(AfriquesPlus) - This week's cover of The Economist is devoted to Sudan's civil war, now in its fourth year, under the headline "How to end Sudan's brutal, forgotten conflict." The magazine's leader argues that outsiders have shown "callous indifference to the suffering, by paying to keep the fighting going or neglecting it," but that a narrow diplomatic opening has now emerged and "must be grabbed."
The piece opens on a stark portrait of Khartoum, once a city of roughly seven million people before the war erupted in April 2023. "Today its centre is deserted," the magazine reports following a rare visit to the country. "So many bodies have been dumped that human skulls spill out of makeshift mass graves." The war has driven 14 million people from their homes and killed hundreds of thousands through fighting, famine and what the magazine calls "genocidal violence," making it comparable in scale only to the conflict in Congo in the early 2000s, though The Economist stresses Sudan's war carries far greater geopolitical weight, having already helped reignite civil wars in South Sudan and Yemen.
The conflict pits the Sudanese Armed Forces against the Rapid Support Forces, a militia the magazine says receives "weapons, money and mercenaries from the United Arab Emirates," which denies the claim, while the army draws backing from Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Until recently, The Economist notes, "all these actors had an overwhelming interest in keeping the war going."
The magazine identifies two developments now creating a fragile opening. First, Houthi attacks on oil tankers in the Red Sea have underscored Sudan's strategic coastline for Saudi Arabia, reviving Riyadh's interest in the war and potentially raising the cost for the UAE of continuing to back the RSF. Second, the Sudanese army has posted its most significant battlefield gains since retaking Khartoum, including recapturing a key highway to el-Obeid in late July and retaking the border town of Kurmuk.
Sudan's rainy season, the magazine notes, should bring a lull in fighting over the coming month, giving a "humanitarian truce" proposed by Massad Boulos, Donald Trump's Africa envoy, "a better chance of holding while the battle lines are relatively static." Without action, The Economist warns, the country risks a "Somalia timeline" — a phrase it says many exhausted Sudanese now use to describe a decades-long conflict with no end in sight — as fragmentation among the war's dozens of militias accelerates regardless of who prevails.
