For the past three years, Western media outlets have been focussed on the wars in Gaza and Ukraine (and on the US vs China trade rivalry) to the exclusion of almost every other conflict. The civil war in Sudan has been all but ignored, despite the toll in human suffering. Since fighting broke out between two rival military groups in April 2023, at least 150,000 people have been killed. Moreover, as Medecins Sans Frontieres recently reported:
The United Nations estimates that 12 million people have been displaced, including almost 3 million people who have fled to neighbouring countries such as Chad, South Sudan, Central African Republic and Egypt. Half of Sudan’s population faces high levels of acute food insecurity (24.6 million people), and more than 8 million face starvation and famine-like conditions.
According to UN estimates, 7 million women and girls have lost their access to reproductive health services, leading to a marked increase in stillbirths, in preventable maternal deaths, and in the mortality rates among newborn babies. Jacinda Ardern has written about this recently.
Despite the scale of the Sudan crisis, the United States has chosen to cut some vital lifelines. Relief agencies estimate that the Trump administration’s slashing of USAID funding has caused the closure of four out of every five of the emergency food kitchens that were catering to displaced Sudanese.
Casus Belli
The immediate origins of Sudan’s civil war are easy enough to sketch in brief. A democratic uprising in 2018 and 2019 had culminated in the overthrow of the 30 years of rule by Omar Hassan al-Bashir, and in the emergence of a civilian government that had wide public support.
In October 2021 however, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) jointly staged a coup against the civilian government led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. In April 2023, the SAF and the RSF then turned on each other, and their subsequent power struggle has been devastating for the civilian population.
Both sides have repeatedly committed atrocities: wholesale massacres, arbitrary executions, ethnic cleansing in some areas, and the widespread use of rape as a weapon of war and intimidation.
The RSF have had a particularly grim history in the use of these tactics. In the late 1990s, they first came to national prominence as a conglomerate of loosely affiliated nomadic militia called the Janjaweed. In the early 2000s, the Janjaweed were trained and deployed by the al-Bashir regime as a counter-insurgency force against rebels in Darfur, where the Janjaweed’s brutal, scorched earth tactics earned them international notoriety.
In 2013, the Al-Bashir regime formally brought the Janjaweed into his government as a kind of praetorian guard, renamed as the Rapid Support Forces. A decade ago, some 40,000 RSF forces were reportedly fighting as mercenaries against the Houthi rebels in Yemen’s civil war, on behalf of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. A contingent of roughly 1,000 RSF troops also fought in Libya in support of the rebel warlord Khalifa Haftar, another UAE protégé.
In one of its last acts before leaving office, the outgoing Biden administration classified the RSF as a genocidal force, and imposed sanctions on its leader and his family business interests, which are headquartered in the UAE.
Sponsored by Emirates
The UAE has been an important factor in the current conflict in Sudan. Formerly, Sudan’s economy had been based on oil but when South Sudan became independent in 2011, 70% of Sudan’s oil economy went out the door with it. Sudan has replaced oil with gold. Crucially, the regions of the country under RSF control include most of the country’s gold deposits, including the mines located in Darfur. At times, the RSF has worked in tandem with Russia’s Wagner Group of mercenaries, who have been diverting some of Sudan’s gold to help fund Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.
All of this has made the RSF warlord Mohamed Hamadan Dagalo aka “ Hemedti” a very rich man. (There is a useful, only slightly dated account of the rise of the RSF financial empire available here.) Hemedti not only controls gold smuggling operations routed through neighbouring Chad. Reportedly, most of Sudan’s trade in gold is conducted with the UAE through the Al Jamaid corporation headed by Hemedti’s brother, Abdul Rahim Dagalo, who is also the deputy head of the RSF.
In return the UAE reportedly supply Hemedti, his family and their RSF fighters with the modern weaponry the RSF needs to sustain its power struggle with the Sudanese Army. This BBC link (also cited above) provides a good backgrounder on the modern gold trade in Sudan, and its role in the civil war.
Footnote One: In Darfur, the RSF/SAF struggle for dominance overlaps with older, more traditional tensions between the nomadic Janjaweed “Arab” camel herders and the sedentary “African” farmers. These tensions have been exacerbated over recent decades by population growth. The divided loyalties between the clans that comprise the Rizeigat tribe to which the RSF leadership and the bulk of its fighters belong have sometimes spilled over into conflict within the RSF itself, but – reportedly – Hemedti still commands loyal support across much of western Sudan.
There are also racial divisions at work in the conflict, and some religious differences exist among a Sudanese population that while 90% Sunni Muslim (with strong historical links to Sufism) also contains adherents of more traditional and indigenous religious beliefs. The Christian minority comprise 5% of the Sudanese population. (South Sudan is estimated to be about 50% Christian.)
Footnote Two. The good news is that the outside world is finally taking notice of the suffering in Sudan, and of the millions of people fleeing into adjacent countries to escape the fighting. Ten days ago, the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE came up with a road map for a truce, an influx of aid and eventual peace in Sudan. This plan is due to be further discussed informally among the attendees at the UN General Assembly this week. The US-led proposal can be found here.
The bad news is that the truce/aid influx/peace plan omits any participation by the ousted democratic government in exile. Instead, it treats the Sudanese Armed Forces (and its leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his alleged “Government of Hope”) as the legitimate representative of the Sudanese people.
As critics have already pointed out, this approach will solidify the grip on power of one of the military leaders who (a) derailed Sudan’s democratic transition and (b) launched the ongoing civil war. Surely, if the US, the UAE, Egypt and the Saudis don’t simply want to reward (and do future business with) a military strong man, they need to include the democratic government-in-exile at the table. So far, that’s not happening.
Footnote Three: Western media also commonly ignores the other major war in Africa, within the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The fighting in eastern Congo has been complicated by the active participation of neighbouring Rwanda on one side of the conflict. Here’s a useful explainer update.
Music from Sudan
First, a beautiful older song by Mohammed Wardi (1932-2012) the legendary “Voice of Sudan”:
At the Cannes film festival this year, Angelina Jolie used her speech to commemorate female artists such as the Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna killed in Gaza, the novelist Victoria Amelina killed in Ukraine, and the singer Shaden Gardood who was killed in Sudan when a mortar shell hit her home during an urban firefight between the SAF and RSF.
Here’s a dance track featuring Shaden Gardood: