The worst war in the world right now is also its least noticed. It’s happening in Sudan, where the country’s armed forces are clashing ferociously with a paramilitary force that evolved out of the savage Janjaweed militia that terrorized Darfur.
This is some serious Mad Max shit that threatens to create a famine that agencies modeling the conflict predict will kill 6 to 10 million people.
The West largely ignores the war, focused on Ukraine and Gaza. The UAE is supplying arms to the RSF — arms they have purchased from the U.S. — but we’re not going to put the arm on them because we need UAE to put pressure on Hamas to release Israeli hostages. I suspect that the “progressives” screaming about “genocide” in Gaza couldn’t find Sudan on a map of Sudan.
Indeed, The Economist archly notes that you won’t see many Sudanese flags flying on American college campuses. The current edition offers detailed analysis of the conflict — including its potential for mass starvation and regional destabilization on a calamitous scale.
The cause of the famine is Sudan’s civil war, which began in April 2023, when the army and an auxiliary paramilitary, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), fell out. The ensuing conflict has a strong claim to be the biggest and most destructive in the world today. Perhaps 150,000 people have been killed by the fighting itself. At least 245 towns or villages have been burnt. Much of Khartoum, the capital, has been flattened. More than 20% of the country’s pre-war population of roughly 50m have been forced to flee their homes. Some have taken refuge in neighbouring countries such as Egypt, but the vast majority of the displaced—nearly 8m—remain inside Sudan, many of them in camps like Zamzam. Médecins Sans Frontières estimates that 80% of health facilities in war-torn areas are so ravaged by bullets and bombs that they are no longer functional. “Our country is being destroyed by the hour,” says Burai Sidig Ali, the governor of the central bank, which itself has been pillaged and torched.
Russian Wagner mercs have been smuggling gold out of the country, drawing Ukrainian special ops into the theater — though that seems to have died down after Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin met with a tragic “air accident.”
Vast portions of the country have been ravaged by unchecked wildfires.
PBS and The Wall Street Journal have done some good reporting in recent weeks under very dangerous conditions:
Sudan has a long history of terrible conflict. In 1881, a militant Islamist revival movement rose in the desert to overthrow the British-backed (actually, British-controlled) Egyptian government that ruled Sudan. The movement was led by Abdullah ibn-Mohammed, who claimed to be the Mahdi, purportedly a kind of “expected” end times religious leader. The Mahdists took Khartoum, killing British General Charles George Gordon in dramatic Victorian Age last stand fashion, and establishing an Islamic state. It took a decade, but the British eventually trekked up the Nile with an Anglo-Egyptian force and cut the Mahdist forces to pieces at the Battle of Omdurman.
Matthew says
It’s amazing how we Americans know so little about the rest of the world. We may not be the worst at this but we could be better. Of course, part of the problem is that there is so much to know. The history of any one country is so complex. Even ours and we are not that old.
The people who screaming about the “genocide” in Gaza probably didn’t pay attention to that issue until it became trendy to do so. They also tend to come from really financial privileged backgrounds. The working man is too busy trying to provide for his family to spend much time protesting.