Western media and governments are being taken to task for paying too little attention to Sudan — rightly so. The war in Ukraine is bigger and Gaza’s more intense, but for the scale of civilian suffering, the Horn of Africa is unmatched.
Sudan’s civil war has been raging since 2023 and gets ignored, because it is so hard to see a solution. Yet we avert our eyes at our peril, because this conflict offers a foretaste of the armed chaos that looks set to characterize the world’s transition from US dominance.
This is not to whitewash the US, and before that European, centuries. Their actions play a central role in the violence that is unfolding, from the imposition of arbitrary state borders, to more recent interventions in Iraq or Libya. Yet Sudan’s post-Western era is looking just as colonial, as a contest between two generals for power and spoils draws in the rising powers that today demand a say in who gets to run, mine or trade in their back yards.
The biggest role in fomenting Sudan’s mayhem is played by the wealthy Gulf states — in particular the United Arab Emirates (UAE), but also Saudi Arabia and Qatar — as well as Egypt. Prizes include agriculture, gold, water and Red Sea ports. China, Eritrea, Iran, Libya and Russia are in the mix, too. The UAE, despite denials, backs, funds and arms the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, which have been making headlines lately for their savage treatment of civilians in Darfur’s capital, El Fasher. At the same time, it also trades with — and so indirectly funds — the RSF’s opponent, the Sudanese Armed Forces (FAS), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
Gold plays a huge role.
Sudan’s central bank said the Emiratis bought about 97 percent of Sudan’s official gold exports last year, which refers only to that sold by Burhan’s internationally recognized government. The RSF mines and sells gold, too, so the country’s actual output is much larger than the official 64.36 tonne figure reported last year, and the UAE buys most of it.
Ten or 20 years ago, the US would have tried to knock heads together in Sudan and the UN might have proposed peacekeepers, but Washington’s engagement has been tepid, at best. That is because to do more would involve US President Donald Trump confronting key Gulf state allies and business partners when he needs their support on Israel and Iran. It is not clear Trump’s US would want to get involved even if that were not the case.
The so-called Right to Protect — a principle that the international community should prevent governments from slaughtering their own citizens — emerged at the peak of the US “liberal world order” in the 1990s and early 2000s, but has fallen out of fashion. Identity politics and the right of the strong to control their own spheres of influence rule our day.
Little could better sum that up than Trump’s decision to follow the international shock over civilian massacres in El Fasher — including 460 people killed at a hospital — by saying nothing about it. Instead, he continued apparent preparations for an attack on Venezuela, closer to home, and announced he was considering intervention in Nigeria, if it did not halt the killing of Christians by Islamist terrorists. Never mind that there had been no such recent atrocity to prompt Trump’s move, or that the vast majority of those killed by Islamist terrorist violence in Nigeria are Muslim.
Nobody really knows how many civilians have been killed in the Sudanese war, but estimates range from tens to hundreds of thousands.
The UN said the conflict has displaced 12.3 million people. The World Food Program said 24.6 million people face acute hunger.
European Council on Foreign Relations Africa program senior policy fellow Will Brown said: “The only countries that remotely have the lifting power required are China and the US, but China doesn’t seem interested and Sudan doesn’t even make Trump’s list of priorities.”
Right now, the most likely outcome of the war looks to be a division of the country in two, leaving the western part of today’s Sudan controlled by the RSF, and the east by the FAS. It would not be the first time. In July 2011, the southern part of Sudan broke away to form an independent state after years of conflict, taking with it the nation’s oil reserves. Would further fragmentation solve anything? The RSF and the FAS fight alongside unwieldy coalitions of local militias, many of which represent distinct ethnic or territorial interests. Once focused inward, they would likely turn on each other — which is exactly what has happened in South Sudan.
This instability cannot be in anybody’s interest — with the possible exception of Russia’s predatory mercenaries, who profit from chaos. Gulf States’ plans to diversify and develop their economies require regional stability. Europe is threatened politically by the prospect of further waves of asylum seekers. China’s Belt and Road Initiative plans for linking Africa’s natural resources to their country need safe transport investments. The US should be concerned about what the disposition of Sudan’s Red Sea ports means for maritime trade and security, even if the administration is not.
I have no brilliant new solution to offer, but if we are to avoid returning to a Hobbesian, 19th century scramble for power and resources in our new “multipolar” world, forging a settlement among Sudan’s many foreign players that they can sell to their warlord clients would be a great place to start.
Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He was previously Istanbul bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal.
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