In Sudan the Nile, Darfur and Kordofan is again drowning in blood, the carnage unleashed onto workers in cities such as Khartoum and El - Fasher are not purely local affairs, neither is this war due to the pure malice of criminal warlords as it's framed by the bourgeoisie media. The war is another chapter of depravity caused by capitalism’s crisis of stagnant profits in which workers are always made to pay the highest price. The current war has created the largest current humanitarian crisis with over 12 million internal and external refugees, over 150,000 deaths, and unspeakable acts of brutality committed against workers facing food insecurity, famine and having water withheld as a siege tactic.

The cause of the war back in 2023 is oftentimes forgotten. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) general Al - Burhan and the Rapid Support Force (RSF) Hemedti had a falling out over the army’s attempt to absorb the RSF seeing the RSF as just an extra layer and a drain on profits on gold and the state’s elaborate smuggling patronage networks.

The RSF started out as the “Janjaweed” militias which acted as irregulars in order to create deniability for the state in carrying out massacres in the Darfur where armed groups against the state were operating out of. The RSF also served the former dictator Omar Al - Bashir as an immense anti coup d’etat force. But all of this changed in late 2018 when the crisis stricken Al - Bashir regime was ousted in a cross class popular uprising due to the state implementing austerity to pay for the crisis, deepening inflation, shortages of essentials and mass repression. The RSF then acted as the main repression force against workers involved in the popular uprising, the working class and chronically unemployed may have made up the majority involved but were certainly not leading which placed workers at the mercy of the unions, vying democratic bourgeoisie factions who only want to main the source of the crisis which is capitalism and the RSF’s guns.

The war has become too profitable for both sides to simply end, creating parallel economies controlled by the SAF and RSF. Both are attempting to seize control over the country's remaining productive assets, natural resources, and trade networks. Gold remains one of the most important sources of revenue, alongside agricultural land, livestock, taxation, customs, banking, and control over trade routes. But before the war, gold was already one of Sudan's most important sources of foreign currency and a major source of wealth for the military and paramilitary forces, especially the RSF under Hemedti and the SAF. By 2025, gold reportedly accounted for more than 70% of Sudan's national revenue, while Sudanese mines produced around 74.6 metric tons of gold that year. Production actually increased between 2023 and 2025 despite the war.

The SAF-aligned government controls much of the formal mining sector in eastern and northern Sudan and has reduced mining concession and reprocessing fees to encourage licensed companies to continue operating. The RSF, meanwhile, controls important informal mining areas in Darfur and Kordofan. Around Jabal Zaraf in North Kordofan, for example, gold is reportedly transported from mining areas using makeshift airstrips, allowing it to bypass official government controls.

Much of Sudan's gold ultimately enters the international market through the UAE, particularly Dubai. After the UAE imposed restrictions on flights and shipping to Port Sudan in August 2025, the SAF-backed government attempted to redirect exports through Egypt and pursued plans for a refinery in Doha. By November 2025, an estimated 80% of Sudan's gold exports had reportedly moved onto the black market.

While Egypt's deepening backing of the SAF can partly be seen as a way to counter Ethiopia in their wider Nile rivalry, Cairo has no way to stop the now-completed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Instead, locking in Sudan as a dependent ally gives Egypt leverage elsewhere against Addis Ababa, especially as Ethiopia now plans further dams on the Blue Nile. Egypt's involvement also extends directly into competition over gold-producing land along the Sudanese border. Egyptian drones and artillery have reportedly struck informal gold-mining sites such as al-Ansari and al-Ogaidat in River Nile State, killing dozens of Sudanese miners in June 2026, while Egyptian ground troops have reportedly followed some strikes to shut down mines and expel miners. Egyptian aircraft have also reportedly struck RSF supply convoys travelling from Libya's Kufrah airbase towards Darfur. These strikes were presented by Egypt as attempts to stop Emirati arms shipments to the RSF, and Egypt has also expanded its military infrastructure around the Sudanese border.

