace Foundation – Hunger in Sudan's Political Marketplace, by Edward Thomas and Alex de Waal

Researcher Eddie Thomas and World Peace Foundation director Alex de Waal argue that the Sudanese coup regime “picked the path of hunger” by using hunger as a tool of violent repression under the “working assumption that when people are sufficiently destitute and famished, enough of them will submit or collaborate”.

With previous Sudanese regimes neglecting rural food availability at the expense of the wellbeing of urban centres, Thomas and De Waal note how economic deterioration under Omar al-Bashir’s regime contributed to hunger spreading to urban areas – “a big change with unknowable implications”.

Thus, Thomas and De Waal argue, the coup regime picked the “path of hunger” as they knew the human cost of their coup given their inheritance of ultra-austerity and a pre-existing food crisis without the mitigating international assistance.