When Survival is Branded “Collaboration”: How War Language Puts Sudanese Civilians at Risk

“Language does not simply describe reality — it reshapes it.” — Eglal Hamid

In war, survival itself can become a dangerous act. In Sudan today, civilians who try to keep hospitals open, teach displaced children, or maintain basic services sometimes find themselves accused of something else entirely: collaboration. 

In war, a single word can redraw the line between protection and punishment. Across modern conflicts, civilians who try to keep their communities alive are sometimes reclassified through language that transforms survival into suspicion. Teachers become “informants.” Volunteers become “affiliates.” Doctors who keep hospitals running may suddenly be described as “collaborators.” Across Sudan, this war has been marked by massacres, targeted killings, and large-scale violence against civilians, particularly in cities such as Khartoum, Darfur, and El Geneina.

Sudan’s ongoing war illustrates how dangerous this linguistic shift can be. Since fighting erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces, millions of civilians have been murdered in a genocide, others have been displaced and large parts of the country’s state institutions have collapsed. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the conflict has triggered one of the world’s largest displacement crises in recent years.

The destruction of public services has been devastating. Hospitals have been damaged, looted, or forced to shut down as fighting spread across cities and towns.^[1]

When formal institutions collapse, communities often try to keep essential services running themselves. Hospitals, schools, and food networks do not simply disappear because war begins. Someone still has to open the doors. But in wartime narratives, those efforts can later be reframed in dangerous ways.

The doctor who kept the hospitals open

In one Sudanese city, a young doctor — whom we will call Dr. Salma — helped coordinate medical teams to keep several hospitals functioning after fighting erupted. With state institutions collapsing and many doctors fleeing the violence, she worked with remaining medical staff to reopen key departments: dialysis units, maternity wards, paediatric care, and emergency rooms.

She and a small network of volunteers also helped reopen neighbourhood health centres so basic care could continue despite the war.

International humanitarian organisations later stepped in to support these efforts. Medical teams coordinated with organisations such as Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) to secure minimal funding for staff transport, meals, and essential supplies so hospitals could continue operating for civilians.^[2]

But war rarely leaves such efforts untouched. As the war intensified, armed actors increasingly struggled to control their own fighters. Fuel belonging to humanitarian organisations was stolen. Medical staff were threatened. International organisations eventually withdrew for security reasons. And as the political climate hardened, a troubling shift began.

The same activities that had allowed hospitals to function were gradually reframed through the language of wartime suspicion. Helping maintain services in areas controlled by one armed actor could suddenly be described as cooperation with armed actors controlling the area, particularly either the Sudanese army or the Rapid Support Forces depending on territorial control.

The word travelled quickly. Soon, doctors who had spent months treating civilians were increasingly labelled as collaborators by local actors and armed groups, despite their role in providing essential medical care.

When survival becomes suspicion

This phenomenon is not unique to Sudan. In many wars, civilians living under the control of armed actors have little choice but to interact with those authorities in order to secure food, medical care, or basic safety.

But wartime language often erases that reality. Once labels such as collaborator, affiliate, or sympathiser enter public discourse, survival strategies can be reinterpreted as political alignment. The consequences can be severe.

Another doctor — whom we will call Dr. Layla — helped coordinate medical operations during the early months of the war. She worked alongside colleagues to keep hospitals running and negotiated with humanitarian organisations to secure support for medical staff. But as political narratives hardened, accusations began to circulate. Some of her colleagues were arrested. Others were killed

While many such accusations are rooted in suspicion and the breakdown of trust in wartime, it is also important to acknowledge that in some cases, civilians may be coerced or pressured into forms of cooperation with armed actors. However, the distinction between coercion, survival, and voluntary collaboration is often blurred in public narratives. In Sudan’s context, many accusations emerge not from verified actions, but from assumptions shaped by fear, territorial control, and shifting political narratives.

 Dr. Layla herself was eventually forced to flee the area where she had worked. Today she lives in hiding, displaced from her home region and unable to safely return to the communities she once served. Her crime, according to some wartime narratives, was simple: she had kept hospitals functioning in the wrong place.

Yet across Sudan, civilians have continued to resist the collapse of social life in ways that often go unrecognised. In cities such as Khartoum, Omdurman, and El Geneina, ordinary people have organised emergency rooms, shared food networks, and informal systems of care under conditions of extreme violence. Despite massacres, displacement, and the destruction of entire neighbourhoods, communities have continued to create fragile forms of solidarity that allow life to persist. This everyday resistance does not take the form of armed struggle, but of survival itself — a refusal to let social life disappear even in the face of war and mass violence.

The invisible work of survival

War also transforms everyday forms of leadership that rarely appear in official political narratives. Across displacement settings, women often take on responsibilities that sustain communities in the absence of functioning institutions.

In one refugee settlement, a teacher we will call Amina began teaching English to displaced women and children. The host country’s official language was English, and many newly arrived refugees struggled to communicate with local authorities and aid organisations.

Amina organised informal language lessons inside the camp. Her classes helped women learn how to speak to doctors, negotiate in markets, and navigate the bureaucracy of refugee life. Children who had missed years of schooling began learning again.

These acts rarely appear in diplomatic briefings or international policy reports. Yet, they are often what allows displaced communities to rebuild fragments of normal life.

A pattern beyond Sudan

Similar dynamics have been documented in other African conflicts. During the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, reports by organisations such as Human Rights Watch have documented how civilians maintaining basic services including local markets, schools, and health facilities in areas controlled by armed groups were later accused of collaboration.^[3] 

In parts of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, reports from humanitarian organisations including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the International Crisis Group have highlighted how community leaders and medical workers face suspicion for operating in territories under armed control.^[4]

The danger of wartime language is not far-fetched. The problem is not only what happens during war. It is what happens afterwards. In societies emerging from conflict, narratives formed during wartime often shape how accountability, justice, and reconciliation are later pursued.

Once civilians have been linguistically associated with armed actors, their claims to protection as non‑combatants can weaken in the eyes of the public. Words, in this sense, redraw the boundaries of innocence. Because when war language turns survival into suspicion, it is often driven by narratives promoted by armed actors, political groups, and segments of media discourse. For example, in Sudan, terms such as “collaborator” or “affiliate” have been used in public rhetoric to describe civilians operating in areas controlled by opposing forces, regardless of whether their actions were aimed at sustaining basic services.

The implications of this wartime language extend far beyond the present moment. In Sudan, the way civilians are labelled today may shape how justice, accountability, and political legitimacy are defined in the future. When survival is reframed as collaboration, civilians risk being excluded from protection and even targeted in post-war processes of retribution. This creates a dangerous precedent in which the boundaries of civilian status are not determined by law, but by shifting power and narrative.

In some cases, online discourse and local accusations have amplified these labels, transforming ordinary acts of survival into perceived political alignment. Civilians who remain in certain areas or continue working within collapsing systems can thus be publicly framed as aligned with one side of the conflict. When war language turns survival into suspicion, civilians may become the ones who carry the longest consequences of the conflict.

Doctors keep hospitals open. Teachers continue educating children. Women organise food distribution and community care. These actions are not acts of collaboration. They are acts of survival. Recognising that difference may determine whether civilians remain protected — or become targets long after the guns fall silent.

Eglal Hamid is a Sudanese writer focusing on war, displacement, and the social consequences of conflict across Africa. Her work explores how language, gender, and power shape civilian experiences in wartime. 

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