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By Suliman Baldo and Mai Hassan
Dr. Baldo is the director of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker. Dr. Hassan is an associate professor of political science at M.I.T.
When a landslide last month struck a mountainous region in western Sudan, it leveled a village and left as many as 1,000 people dead. In the race to help survivors, though, international aid agencies had to navigate administrative red tape that officials say has routinely been put in place by the Sudanese Armed Forces, the military group seen by some as Sudan’s de facto government after two years of devastating civil war. The group and its rivals have been accused of restricting aid flows into territories they do not control — the stricken region is in a rebel stronghold — and although some aid did eventually reach the area, the bureaucratic obstacles cost valuable time in the effort to save lives.
The delay is a stark example of how granting legitimacy to one side in a civil war has become a matter of life or death for Sudanese.
