Why the World Is Ignoring Sudan's Devastating Civil War

For a brief moment, it was all the world could talk about. On April 15, 2023, clashes erupted between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in the capital of Khartoum. As the fighting spread and the death toll mounted, countries raced to evacuate their citizens.

Embassies were shuttered and escapes facilitated, with all of it broadcast in round-the-clock coverage. But then, a distinct shift occurred. With the evacuations over, the story faded.

It dropped off the headlines as quickly as it had blown up in the first place. Today, encountering coverage of Sudan’s conflict in the regular media is a rare event. By early November 2023, major global news frontpages covered floods in Somalia, international diplomatic recalls, and celebrity philanthropy in Africa, while only those who scrolled far down would have noticed a single, short headline about shelling hitting a Sudanese market.

How a conflict that briefly dominated global news feeds became a mere media footnote requires an examination of both Sudan’s ongoing war and an investigation into the broader lack of international interest.

The Scale of a Humanitarian Nightmare

The first notable aspect regarding the relative silence on Sudan is that it is hardly a small or obscure country. At 1.89 million square kilometers, Sudan is the third-largest nation in Africa, a country home to over 45 million people. Nor is it particularly unimportant in the global scheme of things.

With a long Red Sea coastline, the country is situated on a vital trade route, one that will only increase in importance as neighboring states like Saudi Arabia sink money into developing their own adjacent coastlines across the waters. The lack of coverage is highly anomalous given that this is not a low-intensity war impacting only a few unfortunate villages. By most reckonings, it now ranks among the planet’s most devastating crises.

United Nations Undersecretary-General Martin Griffiths, speaking in October—six months after the conflict erupted—stated that half a year of war had plunged Sudan into one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history. That is a largely unambiguous statement, and it is devoid of hyperbole. With over 5.6 million people displaced by the fighting, Sudan ranks alongside Ukraine and Syria in terms of refugees.

Within the nation’s borders, more people are thought to be in desperate need of aid than in Ukraine. The official death toll of Sudan’s conflict, reported at 9,000 during the initial months, is widely considered a severe undercount. Reuters recently conducted an in-depth report detailing a springtime attack by the Rapid Support Forces and their allies on the city of El Geneina in Darfur.

This region in the west of Sudan is home to both nomadic Arab tribes and Black African ethnic groups like the Masalit. Over two months, the RSF slaughtered people in the city, conducting house-to-house executions and attacking convoys of refugees trying to flee. Overall, a local surgeon quoted in the Reuters piece estimated that 4,000 people were killed in El Geneina alone.

Furthermore, the city is far from the only one to have been sacked amidst the fighting. By July, the UN estimated at least 13 mass graves were dotted across the Darfur region—the result of a genocidal campaign carried out by the RSF and Janjaweed militias against the Masalit. Survivors have reported snipers picking off people in the streets, aid camps being sacked and burned, and mosques blown up even as civilians cowered inside them.

Just a week prior to these mass grave discoveries, South Darfur’s capital, Nyala, fell to the RSF. Going by the violence unleashed on El Geneina, it seems highly likely more atrocities have been carried out there. Darfur, of course, has been the site of mass killings before; in the 2000s, the region’s name became a byword for genocide.

Unlike fifteen years ago, however, the violence in this war is not contained in Sudan’s west.

The Devastation of Khartoum and Impending Famine

For all that cities like El Geneina have suffered, the capital of Khartoum has arguably suffered more. As the location of the initial clashes between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces—usually referred to as the SAF—Khartoum has spent the majority of 2023 as an active warzone. Hospitals have been flattened in airstrikes, the presidential palace was attacked, and iconic buildings, like the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company Tower, were destroyed in massive fires.

The infrastructure of the nation’s political and economic center has been systematically dismantled by unrelenting urban combat. From a pre-war metropolitan population of 6.34 million, perhaps half have fled the city. Those who remain have endured severe food shortages, widespread blackouts, systematic looting, and pitched gun battles in residential neighborhoods.

The Economist noted of the extensive damage that Sudan’s capital has essentially become Africa’s Aleppo. Tragically, the cascading effects of this infrastructural collapse mean the situation could soon deteriorate further. The war has closed most of the nation’s transport routes, making shipping vital supplies around the country next to impossible.

Combined with a significantly compromised harvest this year, it is estimated that up to six million people will be on the cusp of famine by December. This horizon of starvation emphasizes just how large a calamity the conflict truly is. It remains highly unusual that only a select few media outlets are covering the situation in any substantial depth.

When the first bombs fell on April 15, their detonations acted not just as the opening salvos of a new war, but as a coda to a brief period of hope—a requiem for Sudan’s recent revolution. Prior to 2019, Sudan had spent three full decades under the authoritarian grip of Omar al-Bashir. Al-Bashir, who came to power in a military coup, was a tyrant who ruled not so much with an iron fist as a wrist-mounted iron machinegun.

