"It's so ugly, it's so cowardly, it's so stupid."

“I think the most important thing you need to know about Sudan is that it's a place where a group of countries that are sometimes called the middle powers – not superpowers, they’re not all big countries – are fueling the war for their own purposes,” says Atlantic staff writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum, after spending weeks in the country during its ongoing civil war, alongside Pulitzer Prize-winning Photojournalist Lynsey Addario. At the same time, the forces of peacemaking are no longer around – entities like the United Nations, the United States and the like. As a result, “The UNHCR was operating at a fraction of its budget because the donors just have not come through in recent years,” says Addario. “UNHCR didn't even have a budget to provide them with any shelter. They couldn't provide any hot meals. They couldn't provide anything, really, because they had no budget.”