As always, conflicts are much easier to understand when viewed through the lens of materialism.
Factors such as ethnicity or religion are never the reason for these conflicts. Those are simply the excuse. It’s what’s used to fuel the fire.
The heart of this conflict is Sudan’s gold that’s laundered via Dubai then Switzerland.
The culpability of Western powers including the US cannot be ignored either. The RSF is supplied with diverted arms shipments from the West to the UAE.
Just like in Gaza the US could stop this at any time with a phone call.
This is almost exactly wrong. Like, if you wanted to invent a plausible-on-its-face position that formed a perfect -1 dot product with the truth, this is what you’d come up with.
Polite western society has become so disconnected from what earnest religious belief feels like that they have become unable to comprehend the world around them, which hasn’t. They project their own materialism onto the own world and conclude that sectarian hatred is overblown because after all, who could really get that worked up about some dusty book? The idea that the Sudanese are just innocent victims of big evil powers fighting over gold is the kind of thing that makes a good theme in English class. We’re now dealing with an entire generation that was only taught this “counter-narrative”, and simply pattern matches it to every single thing. Yes, you can always construct sentences that recast any bad world events as being caused by our own callous indifference to the beleaguered and noble savage. No, that is not an automatic shortcut to truth and wisdom. The West does not have a monopoly on making terrible, short-sighted, violent choices.
But putting aside the diminishing of African agency, even if you do focus on the involvement of outside forces, the Sudanese civil war is notably characterized by the involvement of _middle_ powers, and not particularly Western ones. They are there for varying reasons, all of them nihilistic but only some of them materialistic. Ukrainians are there, for instance, because Russians are there, and it’s a lawless place where you can kill Russians. That’s a lot of things, but a simplistic gold grab it is not.
Way to miss the point and claim things I never said at the same time.
Earnest religious belief means nothing without material support. You can hate someone all you want for whatever religious reasons you want but it doesn't matter unless somebody gives you guns, bombs, tanks and planes. And why would someone do that? Because of material interests.
Why did the Crusades happens (multiple times)? Because of material interests. How did those who materially benefit get ordinary people to fight? By fomenting religious fervor and hatred. Why did they do that? To further their material interests.
You mention Ukraine. Perfect example. Russia took Crimea to get a port on the Black Sea in 2014 and also to control resources in that area. Why did Russia invade in 2021? Because maintaining what is essentially an oblast (like Kaliningrad) became too expensive. Ukraine had cut off the water. So Russia ideally wanted to despose the government and install another Lukachenko puppet government (like they have in Belarus) but, failing that, they wanted to secure a land bridge to Crimea. Just look at a map.
One could say the exact same thing you do about "African agency" about the Russian-speaking people of eastern Ukraine but that's just an excuse. Putin doesn't care about that. He cares about the land they live on. And we've seen this exact playbook many times over. For example, Hitler used to annex Austria and the Sudetenland to ostensibly re-unite German-speaking people but again, that wasn't the point.
Now you might say in any of these places the people are motivated to kill for ethnic and/or religios interests. They may genuinely believe in this (but again, ask yourself why) but there are also a ton of opportunists. An absolute perfect example of this is Maria Corina Machado, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner, who opposed Maduro in Venezuela and her two biggest goals are to privatize Venezuelan industries (previously nationalized) and to further support Israel. She may as well put out a press release saying she's open to the backing her in a coup. Privatizing national industries for Western companies to profit? Sounds a whole lot like material interests to me.
Go back in history and ask yourself why the borders of Sudan are what they are, just like we could for Rwanda and a host of other civil wars. Why exactly are these different ethnic groups in the same country? Well, that's a colonizer special, perfected by the British Empire, to sow division in the locals so the colonizer can profit. Once again, material interests.
>As always, conflicts are much easier to understand when viewed through the lens of materialism.
That no doubt does make understanding things seem easier.
> Factors such as ethnicity or religion are never the reason for these conflicts
Economics motivates. But these divisions dominate in determining magnitude. You don’t need genocide to control mines, farms and oil fields. (You need labour.)
The dial turns from enslavement to extermination when there is deep-rooted fury. That sort of fury can really only be channeled on divisions of race and religion. (You need a way for poorly-trained, uneducated troops to mostly reliably identify the enemy.)
