Sudan, football and the 'worst humanitarian crisis on earth'

Before every training session, the Sudan men’s football team line up together and link arms. The captain calls them to attention for a moment of silence, which is broken by another shout before they clap three times in unison. It doesn’t matter where they are; it’s when they put everything else to one side and focus solely on football.

They can’t play matches at home because, since April 2023, the north-east African country has been gripped by a bitter civil war between the government-led national army and the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF). As many as 150,000 people have been killed, according to U.S. estimates and 14 million have been moved from their homes, says the United Nations (UN).

Football pitches around Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and in the neighbouring city of Omdurman have been used as burial grounds for the dead rather than games. The 19-month conflict has caused what is, according to the United Nations, “the worst humanitarian crisis on earth”.

“The numbers are so large that you can’t even get your head around the scale of human suffering,” the United States’ special envoy for Sudan, Tom Perriello, told reporters this week. “The numbers are astronomical…(and) the death toll is probably more than anything that’s been estimated.”

People from Sudan have found themselves fighting for peace but also for attention, as conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine dominate headlines.

Sudan’s football team have been forced into a nomadic existence, playing “home” games in South Sudan (which became its own nation in 2011), Mauritania, Saudi Arabia and Libya. But they have achieved remarkable results: Sudan have qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) starting in Morocco in a month’s time and are top of their group competing to reach the World Cup, a tournament they have never played in before, in the United States, Canada and Mexico in 2026.

The Athletic has spoken to some of those impacted by the conflict, reporting from Omdurman in Sudan, neighbouring country Chad and the fellow African nation of Morocco and explored the other thread that unites them: football. Some interviews have been translated from Arabic and people have been referenced only by first names to protect their identities. You can listen to our podcast, Sudan: Football and the Forgotten War here, too.

“It’s an honour to be the captain of Sudan and represent the whole country during this difficult time,” Ramadan Agab, the team’s experienced captain, tells The Athletic at Sudan’s training camp in Rabat, Morocco’s capital, this month. “Sudan is the motherland. It is everything. Trying to make the nation happy is an emotion I cannot express.

“It’s a very difficult thing to be away from home all the time with club and country. All your life, emotions and thoughts are back in Sudan. But we know we have a job to do, it is important for our careers, and for the country in this situation, so we must deal with it.”

Agab is using football to try to make Sudan “happy” (Adam Leventhal/The Athletic)

Two brothers came to watch the training camp, too.

“These players have an obligation to represent us in a very good manner, because they hold on their shoulders the hopes of 40 million Sudanese people and they represent us worldwide,” says one of them, Abdallah.

His sibling, Mohammed, adds: “Everyone is watching the national team as if (the team) are having their own war. They are a symbol of freedom.”

“Most of the time when we are in camp, a message will come that one of the players has lost a family member,” says the team’s head coach, James Kwesi Appiah. “It’s happened about five times. You have to go and console him.

“We speak about what is happening back at home when we’re in camp. I also see a lot of what is happening on TV. Why can’t we all do something to let these guys achieve, so that at least the people back home will be happy?”

Appiah, the former Ghana captain and coach, focused on that before Sudan beat his home nation in their most notable result of AFCON qualifying. “I told them, ‘All your parents, your family members will be out there in Sudan putting their guns down and watching this game. This is the time to make them happy’,” he says.

Sudan won that match 2-0 on October 15 in Benghazi, Libya, beating Ghana, the group favourites with their familiar Premier League names such as West Ham’s Mohammed Kudus, Antoine Semenyo of Bournemouth and Leicester City player Jordan Ayew. Five days earlier, the teams drew 0-0 in Accra, Ghana, so Sudan needed just a point from their final two games, against Niger and Angola, to qualify for AFCON.

A 4-0 loss against Niger on November 14 increased the tension even further, with Sudan suffering only their second defeat in 10 qualifying matches. But a 0-0 draw against Angola back in Benghazi on November 18 saw Sudan clinch a place at AFCON 2025 as group runners-up behind Angola.

It is only the fourth time in 25 attempts they have made it to the continental showpiece, which Sudan won as hosts in 1970.

