“Far from being caused by personal rivalry, this conflict is rooted in the long history of the region and Sudan’s never-ending economic and social crisis.
The conflict between the North and the South claimed between half a million and a million lives from 1955 to 2002.
And herein lies the cause of the fighting tearing Sudan apart. To understand it requires going back to 2011. The secession of South Sudan and the rise of guerrilla movements within the North’s Muslim populations had weakened President Omar al-Bashir’s authority. His increasingly unpopular Islamist regime had been in power since the coup of June 1989 and was rotten with corruption.
The regime sent the Janjaweed to fight in Yemen on behalf of the Saudis – who paid handsomely – and then tasked them with repressing the northern guerrillas of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), first in Darfur and then throughout the country.
From the day after the coup, there were obvious tensions between the two forces, each of which tried (unsuccessfully) to take over the democratic movement by claiming to represent popular anti-dictatorship legitimacy.
In January 2022 Washington dispatched Molly Phee, assistant secretary of state for foreign affairs, for purely symbolic talks with the new regime, thereby endorsing the coup.
So not ti disrupt gold sales to Russia, “Sudan abstained in the UN General Assembly vote condemning the invasion of Ukraine.
The regime’s ties with Russia did not prevent the US from resuming economic aid to Sudan in May 2022.
Over the years, the SAF and RSF have collaborated uneasily over the ever-shrinking pie of the Sudanese economy, which has become increasingly reliant on gold production.” Sudan is currently Africa's third producer of gold.”
The relative importance of this sector does seem real, “for gold becoming the country’s major export has had catastrophic socioeconomic effects. The squandering and concentration of income, which began during the brief oil boom (1999-2011), worsened in 2011, after South Sudan gained independence, because the main oil wells are there. Unlike oil, gold is well suited to small-scale exploitation and clandestine trade. In an uncertain security context, the bulk of Sudan’s wealth increasingly bypasses the state and falls into the military’s hands.”
Al-Burhan’s own middle-class background “seems to have predisposed him towards extremists from good families over lower-class protesters (gharraba or western scum). In Hemedti’s camp, the preferences are reversed and hostility focuses on the kozan, a derogatory term for their Islamist enemies.
The coup of 25 October 2021 halted Sudan’s democratic revolution, but on a different basis for each side. For the regular army under al-Burhan, it was as much a social issue as a political one: a large part of the working and middle classes saw 2019’s April Revolution and the elimination of Islamists as a way for Sudan to evolve towards greater social and economic justice. For Hemedti and his paramilitaries, marginalised by the Nile Valley elite, the coup was necessary to break the monopoly on power held by an Arab-speaking aristocracy since the Ottoman conquest, then perpetuated by the British and maintained by a militarised bourgeoisie since independence.
To understand the situation in Sudan, it’s worth examining the role of the UAE – which ironically has become a local vector for Russian influence – and the Emirates’ confrontation with Egypt, which represents US interests. Its shift towards greater autonomy began in the early 2000s, achieved mainly through the logistics company DP World, set up in 1999 in Dubai.
When the civil war spread nationwide in April 2023, the UAE expanded its involvement and began collaborating with the Wagner Group. Via its satellites in the Central African Republic, Wagner delivered weapons (paid for by the UAE) to the RSF amid confusion over the divisions among the Rizeigat clans.
The death of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin further complicated matters: Vladimir Putin reorganised his militias in Africa, meaning two Russian groups competed to supply the RSF. In December the Kremlin announced the creation of the Africa Corps, which could bring together their operations. The UAE has resolved these financial and logistical uncertainties with the help of Libya’s Marshal Khalifa Haftar.
Sudan seems to be inexorably sinking into chaos. Financial support, notably the $1.4bn provided by the IMF in July 2021, has had no economic or social impact. The near-genocide of Darfur’s African populations (thousands of deaths have gone unrecorded) is no longer factored in to any political calculations.”
Extracts from Gérard Prunier’s article on Le Monde Diplomatique, March 2024
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The best approach I have seen so far to what is happening in Sudan.
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