There is a secret Egyptian drone base at East Oweinat, where Turkish-made Akinci drones have reportedly been used against RSF positions. The base was expanded with longer runways, buildings, and military bunkers. After Burhan's visit to Cairo in December 2025, Egypt and the SAF established a joint operations room in North Kordofan to coordinate supply corridors and battlefield intelligence, with another coordination hub later established in El-Obeid. Egyptian officers have also made repeated visits to Sudan to coordinate logistics, targeting, and warning systems with SAF forces.

The struggle over agricultural land also predates the war. Beginning in the early 2000s, the Bashir government increasingly leased large areas of Nile-irrigated agricultural land to Gulf investors. This accelerated after the 2008 food-price crisis and again after 2013, when Sudan was presented as an alternative investment destination to compensate for the loss of most of its oil revenue after South Sudan's independence in 2011. A major part of this investment was the production of alfalfa, which was exported mainly to Saudi Arabia and the UAE for their livestock industries.

Some of these land concessions were enormous. Lebanese company GLB Invest holds a 99-year renewable lease covering about 87,200 hectares north of Khartoum. Saudi company Al Rajhi International operates 140 center-pivot irrigation systems over roughly 50,000 feddans near Berber, while Sudanese conglomerate Moawia Elberier holds rights to as much as 480,000 feddans. The Land Matrix has recorded 762,208 hectares of large-scale land acquisitions in Sudan since 1972, with most deals occurring after 2000. These areas were fenced-off areas previously used for farming and grazing and could also restrict access to wells. However, the war has disrupted these areas and disrupted the concentrated $35.7 billion in land investment, causing Saudi Arabia to diversify beyond Sudan. Lack of returns was a major point of contention for Saudi Arabia, one of Sudan's largest creditors, and this contributed to Riyadh blocking Pakistan's proposed $1.5 billion arms deal to supply Sudan with fighter jets and military equipment.

The Imperialist war in Sudan implicates the USA, UK, Russia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and all other states bordering Sudan. The US and UK want to be seen as leaders in signing peace agreements such as those proposed by US envoy Massad Boulos in late 2025 and April, June 2026, but the US is being led by nose by both the UAE and Saudi Arabia, the USA can not anger either of them due to both of them being crucial for war against Iran. The US has instead tried to appear as an impartial negotiator and only scratched both the SAF military government and the RSF with sanctions, focusing only on sanctioning companies which already had them such as those procuring Colombian mercenaries for the RSF, or the SAF’s military conglomerate DIS. Which was already sanctioned due to procuring Iranian weaponry or utilizing Iranian technical expertise in manufacturing drones.

While China has been only giving signals to the SAF controlled government that they will give them concession free loans by forgiving past debts. China already eased 340 million Yuan ($50 million) of past debts and 200 million in active grants to revive infrastructure with Sudan’s finance minister Gibril Ibrahim reminiscing upon China being the only major Imperialist power to have continuously invested in Sudan’s oil extraction when the state was under sanctions set in place over brutal massacres against civilians in the Darfur. This strategy is a part of China and the US’s great game across Africa to control strategic resources and thus future profits with China using concession free loans against the US’s powerful IMF cudgel. China is not solely interested in soft power Imperialism and their more recent blitz apart of the Belt and Road initiative to build out military installments shows a need to put more iron behind their economic influence in controlling strategic points across the continent.

The war has no signs of ending for a multitude of reasons, besides the immense profits crisis stricken Imperialist belligerent can siphon out of Sudan there is immense rivalries which have been shown in the disunity of the Imperialist camps and the local armed forces. The most glaring examples are when the Sudanese central bank investigated and revoked the licenses for the fintech firm Al-Asjad which is owned by the UAE and high ranking Sudanese military officials such as general Mahgoub Albushra and many others. Similarly with Iran’s intermediaries within the SAF dominated government through the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood. The war has been an opening to restore relations which a desperate Omar Al - Bashir severed to curry favor with the USA in 2016 to save his faltering regime. This goes further with the IRGC supplying the SAF with Mohajer- 6 drones battering the RSF, and also to harden Iran’s position in the red sea. Similarly, this implicates Qatar which heavily patronizes the Muslim Brotherhood and hence why Al Jazeera has been silent besides running some humanitarian articles.

