The Civil War in Sudan between the Sudanese Military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has now entered its third year. Despite the fact that this war has not always received a lot of international coverage, it is fair to say that this war has likely been one of the deadliest and most devastating wars our generation has witnessed. All of the worst kinds of atrocities imaginable have been inflicted upon the Sudanese people, from sexual violence, ethnic cleansing, famine and much more.
Over the course of this war, hundreds of thousands of Sudanese civilians have likely been killed and millions have been forced to flee from their homes and villages. For those who have still managed to survive, they have faced constant famine and displacement throughout the course of this war. It’s honestly difficult to choose which has experienced a worse fate, those who have already lost their lives as a result of this war, or those who continue to live in the hell that has been inflicted on them by the warring parties.
However, much of the world has been largely indifferent to the suffering of the Sudanese population. As this war has been largely overshadowed by the wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine. Throughout the course of this last year, we have seen widespread protests all around the world against the war in Gaza. Similarly, after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we saw protests against Putin’s government, and we saw the United States, together with European governments, rally around Ukraine and provide it with billions worth of military and economic assistance.
The last two years have basically been wall-to-wall coverage of these two conflicts in particular. However, the war in Sudan, which by most measurements has been much more devastating, in terms of the scale of the human suffering it has caused, has largely been happening in the background.
Perhaps the most concerning trend around this war, in my view, is that the death and the suffering of African people is something that has largely become less newsworthy for much of the world. 25 million Sudanese are currently experiencing starvation, however, much of the world has already become so desensitised to hearing about such numbers coming out of the African continent at this point. In the past, the genocide that took place in Western Darfur had managed to capture the attention of people around the world, yet the ethnic cleansing campaign taking place again today in Darfur is barely spoken about.
One of the results of this lack of interest or awareness of the war has been that international aid agencies have struggled to even raise funds to support Sudanese civilians who have been displaced from their homes. If anything, even less aid is being provided today, over 2 years into the war, as a result of the Trump administration’s policy to reduce the amount of aid given out by the US government.
Though, it is difficult to be too disgruntled with the international community when African leaders do not seem to care much either. In fact, the two men who are leading the war efforts have been welcomed with open arms by some African leaders at different moments throughout the conflict. In February this year, Kenya’s president, William Ruto, would host Hemedti, the head of the RSF, in Nairobi, despite the fact that the RSF has been alleged to be taking part in ethnic cleansing campaigns against minority groups within the Western Darfur region in Southwest Sudan. Likewise, Ethiopia’s prime minister would meet with Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, the Sudanese military chief, in July last year.
How can we really complain much about the response of the international community to the war in Sudan, when neighbouring African leaders choose to hold meetings with the leaders of the warring parties, thereby giving them legitimacy? Time and time again, we see this same trend of African leaders sitting idly by as dictators and despots commit atrocities against civilians. Rather than even have any words of condemnation, African leaders would rather eagerly line up to hold meetings and appear in pictures alongside these rulers.
This is perhaps the most concerning aspect of this conflict. Today, it is the Sudanese people who are being victimised, but tomorrow this sort of conflict could easily break out in any other African country. This is not even a war between two ideologically opposed factions; in fact most Sudanese people do not even support either side in this civil war. At the end of the day, this conflict comes down to the control of money and power between these two factions. And this battle over the resources of the Sudanese state is what has led to the worst humanitarian crisis in the world for over 2 years now.
