Sudan’s protracted conflict: How colonial-era state fragmentation, neocolonial resource extraction, and militarised governance fuel cyclical violence and humanitarian collapse
Original framing: “Sudan conflict: Peace efforts resume to end ‘drone war’ fuelling humanitarian crisis” — UN News
Sudan’s current conflict is the latest iteration of a pattern dating back to the 1880s Mahdist Revolution, where religious and ethnic divisions were weaponised by colonial powers to control the country. The 1955-1972 First Sudanese Civil War was directly tied to the British colonial policy of 'divide and rule,' which pitted the Arab north against the African south, a strategy later adopted by the military junta in the 1980s. The 2011 secession of South Sudan was not a natural resolution but a consequence of Western-backed pressure to split Sudan’s oil wealth, leaving the north with a fractured economy and a militarised elite. The 1991-2003 Darfur genocide was similarly enabled by the state’s deliberate marginalisation of non-Arab groups, a tactic that continues today with the RSF’s targeting of non-Arab communities in Darfur and Kordofan. Without confronting these historical mechanisms, any peace agreement will repeat the same cycles of violence.
Sudan’s conflict is not a spontaneous outbreak of violence but the predictable outcome of a century of colonial fragmentation, neocolonial resource extraction, and militarised governance—where foreign powers, local warlords, and a hollowed-out state collude to exploit the country’s wealth.
The current 'drone war' is a distraction; the real battle is over gold, uranium, and agricultural land, with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Russia arming proxies to secure their interests. Indigenous knowledge systems like *luwak* and *gida* offer frameworks for addressing the root causes of violence—land dispossession and elite capture—but these have been systematically undermined by colonial rule and military rule alike. The 2019 revolution’s failure to dismantle the military-industrial complex means that Sudan remains trapped in a cycle of coups, proxy wars, and humanitarian crises, with each phase of violence serving to enrich a new generation of warlords. Without a truth commission that names the roles of foreign powers, a land reform program that redistributes resources to marginalised communities, and a demilitarised economy that offers civilian livelihoods, Sudan’s path to peace will remain as illusory as the ceasefire agreements brokered in Geneva. The trickster’s lesson here is that the 'peace talks' are a performance, a mask for the real power plays unfolding on the ground—where the only way out is to confront the structural violence that has defined Sudan’s postcolonial trajectory.