I decided to focus this week’s column on a region that gets far too little attention: Africa. And on Sudan, specifically. Last night, I had the pleasure of attending the International Rescue Committee’s annual dinner, where they bestowed their Freedom Award on Lynsey Addario, a renowned photojournalist who has covered every major conflict zone in the last twenty-five years. She shared stories and made a number of important observations, but the one that stuck with me is that she had covered the original war in Darfur back in the early 2000s and had recently gone back to Sudan, only to find the same situation there more than twenty years later.
Sudan’s new civil war has left more than 150,000 people dead, half the population facing acute food insecurity, and now, the city of El Fasher seized after an eighteen-month assault and siege. According to detailed reporting and satellite imagery analysis, we’re seeing mass killings, siege-induced starvation, and reports of genocide. The war is widely regarded as one of the worst humanitarian crises of the twenty-first century, but this conflict barely gets any international attention.
Why is that? Certain conflicts seem to get passed over because they seem too intractable, too impossible to imagine improving. But just yesterday, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan agreed to a U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal. This isn’t the first time there has been a ceasefire agreement. Is this time different?
To better understand what might happen next, I sat down with my CFR colleague Michelle Gavin, Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies.
Froman: Michelle, for those who haven’t been tracking closely, what’s the current state of play? How did we get from a democratic uprising less than a decade ago to factional infighting that devolved into civil war?
Gavin: When the sheer scope of the popular uprising against Omar al Bashir’s government in 2018 and 2019 made it impossible to maintain the status quo, the military stepped in to seize power, setting up a power-sharing arrangement with civilians for a transitional period. But the military did not actually want to share power, or to see the country transition to democracy, and so launched another coup in 2021. Even then, with civilians sidelined, the security forces were not comfortable sharing power with one another, and a rift emerged between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, and the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF. It’s important to understand that these entities were collaborators for years, part of the same security apparatus operating on behalf of Bashir and his National Congress Party (NCP). The rift exploded into war in April 2023, and throughout the conflict, neither side has shown any interest in protecting the civilian population from harm.
Froman: I remember in the early 2000s when the world vowed “never again” after the mass atrocities of the war in Darfur. And yet, here we are. Why doesn’t Sudan get the attention it deserves? How do you explain the regional and global paralysis toward Sudan? What more could have been done to prevent the bloodshed?
Gavin: Sudan’s crisis has fallen victim to a distracted, fatigued, and dysfunctional system for managing threats to peace and security around the world. Crises in Ukraine and Gaza dominated the news. Sudan quickly became very difficult for journalists to access. The United Nations Security Council has not been in the business of responding effectively to crises for years. The complexity of competing interests in the region has paralyzed the African Union.
Of course, it’s impossible to know what would have happened had the United States moved much more quickly to support the transitional government, altering the landscape of economic incentives for critical Sudanese actors. But most analysts agree that the failure to do so was a mistake. Then there could have been a much more forceful response imposing real costs for the foreign actors funding and arming the belligerents, and that still hasn’t happened. The decision by the United States not to take aggressive action signaled a lack of commitment that some of the war’s main backers appear to have interpreted as a green light.
Froman: What’s your read of the correlation of forces between the SAF and the RSF? The army appears to have regained Khartoum and the Nile corridor, while the RSF controls most of Darfur and the west. Are we seeing the lines harden, or is the RSF gaining momentum?
Gavin: Throughout this two-and-a-half year war, neither side has shown the capacity to achieve decisive military victory, and that has not changed. The fortunes of the two main belligerents have waxed and waned, and right now there is no evidence to suggest that either party is satisfied with the current state of play, so absent some new development, fighting will continue.
Froman: Famine expert Alex de Waal has called Sudan “today’s biggest and most intractable famine,” accusing both belligerents of weaponizing food and aid to achieve their military aims. How deliberate is this starvation strategy? Can you give us a sense of the vastness of the famine’s scale?
Gavin: What’s happening in terms of food security in Sudan is undeniably a deliberate strategy of starving civilians. Sudan has a long history of starving its people as part of its political and military campaigns. During the long civil war between the north and the south, before South Sudanese independence, the Bashir regime worked to prevent food from reaching southerners, honing its skill in throwing up endless bureaucratic and administrative hurdles to cripple humanitarian relief efforts. As an example, in recent days, the SAF expelled from the country two senior officials from the World Food Programme. Those same skills have been applied again in the current conflict. In the case of El Fasher, the RSF employed an explicit campaign of siege that lasted for nearly a year and a half.
Right now, famine has been confirmed in El Fasher and Kadugli. Some of the other regions of Sudan that had been enduring famine are slowly recovering as fighting has moved to other parts of the country, but over 21 million people in Sudan are still facing high levels of food insecurity, and experts predict that twenty additional areas could tip into famine soon. The massive disruption to agriculture in Sudan caused by the war means that serious hunger will persist in the near future even if fighting eases, because planting seasons and harvests have been missed.
