Episode Details

This week we talk about the RSF, coups, and the liberal world order.

We also discuss humanitarian aid, foreign conflicts, and genocide.

Recommended Book: Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer

Transcript

In 2019, a military government took over Sudan, following a successful coup d'état against then-President Omar al-Bashir, who had been in power for thirty years. al-Bashir’s latter years were plagued by popular demonstrations against rising costs of living and pretty abysmal living standards, and the government lashed out against protestors violently, before then dissolving local government leaders and their offices, replacing them with hand-picked military and intelligence officers. After he responded violently to yet another, even bigger protest, the military launched their coup, and the protestors pivoted to targeting them, demanding a civilian-run democracy.

Just two months later, after unsuccessful negotiations between the new military government and the folks demanding they step aside to allow a civilian government to take charge, the military leaders massacred a bunch civilians who hosted a sit-in protest. Protestors shifted to a period of sustained civil disobedience and a general strike, and the government agreed to hold elections in 2022, three years later, and said that they would investigate the massacre their soldiers committed against those protestors. They also established a joint civilian-military unity government that would run things until the new, civilian government was eventually formed.

In late-2021, though, the Sudanese military launched another coup against the unity government, and that council was dissolved, a state of emergency was declared, and all the important people who were helping the country segue back into a democracy were arrested. A new military-only junta was formed, incorporating the two main military groups that were running things, at that point.

In 2023, those two military bodies that were working together to run Sudan via this military junta, the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group that were made into a sort of official part of the country’s military, while remaining separate from it, and the official Sudanese army, both started aggressively recruiting soldiers and taunting each other with military maneuvers. On April 15 that year, they started firing on each other.

This conflict stemmed from the Sudanese military demanding that the RSF dissolve itself, all their people integrating into the country’s main military apparatus, but some kind of stand-off seemed to be a long time coming, as the RSF started its recruiting efforts earlier that year, and built up its military resources in the capital as early as February. But as I mentioned, this tinderbox erupted into a shooting war in April, beginning in the capital city, Khartoum, before spreading fast to other major cities.

So what eventually became a Sudanese civil, which at this point has been ongoing for nearly 2.5 years, began in April of 2023, was long-simmering before that, is between two heavily armed military groups that ran the country together for a few years, and which both claim to be the rightful leaders or owners of the country, and they’re fighting each other in heavily populated areas.

This war was also kicked off and is now sustained in part by ethnic conflicts between the main belligerents, which includes the aforementioned Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces, but also the Sudan Liberation Movement, which governs a fairly remote and self-sufficient mountainous area in the southern part of the country, and the al-Hilu movement, which supports the RSF’s efforts in the region.

What I’d like to talk about today is what’s happening on the ground in Sudan, in the third year of this conflict, and at a moment when the world’s attention seems to h