CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Profit Over People: How the World Fuels Sudan’s War

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

A soft drink stabilized with gum arabic. Gold refined in Dubai. Meat imported for a holiday feast. These objects appear far removed from Sudan’s war. They are not.

Since April 2023, Sudan has been engulfed in a brutal armed conflict that began in Khartoum between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Triggered by disputes over security-sector reform during a stalled democratic transition, the fighting quickly spread nationwide, devastated civilian areas, drew in other armed groups, and crushed the fragile hopes raised by the 2019 overthrow of dictator Omar al-Bashir.

The war is rooted in Sudan’s post-colonial history of militarized rule, peripheral neglect, and outsourced repression. Since independence, successive regimes have governed through force rather than consent, waging prolonged wars against marginalized regions. The 2011 secession of South Sudan ended one conflict but entrenched a security state reliant on armed proxies instead of civilian institutions.

Under al-Bashir, this system was formalized. Militias used to terrorize Darfur—most notoriously the Janjaweed, accused of genocide—were not dismantled but institutionalized as the RSF, embedding racialized violence and impunity within the state.

The SAF and RSF were not historic enemies but former allies: pillars of al-Bashir’s rule who survived his fall with weapons, wealth, and foreign backing intact. The 2018–2019 revolution briefly exposed another possibility when millions of Sudanese came together to overthrow a dictator once thought immovable. But while protesters dismantled al-Bashir, they inherited a state hollowed out by decades of militarization. Civilian forces entered a transitional process without control over the security apparatus, while the SAF and RSF retained their power and international backing. The transition failed not because of popular apathy, but because armed elites were never removed from power. When security-sector reform threatened these parallel power bases, old allies turned on each other, igniting the war.

The human cost has been catastrophic. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed or injured by airstrikes, artillery, and ground assaults in densely populated areas, while entire neighbourhoods, villages, and displacement camps have been destroyed. Sexual and gender-based violence, including rape and gang rape, has been systematically used to terrorize communities, often in front of victims’ families. Widespread looting and the destruction of essential civilian infrastructure—medical centres, markets, food and water systems, and camps—have further violated economic, social, and cultural rights. Many of these acts amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination and persecution.

Sudan has become the site of the world’s largest displacement crisis. Over 11 million people are internally displaced, millions more have fled abroad, while famine and mass malnutrition threaten millions, especially children. Human rights organizations warn that genocide and the world’s worst hunger crisis may be unfolding simultaneously.

Crucially, this violence cannot be understood as purely internal. It is produced and sustained through foreign states and corporate actors that provide weapons, funding, and........

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