Since 2023, Sudan has been consumed by a brutal conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The violence has displaced more than 14 million people, more than in Ukraine and Gaza combined. Four million have fled across borders into impoverished neighbors such as Chad and South Sudan. Half the population is at risk of hunger and nearly all of Sudan’s children are out of school. Cholera spreads, malaria is endemic. But statistics cannot capture the profound sense of meaninglessness left in the wake of destroyed cities, shuttered universities, and looted hospitals.
What makes Sudan’s war especially telling is how deeply it is shaped by outside powers. Both the SAF and RSF fund their operations through illicit gold exports, often routed through the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar arm and finance one side or the other, the UAE bankrolls the RSF, Iran provides drones and weapons to the SAF and Russia trades with both sides. Sudan has become a new Libya or Yemen; a battlefield where middle powers conduct proxy wars, seeking influence, resources, or simply advantage against rivals. The competition for Sudan’s gold deposits and its strategic Red Sea location fuels this chaos, while the people of Sudan pay the price.
Equally alarming is the withdrawal of the Global North. Just a decade ago, Sudan and South Sudan commanded immense American and European attention—mobilizing churches, celebrities, human rights campaigns, and even large-scale U.S. diplomatic engagement. That era is over. Humanitarian aid has been slashed and U.S. foreign policy has shifted elsewhere. Sudanese activists and volunteers struggle heroically to keep people alive with communal kitchens and medicine drives, but they are abandoned by an international community that once claimed a “responsibility to protect.” Refugees have disappeared from American public debate, even as their numbers worldwide soar to record highs. In Sudan, the result is a vacuum: a violent ecosystem where civilians are starved, displaced, and killed, while regional and global actors pursue their own narrow interests.
Sudan’s war is not an isolated tragedy. It shows how quickly the erosion of global responsibility, the commodification of resources, and the withdrawal of compassion in the Global North can turn health, safety, and dignity into casualties of global power politics.
Read more here: The Atlantic, September 2025 Issue, The Most Nihilistic Conflict On Earth, By Anne Applebaum
Photograph by Lynsey Addario