The Sudanese Civil War is not a spontaneous eruption of ethnic hatred but a rationalized struggle for control over the state’s central revenue-generating mechanisms. To understand who keeps the fight alive, one must look past the frontline skirmishes and examine the structural incentives that make peace more expensive than continued kinetic engagement for the primary belligerents. The conflict persists because both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) operate as vertically integrated commercial-military conglomerates. For these entities, the state is the ultimate prize, but the process of fighting serves as a mechanism for resource extraction in its own right.
The Duel for Sovereign Legitimacy and Fiscal Control
The war functions through a dual-state architecture where two rival entities claim the legal right to govern while occupying different nodes of the national economy. The SAF maintains control over the traditional administrative apparatus, the Nile Valley heartland, and the bureaucratic framework required for international diplomacy. Conversely, the RSF controls significant territorial assets in the west and south, including gold-producing regions and vital agricultural hubs.
This geographic split creates a Strategic Deadlock Constraint. Neither side possesses the force projection capabilities to achieve a total military victory, yet both have sufficient access to independent revenue streams to ignore the economic collapse of the civilian population.
The SAF Revenue Model: Institutional Inertia and Port Access
The SAF’s survival hinges on its identity as the "official" state. This status provides three critical advantages:
- Monetary Sovereignty: Control over the Central Bank of Sudan and the ability to print currency, though this leads to hyperinflationary pressures that erode the base of their support.
- Customs and Ports: Domination of Port Sudan allows for the taxation of imports and the limited export of remaining oil reserves, providing a steady flow of hard currency.
- Diplomatic Rent-Seeking: The SAF leverages its recognition by the United Nations to secure humanitarian aid, which is often diverted or used as a tool for population control.
The RSF Revenue Model: Gold and Mercenary Capital
The RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan "Hemedti" Dagalo, operates on a decentralized, entrepreneurial military model.
- Gold Liquidity: Control over the Jebel Amer mines and other artisanal gold sites provides the RSF with a highly liquid, non-sanctionable asset. This gold is smuggled through regional hubs, bypassing the international financial system.
- Transborder Logistics: The RSF’s roots as a mobile desert force allow it to control smuggling routes for fuel, livestock, and weapons across the Sahel.
- External Patronage: The RSF provides regional actors with a counter-terrorism partner or a source of battle-hardened infantry, trading kinetic services for advanced weaponry and diplomatic cover.
External Variables The Multi-Vector Proxy War
The internal mechanics of the war are amplified by a network of regional stakeholders who view Sudan as a theater for broader geopolitical alignment. The conflict is no longer a domestic dispute; it is a Multipolar Proxy Equilibrium.
The Red Sea Security Dilemma
Multiple regional powers view the Sudanese coast as vital to their maritime security and power projection. Support for the SAF often stems from a desire to maintain the status quo and prevent the rise of a non-state actor like the RSF, which could destabilize the Red Sea shipping lanes. Conversely, backers of the RSF see an opportunity to disrupt the old guard and install a leadership more aligned with the emerging financial powers of the Gulf.
The Weaponization of the Sahel
The RSF draws significant manpower from across the borders of Chad, Niger, and Mali. This creates a Transnational Recruitment Loop. As the war continues, the RSF offers higher wages than any civilian enterprise in the Sahel, ensuring a steady supply of recruits. This makes the conflict a regional labor market for violence, where the cost of a soldier is lower than the potential return on looted assets.
The Logistics of Attrition
The endurance of the fighting is predicated on a "Just-in-Time" supply chain for armaments. Despite various arms embargos, weapons continue to flow into the country through two primary corridors.
- The Eastern Corridor: Weapons arriving via Port Sudan or through the northern border, primarily servicing the SAF’s heavy artillery and drone programs.
- The Western Corridor: Shipments through the porous borders of the Central African Republic and Chad, feeding the RSF’s need for small arms, Man-Portable Air-Defense Systems (MANPADS), and technicals.
The introduction of low-cost loitering munitions (drones) has fundamentally altered the cost-benefit analysis of the war. These systems allow for high-impact strikes on infrastructure with minimal risk to personnel, enabling a strategy of Systemic Degradation. By targeting flour mills, water treatment plants, and power grids, each side attempts to make the opponent’s territory ungovernable, forcing the civilian population to migrate and reducing the administrative burden on the occupier.
The Failure of Traditional Mediation Frameworks
Current peace initiatives often fail because they treat the SAF and RSF as political actors seeking a seat at a table. In reality, they are competing firms in a winner-take-all market.
- The Zero-Sum Power Gap: Any power-sharing agreement requires one side to integrate into the other’s command structure. Given the history of the 2019 coup and the subsequent betrayal, neither Hemedti nor Al-Burhan perceives a path to physical or financial safety without total control of the military apparatus.
- The Sanction Ineffectiveness: Targeted sanctions on individuals have proven ineffective because the financial networks are shielded by sovereign actors or hidden in the informal gold trade. The "Pillars of Extraction" are too decentralized to be dismantled by standard Western financial pressure.
The Displacement Economy
The war has created the world's largest displacement crisis, but even this is being financialized. The movement of millions of people creates new markets for:
- Extortion and Checkpoints: Local commanders on both sides generate revenue by taxing internally displaced persons (IDPs) as they flee conflict zones.
- Aid Diversion: By controlling access to IDP camps, military factions ensure that a percentage of international aid is siphoned off to feed troops or is sold on the black market to fund operations.
This creates a Negative Feedback Loop: the more the population is displaced, the more the warring factions can extract from the humanitarian response, which in turn provides the resources to continue the fighting that caused the displacement.
Strategic Trajectory and the Fractured State Scenario
The most probable outcome is not a unified peace treaty but the "Libyanization" of Sudan—a long-term state of fragmented sovereignty.
The Emergence of Local Militias
As the central authorities (SAF and RSF) become overstretched, they are forced to subcontract security to local ethnic militias. This decentralizes the violence and makes a national ceasefire nearly impossible to enforce. Even if the top leadership agreed to stop fighting, local commanders who have grown wealthy from the war economy would have little incentive to comply.
The Collapse of the Formal Agricultural Sector
Sudan was once envisioned as the breadbasket of the Arab world. The war has decimated the Al-Gezira scheme and other mechanized farming hubs. The shift from an agricultural export economy to a war-loot and gold-smuggling economy is a structural regression that will take decades to reverse.
Necessary Strategic Realignments
To disrupt the cycle of attrition, the international community must shift from "shuttle diplomacy" to "financial interdiction." This requires:
- Targeting the Gold-to-Cash Pipeline: Pressure must be applied not just to the RSF, but to the refineries and markets in the Gulf that facilitate the conversion of Sudanese gold into hard currency.
- Disrupting the Fuel Supply: The RSF’s mobility is its greatest asset. Cutting off the supply of refined fuel from neighboring states would effectively ground their technicals and limit their ability to project power over vast desert distances.
- Leveraging Port Access: Diplomatic recognition of the SAF should be made contingent on the unimpeded and neutral distribution of aid through Port Sudan, monitored by a third-party maritime authority rather than SAF-aligned bureaucrats.
The conflict will persist as long as the cost of kinetic operations is lower than the revenue generated by those same operations. Peace in Sudan is not a matter of reconciling two generals; it is a matter of making the war unprofitable. The focus must move from the battlefield to the balance sheet. Only by severing the links between resource extraction and military procurement can the incentive for perpetual attrition be broken. The current path leads to a hollowed-out state where the only functioning institutions are those dedicated to the management of violence.
