The War in Sudan: Origins and Trajectories

The Moynihan Institute and the Maxwell African Scholars Union present Mai Hassan from MIT.

Since April 2023, the country of Sudan has been embroiled in a struggle for power between two wings of its military apparatus, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). As a result of the hostilities, tens of thousands have died. More than 9 million have been displaced. The United Nations says the war has created the “world’s worst hunger crisis,” with the World Food Programme citing more than 25 million people as facing acute hunger. And the U.S. recently declared that the brutal massacres and rape committed by the RSF amount to genocide. 

Though the acute spark of this conflict was a military purge, its seeds were planted years prior, during the country’s prior Islamist authoritarian regime and the subsequent popular revolution that overthrew it. 

After discussing the short- and long-term causes of the conflict, this talk will shift to its current trajectory and discuss potential paths forward.