Lydia Namubiru on How to Tell the Story of Sudan

Last month, The Atlantic published a cover story about the ongoing war in Sudan. It was richly reported—its author, Anne Applebaum, traveled to Khartoum and West Darfur, witnessing the tragic fallout from the war and the collapse of the state. Photographer Lynsey Addario captured scenes of sorrow and despair at hospitals and food distribution centers.

But for some readers, the headline on the cover of the magazine’s September print issue—“The War About Nothing”—didn’t sit right. Lydia Namubiru, the editor in chief of The Continent, a digital newspaper based in South Africa, felt the framing erased the lives and struggles at the heart of the crisis; the cover’s subtitle, “Sudan and the world America left behind,” seemed to further compress the conflict into a mere by-product of US foreign policy. Writing on LinkedIn, Namubiru said, “‘The war about nothing’? How about gold at a time of record shattering prices? How about the inherent risks in creating a militia to do the dirty work of a 40-year dictatorship? How about the fragility that comes from a state being under western sanctions for decades?… If anything, it’s the war about everything.”