The ongoing civil war in Sudan, which began in April 2023, has had devastating consequences for the country. The conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has resulted in over 20,000 deaths, with estimates that the real number is ten times higher. Each side is supported by a complicated web of imperialist interests that promise to drown the country in blood.
This crisis has been described by the United Nations as one of the world’s largest displacement crises, with severe humanitarian impacts across the nation. The UN warns that 25 million Sudanese risk famine.
Decades Of Conflict
The situation has been particularly severe in the region of Darfur, where ethnically motivated attacks have been reported. Accusations of rape and sexual violence by both sides echo past atrocities where 300,000 people where murdered and millions were displaced as part of the genocide of 2003. That war was sparked by the conflict between rebel groups resisting the autocratic rule of now-former president Omar al-Bashir and Sudanese government forces, supported by the Janjaweed militia, the predecessors of today’s RSF.
For 30 years Sudan was ruled by al-Bashir, who took power after he led a military coup in 1989. Al-Bashir was removed from power by his generals following a mass revolutionary movement that erupted in 2019 and threatened to overthrow the government. The defeat of the revolution left room for the Sudanese Armed Forces to oversee what was supposed to be a transitional period towards a civilian government. But it wasn’t long before the SAF moved against the civilian Sovereignty Council of Sudan and staged another military coup. With that came to an end the two years of civilian facade and power was again in the hands of a military junta.
Since the toppling of al-Bashir the RSF grew stronger, leveraging its connections to regional and global actors such as the Libyan National Army (LNA) and the Russian Wagner Group, with access to networks of mercenary companies across the continent and lucrative export of gold.
Sudanese president Al-Burhan and military generals stacked various state positions with old regime loyalists and members of al-Bashir’s congressional party to push back against the rising influence of the RSF. The country sank deeper into crisis until in April 2023 the RSF launched multiple attacks across Sudan and war began. Early on the RSF managed to take over most of the government buildings in the capital Khartoum, forcing the government to relocate to Port Sudan in the northeast of the country.
After a period of relative stalemate, the RSF managed to advance further in the states of Kordofan, Khartoum, and Gezira – strengthening its hold on the south of the country including Darfur. Recently, the SAF has been able to push back and retake the city of Khartom Bahri, north of the capital, making substantial gains, and setting the current frontlines as roughly dividing the country into the government controlled north and east versus the RSF-controlled south and west.
Since the outbreak of war in 2023 civilians found themselves caught in between the warring sides as airstrikes, artillery shelling, and gun fights broke out across the country, turning villages and residential neighborhoods into battle zones. Ten million people have been forced to flee their homes, creating the world’s worst refugee crisis. Civilian infrastructure like health or education are barely functioning if at all, as 70% of the country’s healthcare system has collapsed, and 19 million children no longer have a classroom to attend.
Imperialist Intervention
A major reason for the deep level of devastation is the continuous imperialist intervention in terms of resources and means of war. The UN has held multiple panels on the worsening humanitarian crisis in Sudan, and some formal sanctions have been enacted by the UN Security Council, including a formal arms embargo on Darfur, as well as sanctions by the US and the UK targeting both sides. Research by Amnesty International found that the sanctions had very little effect on the flow of weapons into the country, as recently manufactured or transferred weapons and ammunition from countries including China, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Yemen are being imported in large quantities into Sudan, and then in some cases diverted into Darfur.
The war has given rise to a complex web of international alliances, mostly—though not always—along the global divide between the two major powers, the US and China, with each regional power playing a different role in pursuing its own regional interests.
The UAE has been playing a crucial role in the conflict as the main supporter of the RSF, supplying it with weapons smuggled into Sudan through its western neighbors. In Amdjarass in Eastern Chad (which recently secured a $1.5B loan from the UAE), a hospital and part of the airport were turned into a military base in support of RSF fighters, with some injured being flown to be treated in Abu Dhabi.
The UAE’s support to the RSF goes back to the role the latter played in the war in Yemen, as mercenaries fighting on the side of the Gulf states against the Iran-backed Houthis. Financially, the UAE has a few prominent interests in the country. Firstly its reliance on Sudanese agricultural produce—the UAE imports 90% of its food and invests heavily in farming projects in Africa. It controls several land and farming operations in Sudan. International Holding Company (IHC), the UAE’s largest listed corporation, and Jenaan Investment are farming more than 50,000 hectares in the country. Abu Hamad’s farming project covers another 162,000 hectares of cultivated land. The UAE has also poured $6Bn into a project to construct a new port on the Red Sea coast, enabling it to exert more control over the trade passing through the country. They are heavily invested in the conflict and use the RSF to protect their corporate and political interests in the country which is also crucial for its ambitions to play a key role in the global food system (The UAE aims to lead the Global Food Security Index (GFSI) by 2051).
Aiming to curtail the Emirati influence in the region is Iran, which once again, as with the Houthis in Yemen, is on the opposing side of a proxy war against the Gulf states. Iran has given support to the SAF, supplying it with weapons and advanced drones to push back against the RSF and its allies. In July, Iran and Sudan exchanged ambassadors, formally renewing diplomatic relations after 8 years. Seeing the strategic importance of controlling trade, Iran has attempted to build its own naval base on the Sudanese coast of the Red Sea.
While Egypt’s international alignment puts it mostly at odds with Iran, it serves Egypt better to side with the SAF to push back on Emirati capital gaining significant control over regional trade and posing competition to Egyptian interests. The head of the RSF, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (AKA Hemedti), accused Egypt of conducting airstrikes against his forces using American bombs. Egypt has denied involvement, alleging they were only conducting exercises with the Sudanese military as the excuse. Regardless of the true extent in which Egypt is supporting the SAF, in this conflict it finds its interests aligning with Iran’s, and opposing those of its US-backed regional allies in the middle east.
Gold is playing a crucial role in this conflict. Sudan is the third largest gold producer in Africa with capabilities to produce an estimated 50-100 tonnes, though estimates are hard to make as barely 20% of the country’s gold is being exported through official channels. The UAE alone officially imported precious metals from Sudan valued at $2.8 billion in 2022. Additionally, Russia has been using the Wagner Group to extract gold from Sudan and use it to fuel its war on Ukraine. The mercenary company even operates its own gold processing plant in RSF controlled territory.
The fact gold is available to both warring parties has attracted many other players looking to sell weapons to the two war-hungry sides. Countries like Russia or Turkey are fueling the conflict by flooding it with weapons, using their arms export networks to bypass any official embargoes or sanctions.
Seeing the growing influence by the Wagner Group in Africa, Ukrainian forces have joined the fight on the side of the SAF and earlier this year—hedging their bets on who will win—Russia began supporting the SAF as well. Showcasing the logical madness of war, they now fight alongside Ukraine against their own Wagner Group.
What Way Forward?
The masses in the region have been crushed under brutal imperialist and local war machines who are fighting for power while profiting from Sudan’s natural wealth.
Mass protests in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and other African countries show that working people are rising up against war, poverty, and exploitation. The revolutionary movement of 2019 in Sudan had the power to overthrow the dictatorship and establish a government of the working class, using the region’s resources to feed and employ all. The resistance committees which were used in 2019 to defend working people could be revived and join forces with the rising masses in the region to fight against all sides of imperialist wars.
Only the masses have the power to end all imperialist wars and exploitation and put their collective power and the region’s resources to utilize it for their benefits instead of profits for the few.