He oversaw the earlier genocide in Darfur, encouraging the Arab Janjaweed militias in their atrocities to such an extent that he remains wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. Operating with extreme paranoia, he invited the Janjaweed in 2013 to form an official paramilitary force: the Rapid Support Forces. The original intention was that the RSF would act as a counterweight to the Sudanese Army, lest al-Bashir’s generals start imagining they might look good on the throne.

Historical Context and the Fracture of the Revolution

The establishment of the RSF essentially formalized a highly volatile militia structure within the state apparatus. But the dictator should have paid closer attention to the Janjaweed’s name, which translates to “devils on horseback.” Like all proxy forces operating without institutional accountability, the RSF would not be even remotely troubled by feelings of loyalty.

Things came to a head in the spring of 2019, following months of civilian protests. On April 11, the military joined the public, formally removing al-Bashir from power. What followed was a quick transition to a Sovereignty Council, a body comprising both military men and civilians intended to chart Sudan on a course toward democracy.

However, it was not solely the regular army holding seats on the Council. The deputy chair of the Council was Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, universally known as Hemedti. A former Janjaweed commander from the Arab Rizeigat tribe, Hemedti was responsible for some of the Darfur War’s worst atrocities.

But rather than facing accountability, he was instead placed at the head of the RSF. By the eve of the revolution, he had 100,000 men under his direct command. Hemedti was not the only powerful player on the new Council.

There was also General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, a former army commander in Darfur who rose to power in the chaos of the revolution, eventually becoming chairman of the Sovereignty Council. Initially, the general insisted he was merely playing a transitional role, promising he would be Sudan’s de facto leader only up to the moment that a civilian government could take the reins. But in a nation with a history of military coups and army rule, that promise was severely tested.

The definitive answer came on October 25, 2021, when al-Burhan and Hemedti teamed up to remove the civilian members from the Council, explicitly canceling the transition to democracy. Although large-scale protests erupted, the power play worked. General al-Burhan became the effective leader of Sudan, with Hemedti firmly at his side.

Yet the younger commander had no intention of remaining in the general’s shadow. The Sudan War Monitor has noted that Hemedti cultivated a fiercely loyal following, allowing his subordinates to refer to him as president, emir, and commander-in-chief. As the leader of the RSF, Hemedti commanded a vast militia drawn from Sudan’s poor and marginalized populations, serving as a conduit for decades of resentment felt against the military elites in Khartoum.

With a combustible mix like that leading it, it was probably only a matter of time before Sudan ignited. The spark was a plan to integrate the RSF into Sudan’s regular military structure—a trigger bearing close resemblance to the Russian Army’s plan to take over Wagner, which led to Prigozhin’s aborted mutiny. But while the Wagner uprising fizzled out in hours, the RSF’s violent backlash remains ongoing.

The State of Play and International Involvement

There is considerably more to the conflict between the RSF and the SAF than mere personality clashes between their respective leaders, though unchecked ambition remains a major component. Hemedti is a ruthless operative from a humble background who, under the guise of restoring democracy, appears determined to consolidate absolute power. Outside actors who helped push the RSF and SAF toward extreme actions must also be considered.

Writing in the Guardian, Sudanese journalist Nesrine Malik pointed to despotic governments in North Africa, such as Egypt, that backed the SAF after the revolution in order to extinguish the prospect of a democracy flourishing in their geopolitical backyard. While that backing facilitated the 2021 coup, it also helped further destabilize a nation already suffering a severe power vacuum. Meanwhile, the RSF forged strategic alliances with foreign entities.

The paramilitary organization established ties with Russia and the Wagner Group in exchange for control over lucrative Sudanese gold mines. Since the war broke out, the United Arab Emirates has also emerged as a major external backer of the RSF. In the months since this war erupted, Sudan has transitioned from being an at least theoretically united country into one that seems to be actively cracking apart.

Nowhere is this violent fracturing more evident than in Khartoum. When the fighting began, conventional wisdom assumed that the SAF’s technological superiority would secure a rapid, bloody victory. Instead, Sudan’s primary city has fractured into distinct zones controlled by the rival factions.

In the downtown area, the RSF has seized not only the presidential palace but also most former government ministries. Further out, residential areas and critical supply warehouses are likewise under the militia’s control. RSF power became so widespread in the capital that General al-Burhan fled the city over the summer, setting up an alternative administrative capital in Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast.

Yet, for all their territorial advances, the RSF has failed to completely capture Khartoum. The SAF still holds multiple fortified army bases, including the vital Wadi Saidna air base. This fragmented dynamic is playing out across other parts of the country in similar ways.

