Escaping Sudan’s year-long civil war was just the first hurdle to this American family’s “dream come true”

“Tears were streaming down my face,” El-Fadel Arbab told CBS News of his joyous reunion with his wife and two young children. “I just wanted to cry from all the happiness.”

After 332 days of anguish caused by the now year-long war in Sudan, the Sudanese-American's worry, work and wait to be reunited with his family finally came to an end .

One day in late March, Arbab waited in the arrivals hall at Boston's Logan International Airport, holding a sign decorated with red hearts and yellow smiley faces that he had cut out himself. In English and Arabic were the phrases: “We love you!” and “We're glad you're here!”

The security doors opened and Ehab, 3, and Eyad, 7, in blue suits and ties, entered the United States for the first time. Zienab Abaker, wearing a peach head covering, smiled and hugged her husband.

A nightmare, followed by “a dream come true”

Arbab's family fled Sudan's beleaguered capital, Khartoum, in a UN convoy just two weeks after war broke out. They arrived at Sudan's port on the country's east coast, joining millions of others trying to escape the bloodshed as rival military and paramilitary commanders battled for power over the country.

A US Navy ship transported Abaker and her children, along with 300 other refugees, east across the Red Sea to the port of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. But by then, her husband Arbab, who was working in Portland, Maine, had lost touch with his family.

“No WiFi. No phone. We were checking to see if there's any news or anything,” he said.

Then, on the last sprint, he saw a photograph of his wife and children appear in one article on CBSNews.compart of a series of reports like our team sailed from Jeddah to Port Sudan and then back again on a Saudi naval ship carrying refugees. The image, taken by a Reuters photographer, showed Abaker and the boys being screened by a US soldier in Port Sudan. It was proof that they had made it to shore safely, at least.

“I was just in tears,” she said. “It was like a dream come true.”

He expected his wife and children to arrive in a few weeks, so he quickly rented a two-bedroom apartment and furnished it with donations from the community where he has lived for the past two decades.

But his family's journey had just begun. They reached Saudi Arabia, but got stuck there.

Although Arbab's children are US citizens by birth, his wife is not. The family had submitted all the necessary paperwork for her to obtain a visa to enter the US before the war broke out, but it had not yet been issued.

Arbab overcame US immigration hurdles, brandishing his family's photograph in Port Sudan to US State Department officials and embassy officials in Saudi Arabia, while working three jobs at work to support his family 6,000 miles away and to pay for the new apartment in Maine.

Meanwhile, Abaker was stuck living in a hotel, looking after her children alone, without permission to leave and in constant fear of being arrested and deported to Sudan. The younger boy, traumatized by the conflict he had escaped, lay awake at night and slept during the day.

“She is strong and patient,” said Arbab, “but she had no room for happiness.”

Finally, there was reason to smile.

“The only happiness was when she received her passport. They say you get the visa and you go to the United States and your husband. Then she felt she could be happy,” she recalled.

Arbab said his family was the first Sudanese to break out of limbo in Saudi Arabia and come to the United States, which he is very grateful for. But he added that “dozens and dozens” of people remain stuck in similar circumstances.

War Traps Millions in 'Apocalyptic Catastrophe'

There are no signs of the vicious conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the rival Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group abating since it erupted on April 15, 2023. Before turning against each other, the rival generals leading those well-armed groups staged a coup together against a fragile transitional government that had been trying to guide Sudan to democracy.

Since they fell, their war has killed 14,000 men, women and children, according to the United Nations. More than 8.2 million people have been displaced from their homes, those who have been able to flee abroad and many others seeking what respite they can find in a country with little access to food, running water or healthcare.

“Khartoum has collapsed into a war zone over the past year and millions of Sudanese remain trapped there, essentially locked out,” said Alan Boswell, director of the Horn of Africa project at the think tank International Crisis Group at CBS News.

“Millions of Sudanese are starving and could starve to death this year,” he said, calling it “the kind of apocalyptic catastrophe that seems only for the history books.”

On Monday, the sad one-year anniversary of Sudan's war, France hosted an international conference to raise money for the war-torn country from Western and Gulf nations.

Aid shortfall as world focuses on 'the new'

Boswell, speaking to CBS News on the sidelines of the conference, said the humanitarian mission was about securing both funding and security for Sudan, which he stressed were sorely lacking. Although the UN estimates that $2.7 billion is urgently needed to help the people of Sudan, only $166 million has been received so far, just 6% of the total.

“Ideally, there would be an announcement of hundreds of millions of dollars more that have been committed to humanitarian aid in Sudan. But a big part of the problem has been the Sudanese military's part of the war that essentially block food aid to areas that do.” control, which is a large part of the country.”

Late on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that the conference had pledged an additional $2.1 billion in aid to Sudan, but gave no breakdown of who the donors were, or any timetable for when money could really start helping on the ground.

Arbab told CBS News from his home in Portland that, as far as he could tell, “as long as more wars start somewhere,” powerful Western governments will simply continue to “focus on the new and forget about the old”.

“It didn't go unnoticed that the only time the world really focused on the war in Sudan was to get its own citizens evacuated,” Boswell agreed. “Then interest in the Sudanese war quickly dissipated.”

But he warned that “the conflict may not stay inside Sudan,” noting that the African nation is surrounded by other fragile states, many of them also affected by conflict, “and there is a risk quite important that the instability spreads.”