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Chapter 67: Sudan III: Fuel on the Fire: Engineering a Civil War for Profit and Ports

The first shell hit the hospital just after dawn. Dr. Ibrahim was in the middle of a frantic triage in the emergency ward of the Al-Nau hospital in Khartoum when the world outside exploded. The blast threw him against a wall, and the air filled with the dust of pulverized concrete and the high-pitched screams of the wounded. This was no longer a political crisis; this was a war, and it had come to the heart of the city with a ferocity that was unimaginable just a day before. On April 15, 2023, the two generals Russia had spent years cultivating, Burhan and Hemeti, had finally turned their guns on each other, and the city’s ten million people were their hostages.

In the days that followed, Ibrahim’s world shrank to the blood-slicked floor of the operating theater. He treated a tide of human suffering that seemed endless, bodies ripped apart by high-explosive shells, sniper fire, and shrapnel. But amidst the horror, a terrifying pattern began to emerge. The wounded from the army were mostly hit by small arms fire. But the soldiers loyal to Hemeti's RSF, the paramilitary fighters, kept bringing in men with a different kind of injury, burns and shrapnel from downed aircraft. He listened to the rumors spreading through the exhausted medical staff: the RSF were using sophisticated surface-to-air missiles.

A cold, sickening question began to form in Ibrahim's mind as he worked. Where did a paramilitary group, a force that was essentially a collection of tribal militias, get the technology and training to shoot down fighter jets and attack armored convoys with such lethal precision? The question was an impossible riddle in the chaos of the collapsing city.

The answer was rumbling through the deserts a thousand miles to the west, far from the carnage of Khartoum. On the dusty, unpaved roads leading from the Central African Republic, a new kind of supply convoy was on the move. These were not the usual battered pickups of local smugglers. These were heavy-duty military trucks, operated by the blank-faced European mercenaries of the Wagner Group. Satellite imagery would later confirm what local intelligence had been screaming for weeks: these convoys, loaded at Wagner’s sprawling bases in the C.A.R., were carrying a deadly cargo across the porous border into Hemeti's territory in Darfur. They were bringing in the very weapons that were tearing Ibrahim's world apart—shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, anti-tank guided weapons, advanced drones, and ammunition.

The culmination of this policy, the horrific but logical endpoint of Russia's decision to arm a warlord, came months later in El Fasher. In a city already devastated by fighting, Hemeti’s RSF, the same force that had terrorized Darfur for a generation, launched a deliberate, systematic, and brutal attack on a maternity hospital. The news report, flickering on a battery-powered phone in Ibrahim’s darkened ward, brought back a flash of memory from a time before the war, a time of hope and revolution. He thought of the young protestor, shot dead by an RSF sniper, whose story had once galvanized the nation. The single death of that young girl had sparked a dream of a better future. Now, an entire hospital of mothers and newborns had become a target, the act so common it was just another data point in a forgotten war. The dream had been consumed by a nightmare, a nightmare fueled by Russian guns and paid for with Sudanese gold.

The Discourse 67: The Strategy of Managed Chaos

Russia's role in the devastating Sudanese Civil War that erupted in April 2023 was not that of a neutral bystander or even a passive beneficiary; it was that of a direct and deliberate accelerant. Moscow and its proxy, the Wagner Group (rebranded as the Africa Corps), actively fanned the flames of the conflict by providing critical, state-of-the-art military support to one of its two main factions, Hemeti's Rapid Support Forces. This was not a policy aimed at securing a swift victory for its client, but rather a calculated strategy of managed chaos. A prolonged, intractable conflict that resulted in a fragmented, weakened, and perpetually desperate Sudan was far more aligned with Russia's core interests than a stable, unified, and potentially pro-Western state. The civil war was the mechanism through which Russia sought to achieve its ultimate strategic and economic objectives.

The most direct form of Russian intervention was the arming of the RSF. Compelling evidence from a range of sources, including official UN Panel of Experts reports, declassified US and European intelligence, and open-source analysis of satellite imagery and flight records, has created an irrefutable picture of this support. Wagner used its established, semi-sovereign bases in neighboring Libya (at Al Jufra) and the Central African Republic (at Bangui) as the primary logistical hubs for a sophisticated arms pipeline into Hemeti's strongholds in Darfur. This was not the supply of simple small arms; it was the transfer of advanced, force-multiplying weaponry that fundamentally altered the military balance on the ground. This included MANPADS (Man-Portable Air-Defense Systems), which allowed the RSF to contest the Sudanese army’s air superiority, as well as anti-tank guided missiles, heavy artillery, and sophisticated drones for surveillance and attack. This military support was the fuel that allowed the fire of the civil war to catch and spread with such terrifying speed and destructive power.

Russia’s overarching strategy is one of profitable, perpetual chaos. A decisive victory for either side, or a negotiated peace that might lead to a stable, sovereign government in Khartoum, would be a strategic defeat for Moscow. Such a government would inevitably seek to re-establish ties with the West, take control of its own natural resources, and end the illicit smuggling operations that have been so profitable for the Kremlin. A protracted civil war, by contrast, creates the perfect conditions for exploitation. A desperate and internationally isolated warlord like Hemeti is a far more compliant business partner than a legitimate head of state. As long as the war rages, Russia can continue to provide weapons and protection in a direct, off-the-books trade for gold and other resources, all while consolidating its physical presence in the region.

The ultimate grand prize for which Russia is playing is a permanent, strategic foothold on the Red Sea. For decades, Russia has sought to establish a warm-water naval base, a goal that has been consistently thwarted. The Sudanese civil war is Russia’s opportunity to finally achieve this objective through asymmetric means. By becoming the indispensable military patron of the RSF, Russia is positioning itself to be the ultimate kingmaker in any future settlement. Its goal is to secure a long-term basing agreement from a grateful client, whether that be a victorious Hemeti in control of all of Sudan, or a de facto independent state in the gold-rich and port-adjacent east of the country. A naval base at Port Sudan would give the Russian Navy a permanent strategic position astride one of the world's most critical maritime choke points, the Suez Canal, allowing it to project power into the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Horn of Africa, and fundamentally altering the geopolitical balance of the entire region.