> heart of this conflict is Sudan’s gold
Why not oil, too?
> Just like in Gaza the US could stop this at any time with a phone call
This hubris fuels our forever wars, both in trade and militarily.
We don’t have that influence. If we tried restricting both Qatar and the UAE in Africa, we’d put serious economic and military interests at stake. Interests American voters care about enough that our leaders have even less free rein than our geopolitical limits circumscribe.
> You don’t need genocide to control mines, farms and oil fields
True but if your goal is the control of resources, you don't really care if your proxy ends up engaging in these and other war crimes. That's just the cost of doing business.
Take as example when Saddam Hussein used nerve gas on the Kurds in Halabja in 1988. Well that's a war crime. Did the US care? Not until 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia. Up until then Saddam was a foil against Iran, who was only really an enemy after religious fundamentalists overthrew the US puppet regime of the Shah in 1979. Then in the 1990s, the US retroactively started caring about Halabja.
So did the US need Saddam to use nerve gas on the Kurds? No, of course not. Did they care? Absolutely not. Again, it was the cost of doing business.
> We don’t have that influence.
Yes we absolutely do. You get that power when you supply the weapons and can choose who to supply them to. We have many weapons that we could wield against allies in particular. What if the US declared that gold sourced from Sudan was illegal to trade in? If you say the US can't make laws in other countries, I'll just laugh. The US still has control of the global financial system and can declare that any bank wanting access to the US financial system has to not trade in Sudanese gold.
Currently, the UAE gets away with this by essentially laundering Sudanese gold. The system allows them to do this. Well the UAE produces no gold so what if any gold exports from Dubai had to come with certificates showing from where it was imported?
If you don't think that can be done, look no further than the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme ("KPCS") for conflict-free diamonds [1].
> ... we’d put serious economic and military interests at stake. Interests American voters care about ...
I'm curious what African (or even Middle Eastern) interests you think voters care about? I say this because American voters pretty famously don't really care about foreign policy at all. Also, foreign policy is notably uniparty. The war in AFghanistan went through 4 administrations, 2 Republican, 2 Democrat. Vietnam went through 5 administrations (2 Democrat, 3 Republican) as well (ie Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford).
[1]: https://www.kimberleyprocess.com/
> if your goal is the control of resources, you don't really care if your proxy ends up engaging in these and other war crimes
Granted. The UAE is not involved due to animus. But this analysis renders everyone in Sudan as NPCs. The reason the conflict is an opportunity for meddling, the reason it has turned into a genocide, these causes are found more in culture and politics than pure economics.
> You get that power when you supply the weapons and can choose who to supply them to
America withholding arms from Sudan wouldn’t change much.
If we started dictating Emirati foreign policy based on withholding arms, they should drop us as a security guarantor. (And can. And eventually would.)
We’d lose a reliable ally and investor and oil producer in exchange for foreign policy control in a region Americans are sick of being involved in.
> What if the US declared that gold sourced from Sudan was illegal to trade in?
Nothing. Like actually nothing. Maybe domestic gold prices would bump up a bit, but less than they have with tariffs and the deficit explosion.
If we tried to get the UAE to stop trading Sudanese gold, on the other hand, that would mean applying diplomatic and possibly economic pressure. That could result in costs to American voters we don’t care to pay.
> the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme ("KPCS") for conflict-free diamonds
Yet blood diamonds still sell.
Gold is tracked and traded based on provenance—high-end mints will produce more expensive bars. The difference is there is a larger buyer pool for conflict gold than there is for diamonds. (And much more for oil.)
> American voters pretty famously don't really care about foreign policy at all
This is what I meant. American leaders are constrained in acting on foreign policy lines that result in domestic pain. Alienating the Gulf would result in domestic pain.
So Arabs fly planes into the world trade center, commit mass genocide at darfur and are still support this dude and his band of thugs with their colonialist rape of Africa?
The US could drop a nuke on UAE and tell them to stop funding colonialist expansion. The war against evil is never ending playing nice is a fools game.
You know if we nuked the UAE, everyone would just start funding the folks that make Hamas seem like the church social committee right?
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You should not be posting here if you think that is a serious suggestion. Go play Civ or something