In Myanmar a horrific war pits the army against the populace. We’ve paid too little attention. Especially once attention was riveted by Russia’s horrific war on Ukraine. And then attention was diverted by Israel’s horrific Gaza war. Leaving little available for Sudan’s war — actually the most horrific of all.
Scolds of humanity tell us all this war is just endemic to our aggressive basic character. Yet in civilized societies we’ve learned to live quite peaceably, keeping a lid on what violent tendencies might lurk within us. In 2009, I could write in my Rational Optimism book of what appeared to be a growing restraint upon armed conflict. Elaborated soon after in Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature (citing mine).
How tragically different things now look. With the world largely just shrugging at Sudan’s nightmare.
What is that war about? Not ideology. Not entirely an ethnic clash. Not about territory — except insofar as they’re fighting over the whole country. Battling to plunder it. Not even to control its people — rather just what they can grab. In the process destroying more than grabbing. Moreover, few of the combatants on the ground will gain anything material. It’s more like violence for the sake of violence. Nihilistically drunk on it.
Of course, those behind it do have more calculated self-serving motives.
The background: For three decades Sudan was ruled by a rough character, Omar al-Bashir. During his time, genocidal violence engulfed the western Darfur region, perpetrated by the “Janjaweed,” a “militia” of ethnically Muslim guys against darker skinned non-Muslims.
Another mainly ethnic conflict also raged between North and South. Improbably, the South managed to win independence — a further seeming harbinger of world improvement. But then South Sudan fell into its own tribalistic violence. However, that’s another story.
Unrelatedly, in 2019, Bashir was overthrown, by the army in concert with civic activists. Huge popular demonstrations looked like they just might bring about a more or less democratic country. But the military ultimately squelched that.
That military was actually split between a regular army (SAF) and the “Rapid Support Forces” (RSF) descended from the Janjaweed, headed by Muhammad Dagalo (it seems obligatory to say he’s known by the cute little nickname “Hemedti”). I recall the first time I encountered the name in coverage of post-Bashir Sudan. Sounds like a very bad guy, I told myself; watch him.
Not content to share power with the regular army, Dagalo wanted it all, and went to war.
By rapaciously deploying the forces at his disposal, he had already built a formidable empire of ill-gotten financial assets, to bankroll his ambitions. And to gain much cred and support among other regional regimes, even being feted by them in style as the potentate he aspires to be. And he looks to be winning the war.
But while it goes on, the impact is catastrophic. Yet another example of what vast human suffering one man will inflict to feed his ego.
Darfur is again in flames with pervasive murderous ethnic cleansing. But it’s really a countrywide holocaust. The capital, Khartoum — so storied in history — has been devastated. Deaths are in six figures and soon could easily top seven; with those fleeing their homes in eight figures; and the wreckage of the food infrastructure presaging gigantic famine. The conflict could also easily spill over into fragile nearby nations. The inevitable wave of refugees hasn’t yet hit Europe — where their political impact will likely be huge, and not positive.
Other countries are already involved, most notably the UAE backing Dagalo’s RSF, while Egypt aids the SAF; Russia, the friend of all bad guys, and its (former) Wagner Group, have also helped Dagalo. The recent wave of coups across Sub-Saharan Africa, installing Russophile regimes, may not be unrelated.
No good outcome seems possible. Dagalo’s RSF may “win” the war but it will rule another hellhole failed state, another gangster state, a model becoming all too familiar. Certainly not the march of progress optimists like me once fancied was happening.
We also liked to point out that whereas an air crash is big news, thousands of daily safe landings go unreported. And despite all the awfulness, the world is indeed full of undramatic good news. Yet it’s getting harder to see the crashes as outliers.
Losing a country here, a country there, might not feel like a big deal, especially if they’re distant ones, with darker skinned people, that seem to matter little. But we Westerners have scant sense of just how thin is our cloak of civilization against the howling gales.