By John J. Metzler, April 24, 2025The Four Horsemen of the apocalypse are stalking Sudan; Brutal civil conflict, widespread devastation, humanitarian disasters, and the displacement of millions of refugees.
Now add the Fifth Horseman, the darkness of global indifference.
In characterizing one of the world’s biggest conflicts, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres commented, “Two years into a devastating war, Sudan remains in a crisis of staggering proportions, with civilians paying the highest price.” He added: “Almost 12 million people have fled their homes, in what has become the world’s largest displacement crisis. More than 3.8 million of these have crossed into neighboring countries.”
In fact, more than 30 million people, half the population, require humanitarian support.
At least 150,000 civilians have been killed in the fighting. Moreover, the violence has equally targeted humanitarian aid workers.
A dire warning by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva adds, “We have seen over the past two years an insidious pattern of dehumanization in how war is being carried out. Civilians are killed and injured, their homes looted, and their livelihoods destroyed. Sexual violence is rampant and seeding trauma that will reverberate for generations.”
A huge but arid land more than twice the size of Texas, Sudan remains a largely Muslim country which has been plagued by endemic ethnic violence, instability and poverty.
Since independence in 1956 Sudan has largely been governed by a succession of military regimes, the best-known headed by Omar al-Bashir, (later indicted by the ICC in the Hague for war crimes) who ruled ruthlessly between 1989 and 2019.
Following the most recent military coup in 2021, two leaders, once allies, emerged. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the regular armed forces and a partisan of ousted dictator al-Bashir, has confronted his erstwhile ally Gen. Mohamed Dagalo, aka Hemedti the chief of the Rapid Support forces, a parallel security force.
Hemedti led the notorious Arab militia known as the Jangaweed during the Darfur conflict.
Both the regular Army and the Rapid Support Forces have committed widespread abuses against civilians. The fighting has also wrecked the capital city Khartoum.
Two decades ago, Sudan’s ethnic cleansing against the black Christian minority in Darfur made headlines; Today some of the same players from that brutal campaign which holds the dubious distinction as the first genocide in the 21st century, are tearing their country up yet again in an orgy of violence.
Filippo Grande, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees stated bluntly, “The Sudanese are besieged on all sides [by] war, widespread abuses, indignity, hunger and other hardships. And they face indifference from the outside world, which for the past two years has shown scant interest in bringing peace to Sudan or relief to its neighbors.”
Now two years into the internecine conflict, the fighting has expanded.
Attacks on refugee camps in north Darfur including Zamzam and Abu Shouk, that were already sheltering those displaced by earlier violence have forced an estimated 400,000 to 450,000 people to flee according to UN humanitarian agencies. Rapid Support Forces affiliated forces launched coordinated attacks on Zamzam, Abu Shouk and El Fasher, killing hundreds, including children and humanitarian staff.
Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries have declared the formation of a rival government in Sudan, according to the BBC. The RSF leader, Mohamed “Hemedti” Dagalo, said his group was “building the only realistic future for Sudan.” More than ironically, after near permanent conflict with the Islamic rulers in Khartoum, the largely Christian South Sudan gained its independence from the central government in 2011.
Tragically that region has fared little better under independence with political conflict teetering on civil war.
But who supplies the lethal weapons for so poor a country’s government and opposition forces?
Secretary-General Guterres stated, “The only way to ensure the protection of civilians is to end this senseless conflict. I am deeply concerned that weapons and fighters continue to flow into Sudan, allowing the conflict to persist and spread across the country.”
He continued, “The external support and flow of weapons must end.”
Yet, despite a United Nations arms embargo (which narrowly covers only Darfur) last year, a UN Security Council report, among others, cited alleged weapons shipments from the United Arab Emirates to the RSF paramilitaries. There is also military hardware from Russia. Egypt has apparently supplied Sudan’s central government in Khartoum.
The world faces crisis overload especially in nearly a dozen Sub-Saharan African states, including Sudan. Given the grim alternatives the only realistic way to ensure peace is for warring factions to cease this senseless conflict which mires the country in self-inflicted chaos.
John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of Divided Dynamism the Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China (2014). [See pre-2011 Archives]
