By obscuring the crisis, we mean the deliberate silencing and concealment of what is happening in Sudan. As you know, there are numerous horrific violations taking place in Sudan that the world chooses to ignore. This is not because Sudan is unimportant or unknown; rather, the issue is far more complex. The media blackout on what is happening in Sudan is systematic and intentional, and it has profound consequences.
We see, for example, that the World Food Programme has announced that it will reduce Sudan’s share of aid in the midst of catastrophe due to weak funding. This is not merely a dangerous development in a country that has come to depend heavily on humanitarian assistance. I personally visited more than six displacement camps and was shocked to discover that much of the aid does not reach the displaced people, but is instead sold on the open market. This exposes vast networks of corruption in the distribution of humanitarian aid.
What we seek to highlight is how capitalism invests in crises. In a country like Sudan, we find that the same companies that sell weapons to the army also sell opposing weapons to the Rapid Support Forces, ensuring the continuation of the war in exchange for gold. There has been a significant spread of unregulated artisanal mining, which claims the lives of thousands of workers every year in order to extract larger quantities of gold. This gold is then used to gain greater purchasing power to import more weapons.
This war is not a civil war or a tribal conflict; it is a war of imperial corporations within the countries of the Global South. The paths of Libya, Yemen, and Syria have become models: the strategy of supporting militias and waging proxy wars has turned into an investment hub and a market opened in troubled waters, where profitable fishing takes place. In times of war, the trade in weapons, drugs, and human trafficking flourishes significantly.
Today, we see no horizon for resolving the Sudanese crisis except through political, cultural, and economic resistance to the dominant system, and through thinking seriously about ways to cut off the supply of weapons as the most effective means of stopping the war. Since much of the funding comes from within, a strike by gold mine workers could have a major impact on the war in Sudan. However, this is extremely difficult in the absence of unified trade unions or labor institutions, and given the differences in working environments that deeply affect every aspect of organizing.
We know that building such networks is among the most difficult tasks, but we are attempting to form groups based on careful study of workers’ environments, the causes, nature, and traditions of their labor. Ending the war in Sudan begins with drying up the sources of both internal and external funding.