Froman: The war has been described to me as a web of regional proxy battles—with Egypt and Iran backing the Sudanese Armed Forces, Saudi Arabia tipping toward the SAF, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) arming the RSF. Who are the key outside players in Sudan? How are their interests and material support influencing the conflict? And what are their interests in Sudan to begin with?
Gavin: This conflict could not go on without external support. The SAF has been supported by Egypt and Turkey as well as Iran, and it has enjoyed diplomatic support from Saudi Arabia. Russia, eager to secure a port on the Red Sea, has also backed the SAF. The diversity of SAF backers speaks volumes about how factionalized the SAF itself actually is. The RSF’s main backer is the UAE, although they too have gotten some support from Russia, where the RSF has pre-war economic relationships. The depth of the UAE’s influence in north and east Africa has led states eager to stay in Abu Dhabi’s good graces to tilt toward the RSF as well, including Kenya, Chad, Ethiopia, and Khalifa Haftar’s portion of Libya.
For many of these external actors, Sudan is a venue in their competition with each other that they cannot ignore. Some of the SAF’s backers have clear affinities for an authoritarian government closely aligned to the military. In the case of Egypt, there is also the matter of Nile waters, and its desire to isolate Ethiopia by remaining aligned with Sudan. The UAE consistently denies supporting the RSF despite ample evidence to the contrary, but Emirati diplomats also warn of the dangers of Islamist influences within the SAF.
Froman: I imagine President Donald Trump would like to add Sudan to the list of conflicts ended on his watch. And I gather that the United States, along with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, has been working under the “Quad” format on a three-month humanitarian truce. Then, just this week, the RSF agreed to the proposal. We haven’t heard from the Sudanese army yet, though they’ve rejected previous proposals. Why have outside mediation efforts failed so far? What leverage does Washington really have, and have we taken it out for a drive? And are sanctions, incentives, or diplomacy with the Gulf states more likely to move the needle?
Gavin: It would be wonderful if the RSF’s recent announcement that it would accept a ceasefire were a serious indicator that they are interested in peace. But both sides have agreed to ceasefires in the past, only to violate their agreements within days. The timing of the announcement, coming after reports that the SAF would not accept a deal unless the RSF agreed to vacate the cities it holds, suggests a bid for international sympathy more than a serious desire for peace. After all, the ceasefire proposal has been on the table for over a month, and during that time, both sides have stockpiled more weapons. The RSF seized El Fasher and unleashed terrible violence on the civilians it had been slowly starving to death for months, and SAF officials expelled senior humanitarian aid workers. None of the actions on the ground have suggested that either side is serious about a humanitarian ceasefire and genuine peace process.
Mediation has failed thus far because the external supporters of this war see little cost to continuing their activities, and neither side trusts the other, nor do they have any interest in a truly civilian-led Sudan that could box them out from lucrative deals and opportunities to wield power. Washington certainly has leverage with Egypt and the UAE, but policymakers have been unwilling to use it while they work with these same actors on other crises, not least Gaza. Diplomatic efforts to accommodate genuine security concerns have never been accompanied by serious pressure to stop fueling this war.
Froman: The impact of the crisis in Sudan isn’t necessarily limited to Sudan. More than 12 million have been displaced. What are the stakes for regional peace and stability? Any implications for the resurgence in terror across the Sahel and northeast Africa?
Gavin: Sudan’s collapse has already exacerbated tensions in South Sudan, which appears to be sliding into a resumption of its own civil conflict. It has made the already fragile stability in Chad that much more brittle. The web of belligerents and their backers’ relationships across the Horn risk escalating tensions throughout the region, particularly between Ethiopia and Eritrea and in Somalia.
Froman: Assuming we apply some degree of strategic leverage to end the conflict, what do the endgame scenarios look like? Is there a partition in the cards? What are the odds of a unified Sudan when the dust settles?
Gavin: De facto partition is more or less the status quo, but no entity appears satisfied with this arrangement. At this point, all relevant actors appear to be envisioning a unified Sudan in the future.
Froman: Despite the scale of the tragedy on the ground, it still seems to me that Sudan is paid short shrift in U.S. media and policy circles. What’s at stake here—not only on a humanitarian level, but for the United States and the region as a whole? Why does it matter? Why should Americans care?
Gavin: What happens in Sudan absolutely can hurt us. For decades, Sudan was a malign actor on the world stage, supporting Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and harboring Osama bin Laden. Terrorist networks that aim to harm the United States would welcome a solid foothold in Sudan, just as Russia would welcome a new method to project power in the important commercial corridor of the Red Sea.
But there is another side of the coin as well, which is the opportunity cost of abandoning the Sudanese people’s quest for an entirely different kind of Sudan—one that is democratic, sovereign, and governed by the rule of law. A state like that, bridging the Arab and African worlds, could ease pressure on other U.S. relationships in the region and provide meaningful opportunities for collaboration in advancing peace, security, and prosperity.
Finally, Americans should consider whether they want to live in a world in which the wealthy and the armed can starve and slaughter civilians with total impunity. International humanitarian law and the laws of war were developed to protect everyone. When they are discarded, we are all more vulnerable.
Let me know what you think about the crisis in Sudan and what this column should cover next by replying to president@cfr.org.
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