Slavoj Zizek

LJUBLJANA – When one looks for a figure who best represents the worst tendencies of our brutal age, the first names that come to mind include Yahya Sinwar (Hamas’s leader in Gaza), Binyamin Netanyahu, Kim Jong-un, or Vladimir Putin. But that is primarily because we are bombarded with news about these leaders. If we widen the lens to account for horrors that Western mainstream media largely ignore, those waging Sudan’s civil war stand out even more. The country’s new warlords are displaying shocking cruelty and indifference toward their own people (or those living in the regions they control), including by systematically hampering the flow of humanitarian aid and taking an exorbitant amount of it for themselves.

The situation in Sudan exposes a global economic logic that has remained obfuscated in other cases. Back in 2019, widespread demonstrations toppled the country’s longtime dictator, Omar al-Bashir, whose reign at least had maintained a semblance of peace and stability following the secession of South Sudan (a predominantly Christian country that is now mired in its own civil war). Then, following a brief moment of transitional government and renewed hopes for democratization, a brutal war erupted between two Muslim warlords: General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) who is still nominally head of state, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (or Hemedti, meaning “little Mohamed”), the commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and one of the country’s wealthiest men.

The RSF is behind........

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