The War You're Not Watching is Getting Worse.

Sudan is starving—and still not strategic enough to save

The civil war in Sudan is now in its third year. Despite its massive scale and huge humanitarian impact, it garners little interest in the international media or in global politics. While the G7 and NATO discuss further support to Ukraine and the US mulls joining Israel’s campaign against Iran, Sudan is relegated to a second-class conflict. There is little public focus on how to bring it to an end or even mitigate some of the hostilities. UN warnings about the impact on civilians see little action. It is a bloody mess and one which gives stark lessons about the realities of geopolitics.

Since I last wrote about the conflict, the conflict has escalated. Government forces continued to rally through 2024, gaining ground. In the last few months, they successfully pushed through the twin cities of Omdurman and Khartoum. Both are now reportedly “free” of rebels from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary forces. These victories, including regaining the Presidential Palace and major ministries, have strategic and symbolic importance, yet are not enough to bring the conflict to an end. The RSF still control vast swathes of the South West of the country and has the city of El Fasher under siege. It looks unlikely that the war will conclude soon.

The same is sadly true of diplomatic efforts to end it. Previous attempts have been largely rebuffed by the parties. Nor is there much international enthusiasm for getting involved. The conflict has failed to attract the interest of the sort of major powers who could broker or enforce peace. It is crowded out by other, more pressing conflicts, simply not strategically important enough to spare much thinking. As a result, the tragedy rolls on.

For civilians, this remains devastating. The battles for the cities have given rise to urban warfare, with civilians often caught up in it. Residential areas are routinely shelled. Hospitals and other bits of critical infrastructure have been hit. In El-Fasher, just two medical centres remain operational, and even then, constant fighting makes it difficult for the injured to even seek medical attention. Even in “liberated” Khartoum, the lingering damage continues to interrupt electricity and water supplies. Life is hard, and famine and disease stalk the country.

Already, the fighting has led to the biggest movement of people in the world. Around 11 million are internally displaced. A total of 25 million are affected by the threat of starvation and illness. Away from the violence of the cities, a less-reported war rages. It is rife with atrocities against civilians, with humanitarian organisations reporting the widespread use of sexual violence and enforced starvation. This week, the UN warned again of the scale of the crisis, pointing in particular to the manipulation of aid flows as a weapon to impose famine on non-combatants.

Indeed, almost all news coming out of the country is inescapably bleak. Both sides stand accused of war crimes. In April, RSF rebels allegedly launched an assault on the Zamzam Refugee camp. NGO reports suggest that more than 400 civilians were killed, along with aid workers, a further tragedy in a place where malnutrition kills a child every two hours. It points to one of the most appalling aspects of the war – that for those caught up in it, there is almost nowhere safe to flee.

Government forces, meanwhile, have been accused by the United States of using chemical weapons. As a result of two unidentified incidents last year, the US has imposed sanctions on government leaders. This will limit US exports to the country and stop some lines of government credits. Analysts believe it is unlikely to make much impact on the flow of the war, however. Ultimately, the US has few options and limited bandwidth for pushing this towards peace.

Regional actors are instead in a position to escalate the conflict. Chad, Libya and South Sudan have all been accused of supporting the RSF rebels. So, too, have the UAE, which Sudan took to court over allegations they have enabled genocide in Darfur. The case was rejected on jurisdictional grounds (the Emirate has excluded itself from the ICJ investigation) but was accompanied by a break in diplomatic relations. This week, the investigations website Bellingcat also identified weapons from Kenya flowing into the conflict. Reports also suggest that the government has used Iranian-made drones to drive back the rebels around Khartoum. Most of these weapons flow despite the lingering embargo from the first Darfur genocide, which is obviously poorly policed.

From the outside, it is hard not to despair at the situation. The UN has already declared this the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The estimated 150,000 civilian deaths across the conflict is likely a significant underestimate. The broader numbers of those exposed to violence and privation are almost unfathomably large. Horrifying reports abound about the use of sexual violence, including the mass rapes of children as young as 1. In a direct act of genocide, RSF rebels are said to taunt minority group women in Darfur that they will be forced to bear Arab children. Yet few around the world are paying attention.

The war rages on, almost unmentioned by Western news. Despite its scale, it never rises beyond third billing in international affairs. Crowded out by the proximity of Ukraine and the general interest in the Middle East. There have been just six debates on the topic in the Commons this year, compared with 14 on the Gaza issue. The war garners little public interest either, with only a smattering of protests, mostly attended by migrants from the region. While the first Darfur crisis, two decades ago, was brought to the forefront through the partnership of international bodies and celebrity activists, there has been no such attention so far.

