THE screams of Melissa are still echoing in the skies over Jamaica. With winds howling at nearly three hundred kilometres per hour, four-metre-high waves swallowing towns, and whole communities flattened into silence — it felt as if a colossal monster had risen from the sea to avenge its centuries of pain. Hurricane Melissa, a Category 5 storm, was not just another entry in the record of natural disasters. It was a symbol, a metaphor carved into the heart of civilisation — a reminder that nature has begun to lose patience with us.
While the world was still counting the bodies and debris in Jamaica, another storm — this time man-made — was raging across Sudan. In the town of El-Fasher, West Darfur, at least 1,500 civilians were slaughtered in three days by the Rapid Support Forces. Hospitals were turned into graveyards, children starved under siege, and the streets became rivers of blood. Satellite images from Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab showed human-sized figures scattered across the city like shadows of despair. The UN estimates nearly 150,000 people remain trapped, and twelve million have already fled — a mass of displaced humanity drifting between survival and oblivion.
At first glance, the two events could not be more different — one born of wind and water, the other of bullets and hatred. But both, in truth, are symptoms of the same moral disease. Both are outcomes of a civilisation that has forgotten balance, empathy, and restraint. Nature and humanity, once companions in creation, now compete in cruelty.
Melissa’s fury was not random. Nature never acts in anger without reason. It simply mirrors our own excesses. For centuries, human beings have treated the planet as a factory of profit. We have burnt forests to build empires, poisoned rivers in the name of growth, and filled the atmosphere with invisible weapons — carbon, methane, and plastic dust. What we call ‘progress’ was built on plunder. And now, as the winds grow stronger and the seas rise higher, nature seems to be speaking in a language we refuse to understand. It is not punishment; it is reflection.
The same reflection is visible in Sudan, where humanity itself has become its own natural disaster. The atrocities in El-Fasher are not only the consequence of tribal hatred or political ambition. They are the product of the same greed and power lust that drives deforestation and pollution elsewhere. The soil that once nurtured crops has become soaked with blood, and the hunger for dominance has devoured conscience. When human beings destroy forests, they destroy their air; when they destroy each other, they destroy their soul.
In both cases, the victims are the innocent — the ones who did not sign the deals, cut the trees, or fire the guns. The woman in Jamaica whose house vanished in the waves and the mother in Sudan holding her starving child under a bombed-out roof — both stand on the same ground of suffering. Civilisation has created two gods: one called Nature and one called Power. Both, when disrespected, demand their sacrifices.
It is often said that nature’s wrath is unstoppable. But human cruelty is far more relentless. Melissa’s winds calmed after three days; Sudan’s winds of violence have raged for years. When nature strikes, it leaves behind destruction but also renewal—trees grow again, and rivers return to calm. But when humans strike, they erase futures. They destroy meaning itself. The corpses in Darfur will not decompose into soil that nourishes life; they will decompose into history that condemns us all.
The tragedy of modern civilisation lies in its disconnection — from nature, from morality, and from itself. Once, human beings saw the world as sacred. Every tree, every river, every life had value beyond measurement. Now, in the age of algorithms and arsenals, value is determined by utility. The forest is worth more dead than alive; the soldier is worth more armed than educated. The same mind that digs oil from the earth also digs graves for its own species.
Melissa’s storm is, therefore, not just a meteorological event — it is a psychological mirror. The rising global temperature is not confined to the atmosphere; it burns within human hearts as well. As the climate warms, so does the temperament of society. Nations rise in anger, people argue in hate, and wars erupt like volcanic eruptions of pride. The turbulence of the weather and the turbulence of the mind now seem inseparable.
In Sudan, as in many other forgotten corners of the world, the storm of cruelty is fuelled by the same forces that fuel environmental destruction — greed, corruption, and the illusion of power. The RSF’s massacre in El-Fasher is not an isolated act of barbarity; it is a reflection of the global moral climate. Just as industrialised nations exploit the planet’s resources, militias exploit the vulnerability of the powerless. In both cases, the strong feed on the weak.
What makes this age uniquely terrifying is that both nature and man have turned unpredictable. Once, one could seek refuge from war in nature or from nature’s fury in civilisation. Today, neither offers shelter. When floods and bombs arrive together, where does humanity run?
Even international outrage now feels mechanical. Nations that condemn genocide in Sudan sell weapons to other war zones. Countries that host climate summits continue to drill for oil. It is as if moral language has lost its meaning, recycled like plastic slogans in diplomatic speeches. The hypocrisy is suffocating, and perhaps that too contributes to the thickening air of despair across the globe.
In the quiet moments after Melissa passed, reporters described the eerie silence of Jamaica’s coastlines — the sound of nothingness, broken homes, and broken trees. The same silence hangs over El-Fasher now, broken only by the cries of orphans and the hum of drones. Both silences are sacred reminders: when life is lost, sound itself retreats.
But there is still a difference — a moral distinction that demands reflection. Nature, when it destroys, does not choose victims based on race, religion, or status. A hurricane does not discriminate. Human cruelty, on the other hand, is selective, calculated, and deliberate. That is what makes it far more terrifying. Melissa followed the laws of physics; El-Fasher followed the laws of hate.
Civilisation’s greatest failure is not that it cannot prevent disasters — it is that it refuses to learn from them. After every hurricane, we rebuild the same fragile houses on the same vulnerable coasts. After every war, we sign peace treaties written in the same ink of deceit. We mourn, we forget, and then we repeat. Humanity, it seems, is trapped in an endless cycle of self-destruction, powered by arrogance and amnesia.
The way out of this cycle is neither purely political nor purely technological — it is ethical. The climate crisis and the crisis of cruelty both stem from the same absence of morality. The world needs not just green energy but clean hearts. A society that poisons its rivers cannot cleanse its conscience; a government that kills its people cannot protect its land. If we want to save the planet, we must first save what makes us human.
Melissa’s message, then, is not for meteorologists but for philosophers, poets, and policymakers alike. It says that every storm, whether of wind or of war, begins within us. Nature’s revenge and human hatred are two reflections of the same disordered soul. When we speak of ‘natural disasters’, we must also speak of ‘moral disasters’. The first kills bodies; the second kills meaning.
Melissa’s winds will fade, the sands of Darfur will settle, but the question will remain: did we listen? Did we finally understand that the storms outside and the storms within are one and the same? The fate of civilisation depends not on how we rebuild cities, but on how we rebuild our souls.
Because when nature and humanity both turn cruel, there are no victors — only survivors searching for meaning in the ruins.
Ìý
HM Nazmul Alam is an academic, journalist, and political analyst based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and teaches at IUBAT.
