Origins and causes of Sudan’s conflict: Domestic and international perspectives

The war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and its subsidiary paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that began in April 2023 follows a succession of civil wars that devasted the economically marginalized, socially ostracized, and politically disenfranchised southern and western regions of Sudan, but it has now brought the conflict to the country’s geographic and economic power center. Unlike the decades-long North–South civil wars or the ongoing deadly conflict in Darfur, today’s conflict began in Khartoum and the agriculturally rich heartland of Central Sudan, bringing death and destruction to the central Aj Jazirah and Sennar states, before moving south and west to Darfur and Kordofan. The same historical, economic, political, and ethnic factors that fueled those previous conflicts are at play now, as the belligerent factions seek to control the country’s resources. This time, however, after working together to halt efforts to democratize Sudan, the SAF and RSF turned on each other, each seeking to dominate the kleptocratic state system.