The entire situation serves as a poignant reminder of the harsh realities of geopolitics. No major powers have the strategic or moral incentives to end this conflict. It is too far away, too horrible, too intractable for any sort of concerted action. Neither side in the conflict is particularly palatable, and the restoration of order to the country requires too much effort for too little gain to warrant any concerted action. With both sides uninterested in peace and local allies egging on the bloodshed, there are few options and even less enthusiasm to find them.

Yet even aside from ending the conflict, the lack of interest makes ameliorating it harder. Humanitarian campaigns are struggling to raise sufficient funds to help, even when aid can reach those in need despite the fighting. Barely a third of the regional refugee funding was found last year – a consequence of governments being comfortable ignoring the suffering. In the first quarter of 2025, the UN’s collective response had raised just 6% of the targeted funds. Pledges weren’t being made, and those that were often went unfulfilled.

All of this, of course, has been compounded by the sabotage of USAID. Tens of millions of dollars destined for the region have already been cut. This immediately closed around 1,100 community kitchens – around 80% of those in the country. Overall, the organisation had been responsible for nearly 45% of the total aid that had flowed into the country since the war began. Now, almost all of that has evaporated, with few other nations willing to pick up the slack.

Throughout this year, it is likely that both the fighting and the crisis will worsen. There is no sign of peace, and there is every risk of further hostilities escalating in close proximity to civilians. Support for the humanitarian situation is dwindling, and the region remains vulnerable if shocks elsewhere drive up the prices of essentials. The war will grind on, costing thousands of lives and immiserating millions. Most of this will happen with few in the West noticing.

The awkward truth is Sudan is neither essential nor popular enough to demand help in this crisis. It is the poor relation to other wars, with neither the strategic necessity of Ukraine nor the public attention Gaza attracts. It is neither a diplomatic nor a humanitarian priority. Instead, it languishes, not just unsolved but unsupported. For those of us who do look on, it is a tragedy. For those caught in the conflict, it will be deadly. On an intellectual level, the lesson is clear – don’t be unlucky enough to be unimportant to those who might be able to help you.

None of this requires military intervention or vast new programmes. Just attention. A flicker of moral seriousness. An acknowledgement that what’s happening matters, even if it doesn’t affect us directly. That has not been forthcoming. Sudan’s suffering is treated not as a crisis but as background noise, an ambient misery. It tells us something uncomfortable about the moral hierarchy in foreign policy: unless a conflict is proximate, profitable, or politically expedient, it can be safely ignored. We don’t need to fix it. But we should at least admit that we’ve chosen not to try.

And now, something else:

My picks from around the web this week.

1. Russia Turns Sound into A Weapon

   This is haunting, intimate war reporting at its best. Iryna Tsilyk writes about how life under constant air raid sirens has reshaped her very sense of sound. It’s not trauma porn—it’s poetry: delicate, sharp, and deeply human. A reminder that war changes everything, even the way birdsong or a kettle boiling can feel like threats.

2. The London mayoralty’s quarter-life crisis

   An elegant evisceration of what the mayoralty has become: a title bloated with optics, starved of power. Jack Blanchard sketches its decline from Ken’s transport revolution to Khan’s TikTok tenure, tracing how central government hoarded authority while the job became more personality cult than policy post. London deserves better—but this reads like an obituary rather than a call to arms.

3. I couldn't miss the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt at Tate Modern

   Chris Creegan’s visit to the new UK AIDS memorial is quietly devastating. He captures both the importance of the moment and the nagging sense of how long it took to arrive. There’s rage here, carefully measured, and a beautifully restrained reflection on generational grief, silence, and political forgetting. Essential reading for those who think we’re done with that chapter.

4. Why is Stalin back in the Moscow metro?

   Moscow’s romanticisation of Stalin is creeping back in bronze and stone. This piece asks not just why, but what it tells us about Russian historical memory—and its uses. It's an unnerving read: a reminder that soft power starts with statues, and that nostalgia, when weaponised, makes even mass murder look majestic.

5. Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb Was a Wakeup Call for the West, Too

   I think we’ve all admired the ingenuity of the Ukrainian drone raid. Now we need to think how it plays into the future of our own wars. This analysis lays out how Kyiv is playing a game of strategic misdirection—agile, improvisational, and very modern. It’s not about one big push, but relentless pressure. Whether the West keeps pace is another question entirely.