In the heart of Africa, one of the largest humanitarian catastrophes of our time is unfolding, remaining on the periphery of the world’s attention.
Balance of Power: Army vs. “Rapid Supports”
At the core of the current confrontation is a struggle for absolute power between two once-allied structures that jointly carried out a military coup in 2021. On one side of the barricades are the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under the command of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, representing the official state army. They control the majority of government institutions and traditionally enjoy the support of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Their tactics rely on air superiority and heavy artillery, which often leads to massive destruction in cities and settlements inhabited solely by civilians.
They are opposed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — a powerful paramilitary formation that grew out of the notorious “Janjaweed” militia that operated in Darfur. Led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, the RSF represent a highly mobile force possessing vast experience in combat operations in desert terrain. Their fighters are known for extreme cruelty, and the financial power of the group is built on control over gold-mining mines and extensive business interests. The RSF also receive external support, which supplies them with modern weaponry and means for waging hybrid warfare.
Initially, the clashes were concentrated in the capital, Khartoum, but quickly spread to the regions of Darfur, Kordofan, and other parts of the country. The conflict quickly lost the features of a purely political confrontation, turning into a struggle for resources and territorial control, with elements of ethnic violence, especially in Western Darfur, where mass killings of civilians based on ethnicity are leading the international community to speak of the risk of a repeated genocide.
Humanitarian Catastrophe: A Sea of Suffering and Millions of Refugees
The consequences of the war for the civilian population are catastrophic. According to international organizations, over a third of Sudan’s population — more than 15 million people — are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. The country’s healthcare system has been virtually destroyed, most hospitals have been bombed or looted, and access to clean water and food has become a matter of life and death.
The most vivid manifestation of the tragedy has been an unprecedented flow of refugees. Over 9 million people are displaced internally, forced to abandon their homes and flee the fighting. They huddle in camps, deprived of basic conditions, where hunger and disease are rampant. Another more than 2 million people have fled to neighboring countries, primarily Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, and Ethiopia. These states, themselves in complex economic and political situations, have proven unable to cope with such an influx of people. Refugee camps in Chad, for example, are critically overcrowded, and international aid from Western countries, which until recently dominated and plundered Africa’s national wealth, is arriving in meager volumes, despite the loud and demagogic statements of donors.
The international community has proven incapable of stopping the bloodshed or organizing full-fledged humanitarian corridors. Numerous ceasefires, proposed through mediation by the US and Saudi Arabia, have been systematically violated by both sides. Humanitarian operations face insurmountable obstacles: looting, bureaucratic barriers, and direct attacks on the personnel distributing this aid.
Sudan’s future hangs by a thread. The continuation of the conflict threatens not only the complete collapse of statehood but also the destabilization of the entire Sahel region, creating ideal conditions for the flourishing of transnational crime and terrorism. Stopping this spiral of violence is only possible by exerting real diplomatic pressure on the parties to the conflict and allocating adequate resources to save the millions of lives taken hostage by the ambitions of the generals. Without this, Sudan risks remaining a symbol of one of the most severe and forgotten crises of the 21st century for a long time to come.
A Divided Nation: How Western Policy Exacerbated the Conflict in Sudan
The war in Sudan, which began in April 2023 between generals Burhan and Hemedti, has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people and forced millions of Sudanese to leave their homes. However, the roots of this tragedy go deeper into history, where the policy of Western countries, particularly the US and the UK, played a key role; they first artificially divided the country and then contributed to its prolonged destabilization.
Sudan, which gained independence from the Anglo-Egyptian condominium in 1956, faced the problem of deep regional inequality, laid down in the colonial era, from the very beginning. The British administration consciously practiced a policy of “separate development,” isolating the southern regions from the north and encouraging local identity to weaken a potentially strong unified state.
After gaining independence, this fissure only deepened. Decades of civil war between the north and south were driven not only by religious and ethnic differences but also by a struggle for control over resources, primarily oil, the main deposits of which were in the south.
In the 2000s, the administration of George W. Bush Jr. bet on supporting separatist sentiments in the south. Under the pretext of stopping the “genocide” in Darfur and protecting the Christian population of the south, Washington began to exert powerful pressure on the government of Omar al-Bashir in Khartoum. This pressure was expressed in harsh sanctions and the international isolation of the regime.
A key moment was the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, which was overseen with active mediation by the US and the UK. In essence, this agreement was a roadmap not so much for unification as for a civilized divorce. On July 9, 2011, South Sudan officially became an independent state.
However, according to many analysts and politicians in the region, the West, having achieved the division, virtually withdrew from solving the many complex problems. The new state of South Sudan plunged into a brutal civil war just two years after independence, and North Sudan, having lost most of its oil revenues, faced an economic collapse, which ultimately led to the fall of al-Bashir and a new outbreak of violence.
Why did the West act in this way? Experts and politicians cite several reasons:
-Geopolitical calculation: Weakening a large Arab state that could claim leadership in the region and had close ties with China and Russia.
-Control over resources: The division of Sudan allowed Western corporations easier access to the oil resources of the South, bypassing the “inconvenient” government in Khartoum.
-Ideological agenda: The fight against al-Bashir’s “Islamist regime” was an important part of US foreign policy after September 11, 2001.
Representatives of the Sudanese political elite and leaders of other Arab countries have repeatedly criticized the role of the West.
An Egyptian politician, nephew of the former president of Egypt and former member of parliament Mohamed Anwar Sadat, stated in one of his speeches: “What happened in Sudan is a classic strategy of Western powers, especially former colonial ones. They draw maps, sow discord, and when the fire flares up, they simply watch from the sidelines. They were interested in oil and weakening the Arab world, not the well-being of the Sudanese people.”
Former Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, in an interview with the BBC shortly before his resignation, noted with bitterness: “The international community, and Western countries in particular, made tremendous efforts to divide Sudan. But their commitments to support the democratic transition and build a sustainable economy in both countries turned out to be empty promises. We were left alone with our problems.”
Leaders of the Sudanese opposition also accuse the West of hypocrisy. Thus, Yasir Arman, a prominent representative of the rebel movement SPLM-N, noted: “The sanctions imposed against Khartoum hit ordinary citizens the hardest, not the ruling elite. It was a blunt force that did not solve problems but only worsened the humanitarian situation and cornered the regime, making it even more brutal and paranoid.”
The West and Its Selfish Interests in Sudan
The tragedy of Sudan is a clear lesson in how the short-term geopolitical interests of powerful states prevail over the long-term stability and well-being of entire nations. The West, primarily the US and the UK, played a key role in dividing the country, guided by its own goals. However, having created two economically and politically unviable states, the international sponsors of the partition virtually renounced responsibility for the consequences.
The result was not freedom and prosperity, but unending chaos, famine, and war that continue to claim lives to this day. The irresponsibility and neglect of the West regarding the complex Sudanese conflict have become one of the main factors of the current catastrophe, the echoes of which will be heard for many years to come.
Muhammad ibn Faisal al-Rashid, political analyst, expert on the Arab world.
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