On the other end is the pro-democracy, anti-islamist Nairobi based government of unity and peace with the main forces being the RSF, SPLM factions and other armed groups formerly involved in the anti - Al-Bashir New Sudan movement. Albeit Egypt every other state bordering Sudan has thrown their lot in with them due to supporting a weaker, decentralized Sudan and the immense profits to scour from the working class in Sudan, or from the immense financial gifts given in the case of Chad receiving over $12 billion for the UAE to utilize airbases to coordinate actions with the RSF. Similarly Russia has been one of the main suppliers for the RSF utilizing the Wagner Groups and other PMC to coordinate the movement of heavy weaponry out of their Central African Republic weapons cache in exchange for gold concessions used to ease funding the war in Ukraine. Russia was hedging its bets out until Saudi Arabia forced the SAF to block Russia from gaining access to the Port of Sudan for military deployment.

It is clear that workers have no interest in supporting either gang of armed bandits and their various Imperialist backers. Both the RSF and the SAF have been unleashing ever more carnage upon the working class, from civilian massacres to just practices of indiscriminately bombings civilian infrastructure or withholding water, food and denying aid as a tactic to besiege cities. Workers and refugees are being cramped into encampments swelling the ranks of already crumbling urban centers around Khartoum and in the Darfur without any basic services or amenities.

The north eastern Nile city Atbara was known as the city of Steel and Fire by workers in the railroad industry, decades ago Sudan was a center for workers militancy dominated by the main railroad workers union and Stalinist communist party which became just another openly nationalist party. With the decline in industry hastened by the magnitude of waste production financing the military in decades of civil war at the expense of modernizing, and the worsening crisis of profitability in the 1970s’ industry atrophied and so did working class centers. Decades of repression failed to fully stamp out class activity as seen by a rich history of grass roots assemblies in the periods of the absence of legal trade unions or acting outside of them in economic struggles, or mass mobilizations against repression and declining social conditions for workers. On the eve of the collapse of Al - Bashir’s regime in December 2018, the composition of workers involved included a greater number of precarious and proletarianized professionals in Khartoum hence the immense involvement of the funding starved teachers, healthcare workers and doctors. The immense popular mobilizations which brought down Al - Bashir were always weakened by the political leadership of the SPA (Sudanese Professional Association) who decreased workers' confidence and sold them defeat by redirecting energy towards democratic concessions in a military and RSF dominated coalition government. Even before these final acts of betrayal the SPA leadership was constantly working to limit class activity towards pursuing democratic reforms even when the masses were mobilized in assemblies and whole also imploring workers to return to their stations and for businesses to reopen it is clear what their class interest is.

The only solution for workers in Sudan, across the war ravaged Sahel or any other front is to recognize the cause of their misery and see the ever growing cost the profit starved capitalist system has caused them. Wars are proliferating making it ever more difficult to keep track of ongoing wars and conflicts and other acts of direct and indirect Imperialist confrontations. The current ongoing wars are all related to the crises caused by anemic profits, The main fronts in Ukraine, The Middle East and Iran are direct confrontations between consolidating Imperialist blocs, the fronts are generalizing and the likelihood for the capitalist to ride off of the rails and plunge workers everywhere into another world war grows by the day as the pace of rearmament increases and war becomes the preferred option. As workers can see already that the world does not need to be flattened by mutually assured destruction for untold misery to be forced upon us all from the deaths, destruction and 10s of millions of refugees Imperialist wars have caused already, food insecurity and famine is also on the march due to the ever bifurcating world economy between the two main Imperialist camps. For workers our only defense is our historically found class wide organs such as the soviets, workers councils, Shuras, assemblies, strike committees, etc only in these organs can the proletariat take power for ourselves, but with this workers still need an international political reference point which is the future international communist party to give these organs a truly revolutionary content and prevent them from being co-opted by the capitalist class.

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Image: Chloé Leconte (CC BY-SA 4.0), rescue.org