Sudan and not only Sudan: eliminating the root causes of the civil conflict – Part Two

(Continues from the First Part)

A further disintegration of Sudan following the one already suffered in 2011, with the secession and elevation to statehood of much of its west, stretching far beyond Darfur and Kordofan, would not only signal the disappearance of the country but would usher in a new and major season of instability for an immense region that is already extensively destabilized. This vast region spans much of Sub-Saharan Africa, from the Great Lakes to the Nile Valley, and from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa, bringing together various countries plagued by severe vulnerabilities and internal divisions, which are often the source of repeated civil or regional conflicts. All these conflicts are, in turn, directly or indirectly linked to one another by the actions of military forces and terrorist groups that move casually from one country to another. They ignore borders, finding cross-border support, resources, or safe routes for the trafficking that simultaneously motivates and fuels their subversive and criminal activities. Well-maneuvered and bankrolled from above, they enjoy easily discernable complicity, often benefiting regardless of the specific group or conflict from the same promoters and beneficiaries.

Whether we are talking about Islamic-fundamentalist groups like JNIM, ISGS, ISWAP, Boko Haram, Ansaru, and others in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, or North-Central Nigeria; or Al-Shabaab in Somalia and the RSF themselves in Sudan along with many others allied to them or acting independently; or the M23 backed by Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (currently prevalent, but not alone in regions like Kivu and Ituri where over two hundred armed and radical groups are counted); or the opposing fronts in South Sudan or the many factions that today increasingly emphasize the disunity of Ethiopia (with numerous cases of internal uprisings and localized civil wars from Tigray to Amhara to Oromia and other federal states), in all these conflicts, as in others, the directors pulling the strings from above are often the same, or at least very closely aligned. Sudan is at the very heart of this immense region dotted with conflicts whose ultimate causes, rather than in local reality, are always to be found in sumptuous palaces located elsewhere. Should Sudan disappear, or nearly so, from the map by losing its national and political unity, all these internal and regional conflicts listed so far, along with others, would find themselves geographically welded together. This would result in a potentially worse repetition of the script already seen following the (similarly foreign-directed) disintegration of Libya in 2011. To whom could such a perspective be of interest or benefit?

This, the cui bono?, who benefits?, is the right question to ask, because it allows us to understand which interests and objectives fuel the Sudanese civil conflict. In the first part of this article, we spoke of the role of the United Arab Emirates and Israel in supporting and facilitating the fortunes of the RSF: an old story by now, given the support provided to them when they were still called the Janjaweed, both in Darfur and during their “mission” in Yemen in 2015. Moreover, the Emirates and Israel, among others, exerted great effort to ensure that the Sudanese civil war of the past led to the birth of a South Sudan that matched their desiderata. The Nile and the Red Sea are the two great obsessions of Israeli and Emirati geopolitics, and all the areas these regions contain or border are inevitably part of such a strategy, which is far more than continental. We can rightly say “more than continental” because, not limiting itself to Africa alone or even a large part of it, it also encompasses the Arabian Peninsula and the Mashreq, finding in Yemen, for example, another of its most important points of convergence. The secessionism increasingly looming over Southern Yemen under the leadership of the STC (Southern Transitional Council) forces, supported by the Emirates and Israel in an anti-Houthi function, is, after all, news from just the last few days. Coincidentally, it finds a correspondent on the Somali shore in Somaliland, a project upon which Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv are betting heavily, making use of a compliant qabila (the Isaaq, sometimes joined by the Gadabuursi and the Ciise, and opposed by the Dhulbhante) and a government (Abiy Ahmed’s Ethiopia) that is itself exceedingly complicit.

We have already discussed the support of the United Arab Emirates in Sudan, including supplies since 2023 in terms of weaponry, mercenaries from Colombia, and Chinese-made drones re-exported by Abu Dhabi without Beijing’s knowledge and in violation of the UN embargo (unfortunately, this is nothing new: in every country at war, despite automatically applied sanctions, weapons still arrive in abundance). The RSF have been able to receive these and other supplies through Libya and Chad, via air and land routes across the Sahara to Darfur, and likewise through Ethiopia, with similar routes from Somaliland and Puntland to the Blue Nile. Such a logistical structure already makes us understand how essential it is for the RSF to maintain control over states like Darfur, Kordofan, and Blue Nile, and for their promoters that they succeed in doing so in the future. By the same principle, it explains why it is equally essential for the SAF and their allies to wrest those territories from enemy forces, thereby depriving them of supply routes. Sudanese gold, which the RSF funnel to the Emirates in exchange for all that conspicuous support, represents one of the great (though not the only) engines of this conflict.

The Emirates are now universally described as a global hub for illicit African gold, with imports that vastly exceed official export figures. In this year 2025, now drawing to a close, approximately 66% of the gold imported from Africa, primarily from countries like Sudan, Libya, and Chad, was the result of smuggling, serving as both a source and a fruit of conflict. Chad and Ethiopia are the primary vectors for gold illegally mined in Sudan, in areas controlled by the RSF and therefore outside state control, which is then transported to the Emirates. The routes, exactly like those for weapon supplies, are diverse: from ports like Berbera in Somaliland and Bosaso in Puntland to bases on Chadian and Ethiopian soil, or by exploiting the air bridge guaranteed from Darfur to southern Libya by General Khalifa Haftar’s government. Although Abu Dhabi denies all these responsibilities, UN and SwissAid reports are clear, to say nothing of a now-vast collection of reports appearing in MiddleEastEye, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, Stratfor, The Century, and so on; it is becoming difficult to keep count.

With imports of the “noble metal” par excellence far exceeding its official exports, giving rise to an immense and unsettling “informal state economy,” any prospect of giving up such easy and profitable “manna from heaven” will always be unacceptable to the Emirates. This true “neocolonial industry” also brings significant benefits to other countries like Israel, which subsequently acquire large shares of that gold or “share in the profits” (for example, Israeli pilots are those who transport illicit gold taken by the M23 in eastern DRC via Rwanda; but this is certainly not the only case). This industry reinforces and cements alliances and respective regional strategies that are already consolidated, leading to further and sinister “raising of the stakes.” The Emirati policy of rushing to the ports of the Horn of Africa and the Southern Arabian Peninsula is proof of this, acting as both cause and effect: in addition to the aforementioned ports of Berbera and Bosaso, others like Aden and Mukalla in southern Yemen do not escape their attention. This explains why, besides fomenting Somaliland’s secessionism and the friction between the regional government of Puntland and the federal government of Mogadiscio, Abu Dhabi also aims to sponsor a new South Yemen that would similarly be its satellite. Thus, not only in Berbera, Bosaso, Aden, or Mukalla, but also elsewhere, Abu Dhabi and Israel would establish (as already officially declared) their own ports and military bases.

In short, among the root causes of the conflict in Sudan, it is not only the RSF and their role as a “state within the State” that must be removed, but also the circuits reaching up to the “upper floors” (those “sumptuous palaces located elsewhere” overseas) that guarantee their existence and operations. The same applies to the similar and sinister fortunes of JNIM in Mali and Burkina Faso, or the M23 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and so on. It is a “neocolonial industry” that certainly does not find its “final termination” in local accomplices (Libya, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, etc., who are merely intermediaries and minor partners, conspicuously foreign-directed and influenced).