In the Khartoum-adjacent city of Omdurman, RSF gains are offset by the SAF stubbornly clinging on to strategic positions. However, Darfur remains a region where the RSF exercises almost total dominance. By late October, the Sudan War Monitor reported the fall of the region’s second city, Nyala, as well as the loss of the army’s 21st Infantry Division headquarters in Zalingei.

This left only isolated SAF garrisons in Darfur, primarily in al-Fasher, highlighting a deeply divided operational theater that increasingly resembles a fractured state.

Media Visibility, War Fatigue, and Funding Shortfalls

While dozens of passionate, knowledgeable reporters, including independent journalists with the Sudan War Monitor and international correspondents for Reuters, continue to document the conflict under unbelievably difficult conditions, their findings rarely dominate global discourse. What the public priorities often dictates how governments react and where donor dollars flow. Context News has noted how international aid donations are barely half of what the UN estimates is required to avert a total catastrophe for Sudan’s civilians.

Charities and non-governmental organizations consistently report insufficient funding to operate basic hospitals. The driving forces behind this lack of attention appear highly complex. Some analysts suggest that prejudice plays a significant role.

The progressive magazine The Nation recently published a savage attack on the American media by two Sudanese activists, who compared the coverage to that of the Ukraine War. They declared that while victims of the Russian invasion are deemed worthy of continuous media attention, Sudanese civilians facing remarkably similar fates are structurally ignored. However, attributing this solely to media prejudice requires examining broader patterns.

It is worth remembering that the Darfur War in the 2000s received overwhelming, sustained coverage in the West, as did the 2011 secession of South Sudan. If the media landscape is entirely biased, it fails to explain why other African events, such as the Niger coup, generated endless global headlines. A more systemic factor involves how past coverage of Sudan has fundamentally affected public perception.

During the 2000s, the Darfur genocide was a key concern of global leaders, and the South Sudanese fight for independence was a cause celebre among politicians and activists. As a result, Sudan became linked in people’s minds with war and atrocity. Writing in the State Press, Sudanese-American journalist Fatima Gabir described how the sudden shock value of the war failed to affect non-Sudanese people because they held a preconceived notion that the country’s citizens always lived in conflict.

Gabir quoted a Sudanese-American student who concluded that there is no humanization around Sudanese culture and history, leading audiences to dismiss the violence as a continuation of historical norms. This war fatigue is compounded by shifting donor priorities. In September, the UN’s World Food Program director, Cindy McCain, stated on ABC that the WFP was suffering its worst funding shortage in sixty years.

In trying to explain the financial shortfall, McCain suggested that donor attention was overly focused on Ukraine, stating the conflict had “sucked the oxygen out of the room.” While acknowledging the need to support Ukraine, McCain stressed that other desperate hotspots were being financially starved. Major donors like Canada, Japan, and Norway have all reduced aid to Africa this decade, indicating a longer-term apathy among the public.

Arab News bemoaned this dynamic, noting that the war in Ukraine and the escalating crisis in the Middle East have diverted the international community, leaving Sudan suffering an inadvertent visibility crisis.

The Geopolitical Implications of State Collapse

This localized fragmentation stands in sharp contrast to the east of the country, where the SAF seems to be largely in control. Many analysts fear a potential Libya or Yemen scenario, where the nation essentially splits in two permanent, warring halves. Worryingly, formal division might actually represent an optimistic outcome.

A pessimistic projection involves a far broader shattering akin to the violent breakup of Yugoslavia. The U.S. Institute of Peace recently reported that violence has dispersed well beyond the centralized SAF and RSF commands.

This is highly troubling, as Sudan has traditionally been home to multiple separatist armed groups with their own distinct territorial ambitions. While five of the major separatist organizations formally agreed to lay down their arms following the 2020 Juba Peace Agreement, several are now explicitly threatening to take advantage of the current chaos and return to active fighting. With most of Sudan’s tribal networks additionally in possession of heavy weapons and deeply divided along ethnic lines, the structural conditions for a runaway, multi-factional civil war are well established.

The potential for the conflict to spin out of control means the international community’s lack of attention is not just a diplomatic oversight, but a severe strategic vulnerability. If Sudan collapses entirely into a failed state, the geopolitical consequences for the region and the wider world will be profoundly terrifying. As the World Politics Review recently assessed, a permanent power vacuum in Sudan would actively attract jihadists and mercenaries alike.

A country that spent nearly thirty years designated on the United States terrorism list could once again play host to groups of unchecked extremist organizations operating across the region. This would create an immediate security nightmare that Washington and its regional allies would actively struggle to contain. The historical precedents for this type of institutional collapse are deeply alarming.

