At least 82 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble of the "Al-Zar'a" gold mine near the city of Al-Nuhud in West Kordofan as of Wednesday afternoon, and dozens of people are still missing at a depth exceeding thirty metres, according to what the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse reported from emergency rooms and survivor witnesses. The shafts were dug close to one another, so one of them collapsed and dragged what adjoined it, and the mine — as the Sudan Doctors Network says — is an unregulated site lacking the most basic safety procedures. And there are no specialized rescue teams: the equipment available at the disaster site is a single forklift owned by an individual, and the rest of the digging is done with bare hands and primitive tools.
Let us read these numbers with human eyes, not with the eyes of passing news. This is not a natural disaster nor a matter of fate: artisanal mining sustains in Sudan more than one and a half million workers who work without any safety oversight in areas of armed conflict. The gold is there under our feet, but it is extracted with the blood of the poor and does not return to them with a hospital, a school, or even rescue equipment — the catastrophe itself happened while all the site's equipment belongs to one man. As for those who plunder Sudan's riches and speak in its name from distant capitals, they do not know the names of these victims nor do they visit their sites.
And the same story repeats in other forms all across the homeland: in Tawila in North Darfur, the acting Executive Director of the World Food Programme, Carl Skau, described what he saw during his visit as "an endless ocean of grass huts", confirming that the programme cannot provide more than half the food rations to the displaced, while the United Nations launched a cholera vaccination campaign targeting about 95,000 displaced people, after recording about 2,900 cases and 247 deaths in six states since June. And in Blue Nile, drone strikes at the weekend displaced thousands of people, and more than 3,300 people were displaced from the villages of Geissan on Monday alone, according to the International Organization for Migration and the OCHA office. (Sources: UN News, OCHA, International Organization for Migration, Reuters, September 14–17, 2026)
All of these — the Al-Zar'a workers in Kordofan, the displaced of Tawila in Darfur, and the displaced of Geissan in Blue Nile — are victims of one war and one absent state. Where are the state institutions that should monitor the mines, rescue the afflicted and protect the food convoys? And where are the politicians who filled the world with noise about "the revolution", then sold the martyrs' blood for positions, brought the military back to the scene and ignited the war? We see them today only in hotels and conferences, while the poor dig their graves with their own hands.
Two days ago, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, told reporters that "what is happening in Sudan is utterly horrific" and that the conflict "is fuelled by countries from outside", demanding accountability for those who supply the parties to the conflict with weapons used in attacking civilians (Source: Reuters, September 16). A word of truth that comes late: the world arms the war generously and is stingy toward its victims with food and medicine.
The lesson from Al-Zar'a is clear: Sudan does not lack wealth — gold, land, a Nile, and minds — but it lacks institutions that protect it from thieves and protect the poor from death: real state institutions, not persons fighting over their chairs, and not parties that traded in the blood of their children. And until these institutions are built, the gold under our feet will keep devouring its children.
— Hawaa Abkar
