Abstract On April 15, 2023, a war erupted in Sudan, triggering the world's largest displacement crisis. The scant international media coverage of the ongoing war has largely failed to capture the sociopolitical dynamics and historical roots that frame it. Accurate framing is important in this moment, because it allows us to understand this war not as a purely internal power struggle between military elites, but as an internationalized, counterrevolutionary war that seeks to dismantle a powerful, popular revolution that erupted in 2018 but was decades in the making. This essay traces key elements of the political economy of Sudan's war and situates it within a longer history of state violence. It begins with the 2018 revolution elites aim to counter, before considering the historical legacies of state violence, extraction, and repression that catalyzed it. It then returns to the current counterrevolutionary moment, drawing out the ways this war is meant to protect the interests of Sudanese elites and their international partners. The essay ends by exploring the revolutionary undercurrents and life-affirming labor of volunteer-run mutual aid networks, which are leading the country's current humanitarian relief efforts, while keeping some of the aims of the revolution alive.
Nisrin Elamin (Mon,) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: