Suad Abdel Aziz
The
president’s cuts to USAID are starving the nations that were made dependent on
aid by previous administrations.
Congolese refugees look through a corrugated metal fence at the final
batches of food delivered by the now-dismantled United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) in a storage and food delivery area
at the Musenyi refugee site in Giharo, on May 7, 2025.
A shipment of U.S. wheat intended
to feed millions of starving Yemeni civilians has become a stark symbol of how
the Trump administration weaponizes humanitarian aid not only to punish
geopolitical enemies, but also to stage a hollow performance of compassion
while doing so.
Earlier this year, a U.S. cargo
ship carrying thousands of tons of wheat departed for Yemen, where an ongoing
humanitarian catastrophe has left over 17 million people facing acute food
insecurity. The aid could have fed more than 3.2 million people for a month.
But after the Trump administration baselessly designated Ansar Allah as a
terrorist organization — a move condemned by the United Nations and aid groups
as disastrous for civilians — the wheat sat stranded at sea for months. The
U.S. effectively blocked its own humanitarian mission, choosing political
theater over human lives.
The result? Rotting wheat, wasted
aid, and worsening starvation.
But the story doesn’t end there.
In an apparent attempt to salvage its image, the administration hastily
rerouted the decaying wheat shipment to Sudan — a country experiencing
widespread starvation and economic collapse due to destabilization by a United
Arab Emirates-backed militia. The same administration that imposed unilateral
sanctions and an immigration ban on Sudan, restricting financial flows and
humanitarian operations, is now attempting to cast itself as a savior of
Sudanese civilians.
The move was immediately hailed
by Trump officials as a major humanitarian gesture. State Department
spokespeople insisted the wheat would serve as a “lifeline” for the Sudanese
people. But when the shipment finally arrived in Sudan this month, it was too
late. The wheat was completely spoiled.
Dr. Ahmed Issawi, an official
with Sudan’s Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, confirmed that the
shipment was rejected upon arrival. “The wheat was not suitable for human
consumption,” he told Truthout. “It was rotten before it reached our port.”
It was an expensive, deadly
spectacle.
Aid as a Global Weapon of War
This incident isn’t just a
breakdown in logistics or communication. It reflects a broader U.S. policy
approach that treats humanitarian aid as a tool of geopolitical strategy —
where food, medicine, and basic survival are used as leverage for imperial interests.
Rather than being guided by human need, aid is distributed, withheld, or
rerouted based on political agendas.
In Yemen, this has meant allowing
millions to starve under the guise of “counterterrorism.” In Sudan, it means
imposing sanctions that destabilize an already devastated economy, while
issuing public statements about spoiled aid shipments to feign moral leadership
and deflect accountability.
In Gaza, the Trump administration
recently outsourced humanitarian aid drops to a private U.S. militia. They
offered token amounts of food in a war zone they actively fund and arm, all
whilst brutalizing civilians. This spectacle serves not to save lives, but to
provide cover for a policy of starvation, forced displacement, and genocide
carried out with U.S. complicity.
While the U.S. State Department
attempted to spin the rerouting of the wheat to Sudan as a win — telling CNN
that “the wheat won’t go to waste” — the reality on the ground is different.
Sudanese civilians continue to face hyperinflation, food shortages, and rampant
malnutrition. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a genocidal militia group that
terrorizes civilians, has weaponized hunger by controlling food and
telecommunications infrastructure. Recent U.S. sanctions, far from pressuring
warlords, serve to isolate Sudanese civilians from the resources they need to
survive.
The History of USAID as a
Neocolonial Lever
The Trump administration’s
politicization of humanitarian aid is not a break from U.S. policy tradition
but a continuation of how aid has long been used to enforce global power
hierarchies. Throughout Sudan’s post-colonial history, the United States has positioned
itself as the country’s primary aid provider — leveraging food, development
assistance, and financial relief as tools to shape Sudanese political
alignment.
Since the Cold War, the U.S. has
used development assistance through the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) not only to offer help, but to control. Governments in the
Global South were pushed to accept economic reforms that opened their markets
to foreign investors, slashed public spending, and left local economies
weakened. Sudan, in particular, was forced to restructure its agriculture,
liberalize trade, and rely on imports — including imported food.
Whether under the guise of
counterterrorism cooperation, structural adjustment demands, or support for
democratic transition, U.S. aid has consistently prioritized Washington’s
geopolitical goals over the Sudanese people’s material needs. This legacy of conditional
aid is neocolonial at its core: It enforces dependency while maintaining the
illusion of benevolence. When Sudan falls out of favor — as it has under the
current Trump-era sanctions regime — the very aid that was once touted as
support becomes a weapon of coercion or disappears altogether.
The Devastating Impact of USAID
Cuts
The effects of the Trump
administration’s cuts to U.S. humanitarian aid are now unfolding in full force.
In Sudan and across the Global South, millions of people are being pushed to
the brink of famine as food, health care, and emergency support vanish when
they are needed most. The U.S. yanked the rug out from under countries like
Sudan, cutting off lifelines it deliberately made them rely on, just as famine
and collapse reach their most devastating point.
According to the Associated
Press, recent U.S. budget cuts affect at least 18 million people worldwide who
rely on U.S. food assistance. Boston University estimates that the abrupt cuts
to USAID have meant nearly 300,000 people have died in the first three months
of cuts, more than 200,000 of them children. In Sudan, these cuts have forced
humanitarian organizations to halt food distributions just as hunger reaches
catastrophic levels, forcing the closure of over 80 percent of the emergency
food kitchens. Sudan is now home to the largest hunger crises in the world. The
World Food Programme reports that nearly 25 million people — half the country —
are facing starvation.
Local aid workers in Sudan are
contending with this reality. According to Taysser Dafalla, a humanitarian
worker who leads the Hasahisa Community Kitchen, the impact has been immediate
and brutal. “Since the cuts, the kitchen has been barely able to continue. We
are only operating with the help of diaspora sending money from abroad,”
Dafalla told Truthout. “We used to serve hundreds of meals every day. Now,
we’re lucky if we can feed a quarter of that. The children ask for more, but we
have nothing left to give.”
In displacement camps and
conflict zones, the collapse of food programs has pushed communities past the
breaking point. Adam Rojal, a humanitarian worker from Darfur who is currently
volunteering at the Nertiti camp for internally displaced people, described the
conditions in stark terms: “Nertiti camp and surrounding villages are
experiencing mass starvation. Women are sacrificing themselves to feed their
children so they can survive. People are dying of thirst. This is the worst
situation we have ever been in.”
Rojal added, “Before, we were
already struggling. Now, people are burying loved ones because they haven’t
eaten. The world needs to know … We are not starving because of nature. There
is nothing natural about this.”
Meanwhile, USAID officials
reported to Reuters that shipments of food are now sitting unused in warehouses
due to budget freezes. Programs meant to support children, maternal health, and
food delivery are being delayed or dismantled across multiple crisis zones.
This bureaucratic standstill has turned urgently needed aid into dead weight —
billions of dollars in resources stall in storage while lives are lost by the
hour.
This is the harsh reality: The
U.S. spent decades creating a model where countries were made reliant on aid
for basic survival and is now pulling the plug in a moment of mass starvation.
The people paying the price for this deliberate abandonment are civilians
already trapped between war, sanctions, and climate disaster.
An Urgent Call for Accountability
The deliberate weaponization of
food and humanitarian aid by the United States amounts to collective
punishment. It is a form of siege warfare waged through bureaucracy and
diplomacy, targeting already starving populations in Sudan, Palestine, and
Yemen.
Sanctions regimes imposed by the
Trump administration must be lifted immediately. These unilateral coercive
measures violate fundamental principles of international humanitarian and human
rights law. Under Article 54 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva
Conventions, starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is explicitly
prohibited. Likewise, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights affirms the right to food, health, and an adequate standard of
living. These rights cannot be realized when blockades and sanctions
deliberately block the flow of aid and essential goods to those who need them
most.
Sanctions are not weakening armed
actors — they are strangling civilians and entire societies. Aid blockades and
restrictions on financial systems have made it nearly impossible for
humanitarian agencies to operate — exacerbating malnutrition, disease, and
displacement on a mass scale.
There can be no justification for
policies that knowingly deepen starvation and human suffering. Governments and
international bodies must stop using humanitarian aid, sanctions, and blockades
as tools of political coercion. These practices violate international law and
inflict cruel collective punishment on civilian populations. The international
community must demand accountability and take concrete steps to ensure that
relief efforts are never weaponized.
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