Tuesday marked the second anniversary of the civil war in Sudan, but the war shows no signs of coming to a close. In fact, over three hundred refugees were killed since Thursday, according to NPR, as the Rapid Support Forces laid siege aid camps for refugees of the genocide unfolding in Darfur, Sudan.
Twenty years ago…
The conflict in Darfur goes back at least two decades by a conservative estimate – or centuries, if one accounts for the growth and development of the underlying tensions and resentment that sparked the genocide in the first place.
Sudan has always seen conflict between its northern and southern regions. Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, and the greater northern region of Sudan have always been home to a predominantly Muslim population that is ethnically Arab, while animists and Christians call the southern part of Sudan home.
Within Darfur – a western region of Sudan which is predominantly Muslim – itself, these divisions ceased to center around religion (or at least, religion alone) and mutated to prey off the differences in the ways of life and economic systems of the two main groups who call Darfur home: ethnic Arabs who were traditionally nomadic herders and African groups, like the Maasalit, Zaghawa, and Fur, who were pastoralists.
The differences between northern and southern Sudan led to two decades of a brutal civil war as General Omar al-Bashir and the government in Khartoum pushed for a government centered in Islam, sparking backlash from southern groups. The civil war came to a close in 2005 (in part due to profound international influence) with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, 2 million dead, and 4 million from the south left displaced.
These tensions sparked to life again in Darfur as the Sudanese government funded and armed the “Janjaweed”, or militia groups that were ethnically Arab, to serve as a “proxy” and attack the ethnically African population in Darfur, starting in 2003. Implementing a two-pronged strategy with the government launching air attacks and the Janjaweed employing a “scorched earth” approach, including poisoning wells and burning entire villages to the ground, the Darfur genocide – although the UN, African Union, and European Union disagreed with the term “genocide” – left 400,000 dead, millions displaced, and countless women victims of systemic rape.
In 2005, most of the government’s more far-reaching attacks ceased, although violence against civilians continued for years, merely at a smaller scale.
Following the “conclusion” of the genocide in Darfur, various international measures were taken to promote peace in the region and bring those responsible, including then-President (former general) Omar al-Bashir, to account. However, most of these measures held little actual weight or were undermined by continued violence in the region (like the joint AU-UN UNAMID peacekeeping force) and, specifically in the case of the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s case against al-Bashir, were abandoned due to a lack of international enforcement.
In the spring of 2019, an uprising facilitated the removal of al-Bashir and the rise of the National Congress Party (NCP), ushering in an era of more democratic and constitutional governance and lending hope to the ICC as they sought to indict al-Bashir and other culpable leaders in Sudan.
However, this hope for a democratic nation was short lived, as a military coup in October of 2021 led by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) saw the creation of a Transitional Military Council (TMC). Although the TMC did not reinstate al-Bashir as head of the nation, they did perpetuate several human rights abuses and demolished much of the democratic work done by the NCP during their two-year tenure.
Following the coup in October, the TMC government saw an increase in influence of RSF leaders, and in December of 2022, facilitated the negotiation of a deal, due to intense public pressure, between the RSF, Sudan’s political parties, and the SAF that would have created a new civilian-led government. Unfortunately, the RSF vehemently refused to integrate with the SAF. This conflict between the RSF and SAF eventually dissolved into outright violence in April of 2023, as the RSF attacked key SAF positions in Khartoum and other military sites.
With both sides committing severe human rights violations, then-Secretary of State of the United States of America Anthony Blinken declared, on December 6, 2023, that both the SAF and RSF were committing war crimes and that the RSF, specifically, alongside its allies, had committed various crimes against humanity and facilitated ethnic cleansing since the start of violence in April. On January 7, 2025, Blinken declared that the RSF and its allies had indeed committed genocide.
As part of this acknowledgement of the genocide, Blinken stated that the US would levy sanctions on various RSF companies in the United Arab Emirates, as well as sanctioning the leaders of both the RSF and SAF, the latter of which was found to facilitate the SAF’s war crimes, including obstructing humanitarian aid.
Today –
Since the start of the war, almost 150,000 people have been killed and a third of the nation’s pre-war population has been displaced. Additionally, according to NPR references to the UN, the civil war facilitated the creation of both the world’s worst famine in decades and the worst humanitarian crisis.
On Sunday, the RSF took control of the Zamzam camp, a vital refugee camp, displacing up to 400,000 people and leaving hundreds wounded or dead. At least 300 civilians, including 10 employees from Relief International, were killed. Statistics estimate that the camp was home to at least a million displaced individuals.
While foreign leaders from 20 countries were set to meet at a conference in London, co-hosted by the UK, Germany, and France, on Tuesday (the time of this article’s writing) to hopefully reopen peace talks, the conference holds little promise for an improved situation in Sudan, especially considering that neither the leaders of the SAF nor the RSF were invited to this conference, a source of anger for many Sudanese officials, according to NPR.
Conclusion –
As the world marks the second anniversary of the second civil war to overtake Sudan in two decades, I believe that more than anything, it’s important to take note of the language and media coverage of this conflict.
While both sides have committed extreme war crimes in this conflict and while the RSF has been officially recognized as having committed a genocide, when we think of modern examples of genocides and ethnic cleansing, we fail to acknowledge the violence wreaking havoc across Darfur, especially in casual conversation. The words “genocide” and “war crimes” elicit thoughts of the Holocaust and potentially even the more prominent conflicts currently overtaking our world, but not the multiple instances of violence and civil war in Darfur.
Even if you don’t account for any of the violence that led up to the breaking point in 2023, the civil war and war crimes afflicting the Sudanese people in Darfur have been happening for at least two years… longer than the conflict in Gaza and just a year shy of the conflict in Ukraine. Yet, the hardships faced by the people of Darfur have gone largely unrecognized, unless, of course, we’re obligated to mark the anniversary of such a conflict.
Even the actions taken by the international community to supposedly promote peace in the area and put an end to the civil war speak to the extreme disregard for the conflict as a whole – after all, how can you put an end to a conflict between two warring factions if neither faction is present at the peace talks?
By no means am I suggesting that we discount the struggles faced by the people in Ukraine and Russia, Gaza and Israel, and the countless other sites of horrible violence and genocide across the world.
But it is imperative that even as we acknowledge these more prominent conflicts, we still remember the plight of people in places like Darfur. We still remember the violence and war crimes and the threats to their livelihoods and lives that they unflinchingly face every day. We still acknowledge their hardships and their challenges and push for a peaceful resolution in the way that we do for the conflict in Russia-Ukraine or Israel-Gaza, rather than simply trotting out a throwaway reference every year on the anniversary of conflicts like the one in Sudan.
Else, we risk a never ending torrent of violence that fades into obscurity, leaving the voices of the ones who need the most aid forever unheard.
