Sudan: The Monstrous and Forgotten War

by Jacob Winter, Senior Staff Writer, BA Politics and International Relations 09/12/2024

Over 62,000 people have been killed as a direct result of Sudan’s civil war. Approximately 3.5 million, or 1 in 7, of Sudan’s children are malnourished, and hundreds of thousands of refugees are fleeing to Ethiopia and Chad. The UN warns this war could trigger the world’s largest hunger crisis. Despite the crisis in Sudan escalating every day, the war has been ignored and misrepresented in the media, with the genocide in Palestine and the conflict in Ukraine overshadowing it in nearly every major news outlet. 

The conflict between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) has been condemned globally for its brutality and complete disinterest in ceasefires and peace talks. Despite this, analysts and activists have placed the principal cause for the war's escalation and lack of headway towards peaceful resolution at the feet of foreign actors with direct material and strategic incentives in the region. The actor most blamed for their involvement in the conflict is the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Though the UAE denies involvement, evidence links it to arming the RSF. 

The war started in April 2023, but the foundations were laid in the revolution against Sudanese dictator Omar Al-Bashir in 2019. Al-Bashir ruled Sudan for 30 years, presiding over the civil war that resulted in the independence of South Sudan and the first Darfur genocide. The ICC found Al-Bashir guilty of directing a campaign of mass-rape and indiscriminate murder of civilians in Darfur. 

In 2019, mass protests against Al-Bashir’s rule led the military to overthrow his regime and form the Transitional Sovereignty Council, a coalition of military leaders and key civilian representatives. In 2021, the SAF and the RSF, the Council’s military factions, forced out the civilian leadership, including Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, and reconstituted the Council as predominantly military-led, with only a few civilian bureaucrats remaining (Hamdok himself was briefly reinstated in 2022). The RSF and SAF then governed Sudan until April 2023, when RSF forces attacked SAF positions in several cities across Sudan, occupying the Khartoum airport and capturing Sudan TV.

One of the essential elements of the war in Sudan is the interference of both hegemonic and regional powers in the war, with the aforementioned UAE accused of aiding the RSF. Sudan is a nation rich in natural resources, particularly gold. The UAE, an economy that derives exclusively from its finite oil reserves, has been exploiting natural resources across Africa, be it agricultural land in Ethiopia or Sudan’s rich gold mines. 

Middle East Eye reported that the UAE imports 90% of its food and owns over 50,000 hectares of agricultural land in Sudan. Similarly, the UAE stands to claim 35% of the profits from a newly constructed seaport on the Red Sea, Abu Amma. To protect these assets and assert control over Sudan’s economy, the UAE has armed the RSF, supplying them with weapons through Ethiopia and Chad. In Chad, the UAE runs a hospital used to treat wounded RSF fighters. According to the New Arab, the UAE has gained a monopoly on the illegal arms trade in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, another clear indicator that they are the principal arms supplier of the RSF.

Russia, aligned with the UAE and RSF, has deployed the Wagner group mercenaries to extract Sudan’s gold. According to Business Insider, they have been used to buttress Russia’s economy against Western sanctions. The Wagner Group's involvement has brought Ukrainian Special Forces into Sudan, fighting on the side of the SAF.

Both sides of the civil war are engaged in ethnic cleansing, particularly in the region of Darfur. Darfur has faced genocide at the hands of the Al-Bashir Regime and now by both the SAF and RSF. In the 2004 genocide, over 200,000 people in Darfur were slaughtered by the Sudanese regime, and the RSF itself was founded as a militia during this genocide, aligned with Al-Bashir’s regime. The civil war has led to unrestricted killings of civilians by both sides, and many fear that the bloodshed seen during the 2004 genocide will be seen on a similar scale again.

A particularly horrifying aspect is the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. A UN fact-finding mission in October 2024 found that the use of rape as a direct tactic by the RSF and SAF amounts to a war crime, based on interviews with over 300 victims. While most victims are women and girls, men and young boys have also been victims of mass systematic rape perpetrated by the rival armies. 

While there is no sign of the war ending soon, in the latter half of 2024, the SAF made major strategic gains against the RSF, with Russian aid switching to supporting the SAF. With the vast amount of interests involved in the region, it is unlikely that any state will risk opposing the backers of either the RSF or the SAF. In a statement delivered by the Sudanese Communist Party in May 2024, they stated that it is up to the Sudanese masses themselves to “intensify the struggle to reclaim the revolution.”