Sudan’s players at a training camp in Rabat, Morocco (Adam Leventhal/The Athletic)

“When (Sudan) invited me (to coach the team), I asked them what their target was and they said ‘To build a team’,” explains Appiah. “If it was just building a team, then I wasn’t interested, so I set the target of either qualifying for AFCON or qualifying for the World Cup.”

He may achieve both. Sudan are unbeaten in World Cup qualifying, winning three of their four games so far. Senegal, who sit second in the group, are their next opponents in March, with Sudan the designated “home” team for the game but the actual venue, as has become the norm, to be confirmed.

“I’m so proud of them,” says Appiah. “I’ve told them, ‘Because of the situation back home you’ve got no choice but to move around wherever we go’. They should see that place as their home ground. Whether you have supporters or you don’t, the most important thing is: how can we achieve the ultimate?”

When the conflict came to El Geneina earlier this year, it had catastrophic consequences for Jawahir’s family.

“The house was scorched to the ground,” she says. “They shot and killed both our grandmothers inside their room and lit it on fire. Then they came after us. They killed my aunt, my uncle and my sister inside the house, and my cousin. They shot and injured me. My mother and my daughter were the only ones they did not shoot.”

Two months later, Jawahir’s husband was killed, and she saw her brother for the last time. Heavily pregnant, Jawahir and her mother made it to the Adre refugee camp over the border in Chad, 18 miles west of El Geneina, where more than 100,000 people are housed in makeshift tents and shacks. Jawahir gave birth to a son soon after arriving.

“The journey was incredibly difficult. Some of us perished along the way, while others managed to survive and make it here,” says Muhammad Munir Ibrahim.

He and his friends have formed a team called Sudanese Victory. Playing football — when they can find a ball — is the only positive in their current predicament. “When we arrived, we found no schools or institutions to enrol in. As a result, we turned to football,” he says.

The game acts as a release for those so young.

“It was shocking to find out that almost 10 million children have been within five kilometres (three miles) of active conflict,” Arif Noor, Save the Children’s country director for Sudan, tells The Athletic. “Imagine the kind of psychological trauma and scars that these children will now carry with them, in some cases for the rest of their lives.”

With approximately 19 million children unable to go to school or university, Noor fears for “a whole generation of young Sudanese who are losing out on their future”.

Children who have fled from the war in Sudan look into a tent used as a nutrition clinic at a transit centre for refugees in the South Sudan border town of Renk (Luis Tato/AFP via Getty Images)

The displacement crisis is putting a huge strain on refugee camps. In the North Darfur region of Sudan, famine has been confirmed by UNICEF and the Famine Review Committee (FRC) at one of the largest camps, Zamzam. UNICEF and the UN World Food Programme say that unless aid arrives in many affected regions, more than 700,000 children are projected to suffer severe acute malnutrition.

“This probably is by far one of the largest humanitarian crises that we have seen in the recent past,” says Noor. “Almost half of the population — so, one in every two people — that we come across is in need of humanitarian assistance. The kind of sexual and gender-based violence that we are also seeing in the country is absolutely unimaginable.”

Hafiz wears the red of Al Merrikh — one of Omdurman’s two big clubs — as he takes us on a tour around the Adre camp. It’s the only shirt he had when he was forced from his home in El Geneina.

“The atrocities in West Darfur state, killings, looting, beatings and tying people with ropes (have forced) people to walk long distances on foot,” he says. “The same level of suffering persisted upon reaching Adre camp. People here now have nothing but patience.

“We are living in uncertainty about what the future holds, here and in Sudan, where conditions are deteriorating. Life here is extremely challenging. There are orphans in the camp who lack shelter, food and water and they continue to suffer. People live in dire conditions and neither the elder overseeing the camp nor the organisations present have been able to help them.”

On April 15 last year, fighting began in Khartoum between the national army and the RSF.

The night before, Mazin Abusin, head of development at the Sudan FA, had been playing football.

“It was Ramadan and (the games) usually run after people break their fast in the evening. It was our usual annual competition,” he recalls.

“We woke up (the next day) and heard all the gunshots and the bombing. But the next day, things got worse. We used to say: if you’re lucky, you walk out with your passport, your phone and your life.”

Abusin took cover in Khartoum and Omdurman for two weeks, and then it was time to leave.

“That’s when it hit me,” he says. “I saw all the bodies. I saw dogs eating bodies. It was very scary. There were hundreds of bodies all over the street. There were tanks and cars abandoned by both armies. It was clear there had been a big battle.”

Abusin came to the UK with his family thanks to assistance from the British Army, which organised evacuation flights. He is determined to one day play the final of his football competition back in the same spot, partly to pay tributes to those he has lost — including El Rashid al-Hajj Amin Abdulgadir, a former player turned coach who helped children in poor communities.

One such boy was Abdul Aziz, who has muscular atrophy in his legs so moves around using his arms. He stitched up punctured footballs for Rashid to show his appreciation. “He taught me to play with my hands so I could get involved in street football,” Abdul says.

“(Rashid) had big dreams,” says Abusin. “When he lost his life, he was actually serving the community, (having) set up small kitchens in neighbourhoods to feed the people because of their inability to go and find food. It was targeted by a shell and he lost his life immediately.”

Football continues to be played by amateurs in areas designated as active war zones. “In my neighbourhood, I know at least three or four football grounds that have been used as burial grounds,” says Abusin. “As we speak now, people continue to play even though there’s a risk of shelling.”

A game of football in Barkal, northern Sudan, in September 2023 – five months after war began (Ashraf Shazly/AFP via Getty Images)

Former Al Merrikh and Sudan international Adil Amin Awadallah leads one of the groups.

“We continue to play despite the war and all its related threats,” Awadallah tells The Athletic. “The main threat here is being caught in the crossfire. The worst experience for all the residents of the locality here is the random shelling that continues day and night.”

On a dusty pitch in the Karari district of Omdurman, people gather to play and watch an initiative known as Resilience Through Football.

“Sports in general are always a safe haven for all, but football has an exceptional role, as the people of Omdurman are very passionate about the game,” says Awadallah. “Young and old players gather week in, week out here to enjoy a challenge from other localities.”

They have been keeping tabs on the national team’s exploits too: “They are the only source of happiness the Sudanese people have at the moment. We wish them all the success, we are very proud of them.”

Many parts of Khartoum and Omdurman, two cities separated by the River Nile, are in ruins. The latter is home to both of the nation’s football teams, Al Hilal and Al Merrikh, whose grounds are just a few hundred metres apart.

Abdulrahman, left, and Khedr are among Sudan’s players from the Al Hilal club (Adam Leventhal/The Athletic)

The majority of the Sudan team are on the books of one or the other of the two clubs. Captain Agab and goalkeeper Mohamed Mustafa represent Al Merrikh, while the nation’s top scorer Mohamed Abdulrahman — who scored the clincher against Ghana — and key midfielder Waliedin Khedr — nicknamed Pogba, as he is said to play like France’s 2018 World Cup winner Paul — are Al Hilal players.

Like the national team, they are currently playing their football outside Sudan, having temporarily joined sides in the Mauritanian league.

“That city breathes football,” says Koteba Fareed, who works closely with the Sudan FA, of Omdurman.

Abdulsalam left Sudan aged 15, before this war, travelling first to Libya, then 400 miles across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy.

“There were 140 of us on the boat,” he says, “and when (the authorities) came to save us — amid big sea and waves — and take some onto another boat, we watched four people die in front of us, there was nothing we could do.”

From Italy, he walked to France, then into Belgium, sleeping rough along the way, before it was time to try to get to England — spending 20 hours under a truck, via road back into France and then on a Calais to Dover ferry.

“I went with two of my friends under a big truck with just the road underneath me, it was really dangerous,” he says. “I could see a big moving part of the truck and knew if my shoelace got stuck I would just turn with the wheel and be finished in a second.”

In the UK, he was helped by authorities and the charity Fair Shot, which uses football to unite and educate communities in the UK about the issues faced by those seeking asylum. They visit clubs — some near areas that saw anti-immigration protests back in the summer — and organise games with locals.

Daniel, a Rotherham United fan, was one of the players that Abdulsalam played alongside.

“It’s important to show that it really is a town built on community and everyone’s welcome,” Daniel says. “Sometimes it’s hard to get that message across, but (these games can) prove we (can be) welcoming.”

In so many ways, football is helping the healing process.

(Top photos: Getty Images/Adam Leventhal/Save The Children; design: Eamonn Dalton)