The ongoing crisis in Libya has repeatedly threatened to spill over into neighboring nations, while state collapse in Somalia created all sorts of severe new regional dangers. Sudan is vastly larger than either of those nations and is far more structurally important for the broader region. If the Sudanese state fractures entirely, the security and economic impacts will resonate globally, making the current diplomatic apathy highly dangerous.

Information Blackouts and Tactical Media Suppression

Beyond Western media consumption habits and donor fatigue, a critical factor driving the lack of international awareness involves the active strategies of the warring parties themselves. Specifically, a total lack of media coverage aligns perfectly with the tactical objectives of the Rapid Support Forces. Recent geopolitical history provides a clear blueprint for this strategy.

During the blood-soaked Tigray War in Ethiopia, the conflict went almost unnoticed by the wider world largely because the Ethiopian government implemented a comprehensive information blackout across the warzone. Telecommunications were severed, and anyone entering or leaving Tigray was rigorously searched for devices that might carry images of the conflict to the outside world. By executing this media blockade, authorities managed to prevent the war from gaining traction on social media, deliberately depriving an image-focused global culture of the means for capturing public attention.

Evidence strongly suggests that belligerents in Sudan have studied and adopted these exact methods. The recent RSF atrocities in Darfur have been accompanied by identical operational blackouts, representing deliberate attempts to cut the suffering civilian population off from the outside world. According to reports from Reuters, regional telecommunications networks have been systematically taken down.

During intense periods of violence, civilians attempting to flee the fighting have routinely had their mobile phones confiscated at militia checkpoints. This operational environment is completely different from the conflict in Ukraine, where both Kyiv and Moscow regularly publish combat videos to maintain morale and external support. It also differs entirely from the war in Gaza, where both sides continuously wage a sophisticated global propaganda battle utilizing visual media.

In an increasingly hyper-visual culture, bad actors like the RSF have clearly calculated that international public interest rapidly wanes when there is no new digital content to consume. They have recognized that intentionally hiding a large-scale conflict in the modern era is often as simple as severing a local telecommunications network. Whatever the precise combination of war fatigue, donor apathy, and tactical media suppression may be, the resulting silence remains deeply dangerous.

The world must fundamentally increase its attention regarding the events in Sudan. This is necessary not only because the nation has become an unprecedented humanitarian disaster zone, but because of where the unchecked conflict is inevitably leading. Averting a wider strategic catastrophe requires urgent global recognition of the crisis unfolding on the ground.

Frequently Asked Questions

What sparked Sudan’s civil war in April 2023?

The war began on April 15, 2023, when clashes erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Khartoum. The immediate trigger was a plan to integrate the RSF into Sudan’s regular military structure — a move RSF leader Hemedti violently opposed. Behind that trigger lay the 2021 coup in which General al-Burhan and Hemedti jointly removed civilian members from the Sovereignty Council, derailing Sudan’s democratic transition and setting the two men on a collision course for power.

Who is Hemedti, and what is the RSF’s origin?

Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, universally known as Hemedti, is a former Janjaweed commander from the Arab Rizeigat tribe who was responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the Darfur War. Rather than face accountability, he was placed at the head of a new paramilitary organization, the Rapid Support Forces, which dictator Omar al-Bashir created in 2013 as a counterweight to the regular army. By the eve of the revolution, Hemedti commanded 100,000 fighters.

What foreign actors are fueling the conflict?

The RSF established ties with Russia and the Wagner Group in exchange for control over lucrative Sudanese gold mines, and the United Arab Emirates has emerged as a major external backer of the RSF since the war erupted. On the other side, Egypt backed the SAF after the revolution, seeking to prevent a democracy from taking hold in its geopolitical backyard. This foreign involvement has prolonged and intensified the conflict well beyond a simple internal power struggle.

Why is the world paying so little attention to Sudan’s catastrophe?

Several factors converge: donor attention has shifted to Ukraine, with the WFP reporting its worst funding shortage in sixty years; a preconceived image of Sudan as permanently conflict-ridden dulls the shock value of new atrocities; and — critically — the RSF has implemented deliberate telecommunications blackouts, cutting networks and confiscating phones at checkpoints to prevent images from reaching global audiences in the same way that Ukraine and Gaza footage has.

Why could Sudan’s collapse be a global security threat?

Sudan is Africa’s third-largest country, home to fifty million people, situated on a vital Red Sea trade route, and surrounded by fragile neighbors. The U.S. Institute of Peace warns that violence has already dispersed beyond centralized SAF and RSF commands, with several separatist armed groups threatening to reactivate. Analysts fear a Libya- or Yemen-style permanent fracture, or worse a Yugoslav-style multi-factional collapse that would create a power vacuum attractive to jihadists and mercenaries — with consequences for regional stability far exceeding anything Libya’s collapse produced.

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