Overview
Since April 2023, the conflict between Sudan’s Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has spawned a sophisticated war economy where violence has become a profit-generating enterprise.
While over 11 million people have been displaced and 25 million require humanitarian assistance, domestic commanders, regional powers, and international actors continue to benefit financially from the conflict’s perpetuation.
Key Findings
The RSF generates an estimated $400–500 million annually from gold mining operations in Darfur, with proceeds smuggled primarily through Dubai refineries and UAE-based trading companies.
Both factions receive weapons through complex international networks — the RSF largely via the UAE and Libya, and the SAF from Russia, China, Egypt, and Iran — despite active UN arms embargoes.
Private military contractors, including Africa Corps (formerly Wagner Group) and UAE-linked mercenary recruiters, have further embedded commercial logic into military operations.
Smuggling networks exploiting Sudan’s seven shared borders generate additional revenue through human trafficking, drug transit, and contraband, with the RSF taxing or directly facilitating these flows.
Even humanitarian aid has been compromised. Both factions tax relief convoys, loot WFP warehouses, and force aid organisations into currency exchanges at exploitative rates.
Crucially, UN agencies and NGOs operating in RSF-controlled Darfur cannot avoid contracting with RSF-linked logistics intermediaries — a structural dilemma the international system has yet to resolve.
Practical Recommendations
- Disrupt the Gold Trade
Major trading hubs — particularly the UAE and Switzerland — should ban imports of Sudanese gold without verified non-conflict provenance.
International bodies should establish a certification scheme modelled on the Kimberley Process, with meaningful penalties for non-compliance.
- Strengthen Arms Embargo Enforcement
UN member states must actively monitor shipments, investigate violations, and apply coordinated diplomatic pressure on countries — especially the UAE and Egypt — supplying weapons to warring factions.
- Expand Targeted Sanctions
Asset freezes and travel bans should extend beyond military commanders to encompass the full commercial network: gold traders, logistics intermediaries, and financial facilitators profiting from the conflict.
- Integrate Economic Governance into Peace Negotiations
Any ceasefire framework must address post-conflict resource management and offer armed groups credible pathways to legitimate livelihoods.
Without this, financial incentives to resume fighting will remain intact.
- Redirect Humanitarian Funding Toward Community-Led Structures
Donors should increasingly channel aid through Emergency Response Rooms and local mutual aid networks, bypassing compromised commercial intermediaries and reducing the RSF’s ability to extract rents from relief operations.
Conclusion
The core conclusion is stark: conventional diplomacy and humanitarian assistance cannot end a war sustained by gold revenues, arms markets, and geopolitical competition.
Disrupting the commercial incentives for conflict is a prerequisite — not a supplement — to lasting peace.
