Sudan Is Burning: And the World Just Watches

When innocent, unarmed people die, your chest tightens as if someone has closed a fist around your heart. These are not fighters or politicians; they are mothers and fathers, children and elders—people whose only “fault” was being born on land where armed men fight over power. They scratch out two meals a day if they’re lucky, and muddied water is as precious to them as life itself. When basic needs vanish, who has the luxury to worry about schools, hospitals, or civic services?

Listening to the newest reports out of Sudan feels like drowning. Every fresh wave of deaths drags the soul deeper. Whether the victims are members of the Rapid Support Forces or soldiers in the national army, at least some of them have weapons to fight back. The unarmed? They have nothing but a plea no one hears.

The seizure of a major army camp in El Fasher by the RSF—after years of fighting in North Darfur—was a brutal turning point. The city had been under siege and starvation for a year and a half; it was the army’s last hold in the region. Official numbers say about 2,000 civilians were killed. Survivors and witnesses say the tally is far, far higher. One man who escaped told me his wife was killed in a drone strike; he didn’t even have time to grieve. “The streets were full of bodies,” he said. “I heard an RSF fighter yelling, ‘Kill them all—let no one live.’”

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This war began in April 2023. Since then, some 150,000 people are dead. The wounded are countless. The stories of rape, of families ripped apart, are almost too horrific to repeat. Nearly 12 million people have been forced from their homes, ending up as refugees inside their own country. Why is this happening? Because when a nation’s soil hides treasure and foreign powers stare greedily, when people are powerless and institutions crumble, might becomes the law. In a fight between elephants, it is the grass that is flattened.

Rival groups impose their will; outside powers back the side that suits them. The gains go to those powers. The losses—massive, intimate—fall only on ordinary people: burying the bodies of loved ones, clutching a few belongings, stumbling toward whatever shelter they can find.

This is what happens when wealth, power, and decision-making collect in the hands of a few. Two generals have dragged Sudan onto a powder keg. No Sudanese—nor any foreign visitor—can feel safe. One general, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has long led the armed forces and acted as the country’s ruler, seeking to entrench himself as a permanent strongman. The other, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo—Hemedti—commands the RSF, a powerful militia outside the formal military chain. Hemedti controls gold mines and many of Darfur’s economic arteries; that money feeds his ability to defy the state. Each man seems bent on domination; there is no room, in their minds, for compromise.

Western powers are widely believed to be supporting the RSF. Darfur—the vast, resource-rich region in the southwest—carries a long, bloody memory. The 2003 conflict and ensuing genocide killed hundreds of thousands. Omar al-Bashir, who later ruled for decades, was accused of war crimes and genocide; his lust for power helped push the country toward ruin. He was finally toppled after mass protest and military action; in 2020 Sudan announced it would hand him to the International Criminal Court.

Hemedti’s rise has different roots but the same result: a hunger for control. Born into a poor family in Darfur, pulled from school, he once traded camels. During the Darfur wars he led a militia called the Janjaweed. Al-Bashir supported him; his network grew to include gold, transport, and livestock interests. The RSF—largely composed of Janjaweed fighters—helped remove al-Bashir in 2019. A transitional council followed, with al-Burhan as head and Hemedti as deputy. Now those two men are destroying the country in a private war of supremacy.

The air is thick with bombs and the rhythm of gunfire. The sky itself seems to punish the earth below. There is no one to order these men to stop. No one can make the powerful remember that unchecked ambition devours everything in its path—nations, children’s futures, the fragile bonds of daily life.

Sudan is burning. Its people are dying. The very forces that could end the slaughter—foreign powers who could pressure the warring parties—are instead distracted by the wealth beneath the ground: gold, minerals, resources that glitter like temptation. I keep thinking: if those riches didn’t exist, would the violence be so relentless?

Will Sudan’s people ever see the benefits of the land they walk on? That is a question for another day. Right now, families are carrying out the dead, abandoning homes, searching for a safety that feels impossibly distant. They look for peace—a thing that, for now, is nowhere to be found.