November 22, 2025: Sudan is the southern neighbor of Egypt and for the last few years has been ravaged by famine and a civil war between the army and the Rapid Support Force/RSF militias. The RSF was created in 2013 to deal with rebels in western Sudan. The RSF did that and gained combat experience which gave them an edge over the army that kept the civil war going from late 2023 to the present. What started the war was a military coup that was supposed to be a temporary condition to speed up the return of democracy. That backfired as a lot of the pro-reform civilians declared the military government another effort to restore dictatorship. That’s how Omar al Bashir, the dictator from 1989-to-2019, got his start. The form post-Bashir Sudan took is one of feuding factions and escalating fighting over scarce resources like food and gold. Before the current civil war Sudan produced over $3 billion worth of gold annually and was the third largest producer in Africa. In 2025 Sudan produced 53 tons of gold, worth nearly a billion dollars. Gold is sought by all the factions because with gold you can buy food, weapons, friends, influence or a way out of the country to somewhere safer.

Safer also means safe from enslavement. Slavery continues to exist in Sudan. Since the 1990s the government encouraged the RSF in Western Sudan to raid non-Moslem black African tribes and take slaves.

In 2024 the Sudan civil war escalated and moved to the capital where government and rebel RSF gunmen fought constantly. The two sides could not agree on how to run the government and decided that a death match was the only way to settle the matter. Civilians caught in the crossfire are fleeing the capital and, in some cases, if they can afford it, leaving the country.

Sudan is one of the poorest nations in the world and considered the least developed nation on the planet. The last few years of civil war have led to 60 percent of the population slipping towards starvation because of persistent food shortages. Another problem Sudan has is its short existence as a nation. Modern Sudan did not appear until 1956 when the Republic of Sudan was created from Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Before that Sudan was an Islamic religious dictatorship for fourteen years. For several thousand years before that, Sudan was always part of some other kingdom or empire.

On March 26th the Sudanese army commander landed at the Khartoum airport. This marked the recent recapture of Khartoum from Sudan’s RSF. The war fought by these two groups has been going on for two years. Unrest is reappearing seven years after the end of Sudan's civil war. Despite RSF losing the capital, the civil war continues. The current battle for control of Khartoum has been going on since early 2023. So far, this war has displaced 15 million Sudanese and left over 100,000 dead.

All this comes at a time when portions of Sudan are suffering famine because of disrupted food aid deliveries. There has been a cholera outbreak. Meanwhile the civil war has been tearing Sudan apart since early 2023. This conflict has been between the Sudanese government and major portions of the country that violently disagree with government policies. The SNC/Sovereign National Council was created by civilian and military groups to negotiate a peace deal. That effort has ended as a stalemate in the effort to restore democracy. The coup was supposed to be a temporary condition to speed things up. That backfired as a lot of the pro-reform civilians declared the military government another effort to restore dictatorship. That’s how Omar al Bashir, the dictator from 1989-to-2019, got his start. The situation in South Sudan, one of the results of Bashir’s misrule, is more settled.

Before the April 2023 outbreak of fighting between the RSF and the army, Sudan was planning a long period of peace, reconciliation, reform and rebuilding. By early 2025 the death toll, including civilians, was approaching 80,000. Many more people have been driven from their homes and lost their jobs. This has turned into an economic disaster and food shortages are growing. Foreign aid is often stolen by gangsters, the RSF or soldiers. Instability and violence are becoming Sudan’s normal state of affairs.

The two Sudans became quieter in 2019 when the long-lasting Bashir dictatorship was removed by determined popular resistance. South Sudan ended its post-independence civil war when everyone realized that they were destroying what they were allegedly fighting over and maybe a shouting-match was preferable to shooting at each other. That brought peace to both Sudans for the first time since the 1989 coup when then general Bashir took power and led Sudan on a downward trajectory.

The peace did not last and the fighting between government forces and those of the RSF that has been around since 1988, when they appeared as the Janjaweed Arab Sudanese militia in the west Sudan region of Darfur. Before 1988 the Janjaweed were involved with violence going on in neighboring Chad and Libya but after 1988 the Janjaweed concentrated its activities in Darfur. In 2013 the Janjaweed rebranded themselves as the RSF and evolved into paid Sudanese government enforcers in Darfur.

In 2023 the Sudan government suggested that the RSF become part of the Sudanese Army. RSF refused and in April 2023 the fighting between government forces and the RSF began. At this point the RSF was powerful enough to take on the army. Currently that struggle continues. Between then and now there were some other interesting developments. For example the slavery problem continues in Sudan and sometimes gets into the news. This happened a lot in Sudan since the 1990s as the government encouraged Arabized tribes to raid non-Moslem black African tribes and take slaves. In northern Mali retreating al Qaeda men sometimes took newly enslaved blacks with them. This tolerance of slaving is one of the many reasons Sudan is one of the five most corrupt nations in the world. These five outlaw states are, according to the annual Transparency International Corruption Perception Index, North Korea, Yemen, Syria, South Sudan and Somalia. Sudan is considered a bit less corrupt than South Sudan.

Sudan has been behaving in other ways and in October 2020 was removed from the U.S.’s State Sponsor of Terrorism/SST list. Sudan agreed to pay compensation to American victims of terror attacks, with the attack on the 2000 destroyer Cole in Yemen and the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania the most important. Sudan was on the SST list for 27 years. Sudan’s 2020 transitional government agreed to peaceful relations with Israel. That eventually happened and since late 2020, Israeli governments and security forces have cooperated with their Sudanese equivalents. Recognizing Israel was a divisive issue in Sudan. Even some pro-democracy groups opposed it. As for the SST, escaping the list means Sudan now had better access to international financial and investment organizations. It will also make it much easier and legal for Sudanese to import western technology like computers, smart phones and software. Sudan now had easier access to foreign aid of all types, including life-saving medical assistance. This aid was a major consideration, for Sudan’s governments were always facing an extended economic crisis and shortages of food and medical supplies.