A calamitous war without end in Sudan

The civil war in Sudan, ignited in April 2023 by a ruptured power-sharing pact between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, has devoured the nation with a ferocity rivaling its darkest historical chapters.
Born from the embers of the ouster of Omar Bashir in 2019, the conflict represents the collapse of a fragile transition from military to civilian rule, as rival generals — Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly known as Hemedti — clashed over control of institutions, strategic resources, and the very future of Sudan.
More than 12 million people are displaced or facing famine as a result of the conflict; 15,000 are confirmed dead and many more remain uncounted beneath rubble or in mass graves. Meanwhile, the nation’s economy, once hopeful with International Monetary Fund-backed reforms, has contracted by 40 percent, infrastructure lies in ruins, and 70 percent of hospitals in conflict zones are closed. Still the war rages on, metastasizing into a crisis on multiple fronts as external actors continue to pour fuel on the fire through their proxies.
The Rapid Support Forces, the roots of which lie in the Janjaweed militias of Darfur, has leveraged its paramilitary networks to seize territory and exploit gold mines, while the Sudanese Armed Forces relies on its conventional military apparatus and international legitimacy. Neither side has shown any willingness to compromise, and both are accused of egregious human rights violations, including indiscriminate bombings, gender-based violence, and the use of starvation as a weapon of war.
Civilians, trapped by siege tactics and opportunistic ethnic violence, endure a war without borders, rules or an endgame, a grotesque testament to the international community’s inability to reconcile rhetoric with action.
Worryingly, the international community’s handling of Sudan’s civil war has been a masterclass in dysfunction. Competing diplomatic initiatives, fractured alliances, and a glaring absence of unified pressure have allowed the conflict to metastasize. Mediation efforts by regional organizations, hamstrung by divergent priorities and an inability to enforce agreements, have yielded little beyond symbolic gestures.
Even more disappointing, the UN, once a forum for collective action, now mirrors the world’s disarray: Security Council resolutions languish without implementation, while rival powers exploit procedural gridlock to shield their own interests.
This international inertia has emboldened the warring factions, who interpret global inaction as tacit permission to pursue military gains over negotiation. Even calls for ceasefires to be honored, a minimal demand in the face of mass starvation, are treated as optional, with violations met by silence rather than consequences.

Humanitarian agencies, meanwhile, operate in a lethal limbo. More than 25 million people require aid, yet convoys are routinely blocked, looted or attacked, leaving entire regions severed from deliveries of food, medicine, and other basic supplies. The deliberate targeting of infrastructure during the war, including roads, bridges and hospitals, has turned survival into a logistical impossibility for millions.
While other global crises command sustained attention and resources, the plight of Sudan is relegated to the periphery, its suffering compounded by a cynical arithmetic of geopolitical relevance. Diplomatic communiques tout “grave concern,” yet lack the muscle to halt weapons flows or penalize obstruction.
The result is a self-perpetuating cycle: as the world dithers, the architects of the war consolidate power, aid access shrinks further, and the odds of any meaningful interventions dim.
In Sudan, the limits of a fractured international order are not theoretical, they are measured in empty stomachs and mass graves.

The international community’s handling of Sudan’s civil war has been a masterclass in dysfunction.

Hafed Al-Ghwell

Domestically, the war has systematically dismantled the foundations of civil society, erasing a decade of grassroots mobilization that once promised a democratic transition. The pro-democracy movement, which mobilized millions to topple Bashir in 2019, now operates in fragments, its leaders jailed, exiled, or coerced into silence, while underground networks struggle to sustain resistance amid relentless crackdowns.
More than 1,000 activists have been detained since 2023, and 80 percent of civil society organizations report severe operational disruptions, crippling their ability to document atrocities or advocate for reform.
The conflict has laid bare the military’s unyielding grip on power, as the rival factions, both of which were products of Bashir’s regime, prioritize dominance over governance, rejecting even nominal civilian oversight. Decades of military entrenchment in Sudan’s economy, controlling sectors from agriculture to gold mining, have rendered the prospect of democratic accountability nearly impossible.
The war itself, rooted in the failure of a 2022 power-sharing agreement, exemplifies this defiance; rather than cede authority, the generals have weaponized state institutions, diverting 70 percent of national expenditures toward warfare while 90 percent of the population faces poverty.
Civilian aspirations for representative governance now seem quixotic, as aerial bombardments and ethnic killings in Darfur erase communal trust. With media outlets shut down, universities shorn of dissent, and labor unions disbanded, the machinery of civic engagement lies in ruins, a casualty of war as profound as the cities reduced to ash.
Given all these factors that have sent Sudan hurtling toward total collapse, is there any path to peace? Well, Sudan’s complex war, now entrenched in its second year, defies simplistic narratives of eventual resolution. Neither side possesses the military capacity to achieve outright victory, yet both resist compromise, betting on attrition to exhaust their rival. The Sudanese Armed Forces and and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces each have entrenched economic interests — control of gold mines, ports, and smuggling networks — that incentivize perpetual conflict over stable governance.
Such deadlock is compounded by a fractured international system: global powers lack consensus, regional actors prioritize short-term security over stability, and multilateral institutions, stripped of enforcement tools, issue hollow appeals.
Even if battlefield exhaustion forces temporary truces, the absence of any credible mechanisms to demobilize forces, redistribute resources or address grievances ensures that ceasefires remain transactional pauses, not pathways to peace.
Yet history suggests that even intractable wars reach inflection points. In the case of Sudan, meaningful progress hinges on three factors: coordinated external pressure to alter the cost-benefit calculus of the war; a unified civilian front capable of transcending factionalism; and enforceable guarantees for military integration. External powers backing the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces must align penalties — asset freezes, travel bans, arms embargoes — with demands for good-faith talks.
Simultaneously, civilian coalitions in Sudan, though fragmented, could regain relevance by articulating a shared vision for post-war transition, leveraging grassroots networks that still command moral authority.
None of this guarantees peace, but without such conditions Sudan will descend into being a permanent failed state, its disintegration a blueprint for 21st-century conflict, while also imperiling the already fraught security dynamics in the Horn of Africa. Therefore, the question is not whether the fighting will end and peace prevail, but how many more millions must suffer before the world acknowledges that indifference is a policy choice and one with measurable human consequences.

• Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior fellow and executive director of the North Africa Initiative at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. X: @HafedAlGhwell