Attachments
February 11, 2025
A resolution of the Sudan conflict will require raising the financial and reputational costs of the regional actors who are fueling the conflict while ensuring the interests of each are recognized under a unified, sovereign Sudan.
The U.S. State Department’s January 2025 determination that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary force in Sudan was responsible for genocide was greeted by observers as less of a revelation than as a truism.
An investigation by a United Nations Panel of Experts a year earlier had found that the RSF has systematically violated international humanitarian law, including potentially committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. The RSF and allied Arab-militias selectively targeted African communities (largely from the Masalit ethnic group) in Darfur. In the capital of West Darfur alone, up to 15,000 people were killed.
The genocide declaration accuses the RSF of executing defenseless civilians and unarmed fighters as well as committing widespread sexual violence. The RSF is also linked to the systematic killing of men and boys of all ages, looting of the belongings of the Masalit, and seizure of their territory. An estimated 950,000 people have fled to neighboring Chad. The killings, brutalization, and depopulation of Darfur are tragic echoes from the genocide committed by the precursor of the RSF, the Janjaweed militia, in the 2000s.
There is little dispute, then, over the heinous crimes that justify the declaration.
The primary value from the genocide declaration may be to elevate the attention given to this long-neglected conflict.
Instead, the primary value from the genocide declaration may be to elevate the attention given to this long-neglected conflict in which between 60,000 and 150,000 people are estimated to have perished. Doing so—thereby shining a light on the regional actors that are sponsoring the fighting—may alter the regional political deadlock that has allowed the conflict to persist absent a popular domestic constituency.
The violence against unarmed civilians is occurring within a larger competition between two rival military structures—the RSF and the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), the ostensible national army. While not included in the genocide declaration, SAF leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan was also sanctioned by the United States for committing “lethal attacks on civilians including targeting schools, markets, and hospitals,” as well as deliberately obstructing the flow of emergency assistance to millions of Sudanese. The conflict has displaced an estimated 15 million people, including 3.5 million refugees. Half of the population of 47 million need humanitarian assistance, including at least 638,000 who are at risk of famine.
Sudan’s dueling military structures are a product of the 30-year autocratic regime of Omar al-Bashir, who was deposed in a popular uprising demanding the creation of a democratic government in 2019. The military subsequently joined a transitional government with civilian leaders as part of a promised transition to full civilian rule. Before this could take place, however, al-Burhan and RSF leader General Mohamad Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hemedti,” staged a coup in October 2021. Distrust and escalating political jockeying between the two generals sparked clashes in Khartoum in April 2023, which then quickly spread to other parts of the country.
Regional Dimensions and Drivers
The Sudan conflict is noteworthy for its strategic location. Sudan borders seven other African countries and the Red Sea, through which a quarter of the world’s seaborne container traffic travels. Sudan, thus, serves as a gateway between the Arab world and Africa. From the outset of the conflict, there were worries that Sudan’s strategic location, port access on a critical maritime throughway, fertile farmland along the Nile River, and sizeable deposits of gold would be an irresistible target for regional actors seeking to gain control of the country’s riches and establish a vassal state.
This, in fact, is the trajectory the conflict has taken. Like other proxy conflicts, such as that in Yemen and Libya, the devastation has been even more destructive than a “typical” civil war because so much outside funding and weaponry has poured into the conflict zone while the sponsors have borne none of the human costs.
Even prior to the outbreak of hostilities, Hemedti was alleged to be working with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Russia in trafficking gold from Sudan through Dubai. UAE companies also farm over 200,000 hectares of Sudanese land and the Emirates have plans to invest more than $6 billion in Sudan’s Abu Amama port, giving it significant control over Sudan’s trade routes. The UAE had previously recruited RSF forces to fight in Yemen against the Houthi militias.