The Silent Plight of Sudan
Large scale war has been raging in East Africa for the better part of 2023
Seven months ago Sudan plunged in to a full-scale civil war with conservative estimates putting the death toll currently at roughly 10,400. Millions have fled their homes, disease has spread rapidly, and cases of war rape and targeted ethnic massacres have been reported at alarming rates. How did we get here?
The executive summary is that four years ago, two Sudanese Generals (of separate military entities) worked together to overthrow the thirty-year dictatorial reign of Omar al-Bashir. Two years later those very same generals toppled the successor transitional civilian government. Finally, this spring the Sudan Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces entered in to open conflict for control of the strategically placed Nile River and Red Sea-adjacent country.
Unfortunately, this is yet another episode of fantastic violence in one of the most war-torn places on Earth. Since gaining independence in the mid-twentieth century Sudan has been subjected to two civil wars, a brutal dictatorship, and the chaos surrounding the secession of South Sudan twelve years ago. Ethnic and religious tensions between Muslim Arabs and Christian or non-Abrahamic Africans have played a role in much of the suffering. The country has basically been one continuous tragedy for the entirety of its modern history.
The U.S. Institute for Peace published a useful summary of the current conflict in October that included an assessment of the SAF and RSF ground control:
Khartoum, once the emblem of a unified, independent Sudan, is in the hands of the RSF, with the exception of some SAF strongholds. The city’s fate will depend on whether the SAF will deploy artillery or air power to dislodge the RSF — now using civilians and civilian dwellings as shields — at an inevitably enormous human and material cost.
In the meantime, the SAF has secured its base in Eastern Sudan headquartered at Port Sudan along the Red Sea coast, effectively turning Sudan into a Libya on the Red Sea. The citizens living between Eastern Sudan and Khartoum and Eastern Sudan and Darfur appear to be left to be exhausted — absent food, services and basic security — to join one side or the other. The SAF may also be betting on the exhaustion of the international community and an eventual favorable swing in regional alliances to support its claim to represent the legitimate government of Sudan.
This is a major war. There have been large battles, the unambiguous slaughter of innocent civilians, and disturbing reports of sexual violence. But as I’ve mentioned in the past few weeks, the international attention span is short. I don’t predict we’ll see any protests in front of the DNC, or marches in solidarity with the silently suffering Sudanese populace.
I wrote a few weeks ago about how the situation in Afghanistan is rapidly turning into fertile breeding ground for terror operations. Sudan presents some of the same alarm bells: a massive refugee crisis, evaporation of economic opportunity, and the free flow of arms. Additionally, the region is already teaming with militant combatants. The Iran-sponsored Houthis in Yemen operate just across the Red Sea (of which roughly ten percent of global maritime trade flows through—something to keep in mind when considering the raging conflicts in the region) and AEI’s Critical Threats Project has identified escalating Salafi-Jihadist insurgencies all across the continent:
It would not surprise me in the slightest to see Critical Threats flip Sudan to bright red in a future map should this war continue apace through 2024. The International Crisis Group noted in June that:
A collapsed Sudan could create a haven for transnational militants – who already hold sway on other African battlefields – mercenaries and traffickers who could plague the country’s neighbourhood for years to come. World powers and others with influence over the parties need to act with the alacrity the crisis warrants, all the more so because the challenge of convincing the two sides, who remain hellbent on destroying each other, is so great
Another hotbed of potential Salafi-Jihadist terrorism is not in the United States’ interest. It’s not in the interest of the European trade flowing through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden which is already threatened enough as is by the Houthis (who hijacked a Japanese Cargo Ship last night). Peace Initiatives helmed by America and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have gone nowhere so far but we should continue to utilize every diplomatic tool we can to bring the civil war closer to a close. Until that happens, thousands more innocent Sudanese will die senseless brutal deaths and the risk of Sudan becoming a failed state that attracts foreign fighters increases alarmingly.