Sudan war evolving into a proxy conflict fueled by gold
Illicit gold financing networks prolong the Sudan war, while the neighbors who can help most are embroiled in their own disagreements.
In a nutshell
- External support and hunger for gold prolong Sudan’s violent power struggle
- Regional supply routes enable weapons flows through neighboring states
- Sudan is effectively split, with an SAF east and RSF west
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The conflict that ignited in Sudan in April 2023 began as a power struggle within the ruling military junta, between two members of the Transitional Sovereignty Council: General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hemedti,” leader of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The generals first met decades ago in Darfur when Mr. Burhan was a career SAF officer and Hemedti led the Janjaweed militias, which helped the government fight rebels and eventually became the RSF. The current rift resulted from a dispute over whether to merge the RSF into the SAF to create a single Sudanese military.
Over 30 months of attrition, this domestic feud has metastasized into a high-stakes geopolitical proxy war, endangering the maritime security of the Red Sea and equilibrium in the Horn of Africa. The involvement of regional middle powers has escalated the violence, transforming a state collapse into a regionalized catastrophe and the world’s most severe humanitarian crisis.
Since late 2025, the military situation has pointed to a country deeply divided. The SAF maintains its administrative stronghold in the east and center, utilizing Port Sudan – a logistics and trade hub on the coast and an overwater link to the Middle East – as a wartime capital and a critical maritime gateway for both humanitarian aid and military imports. Meanwhile, two months after unilaterally declaring a parallel state in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, the RSF achieved a decisive consolidation in the west following the October 2025 fall of El Fasher – the SAF’s last stronghold in Darfur. This victory essentially split Sudan into two, with the RSF now pivoting toward the Kordofan region to threaten western approaches to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, which is controlled by the SAF.
The conflict has reached a stalemate sustained by a sophisticated war economy. External financing and the unimpeded supply of weapons have motivated both factions to prioritize military maximalism despite the September 2025 peace roadmap. The sides can continue to fight thanks to illicit financial flows and non-state aligned logistics networks that serve as the conflict’s primary engine.
Gold: A currency for arms
Sudan is one of Africa’s largest gold producers. The precious metal stands as the country’s most critical strategic asset and its primary source of foreign exchange. Gold has transitioned from a national resource to a currency for arms, accounting for over 70 percent of total national revenue. This extraction economy allows both factions to bypass formal banking restrictions and sustain a high-intensity war of attrition.
The United Arab Emirates serves as the primary destination for as much as 70 percent of Sudan’s smuggled gold, coming from both RSF and SAF-controlled areas.
The RSF has established strong control over major gold-mining operations in Darfur and Kordofan, using gold extraction as a key source of funding for its activities.
In turn, the SAF oversees gold extraction across eastern Sudan, much of which passes through informal channels. A significant proportion of this gold is believed to transit via Egypt, a key regional partner of the SAF. Due to porous borders and limited oversight in remote desert regions, monitoring cross-border flows remains challenging. Research estimates that roughly 60 percent of gold produced in Sudan’s Northern, River Nile and Red Sea states is smuggled into Egypt. From southern Egypt, the gold enters formal trading circuits through Cairo and Egyptian ports, with much of it ultimately destined for the UAE.
Widely known as “the City of Gold,” Dubai is a global hub and a key nexus in the international gold trade. After processing in local mills, the Sudanese gold reaches the refineries of Dubai, where it is melted and recast, effectively cleansing its origin of conflict. This process enables supply chain contamination, where the gold becomes a fungible asset that enters the global “Good Delivery” lists. This circuit provides both the RSF and SAF with the liquidity needed to procure fuel, arms, ammunition and advanced technology such as drones.
The RSF patronage network
The RSF’s ability to withstand international pressure is rooted in a transnational network of complicity. This paramilitary logistics chain uses cooperative regional neighbors to bypass formal air-control networks and traditional diplomatic leverage.
Facts & figures
Logistics and supply lines: Nodes of complicity
- Chad: The role of capital city N’Djamena as a primary rear base waned in 2025 due to internal opposition from the Zaghawa community and SAF threats to strike Chadian territory. Nevertheless, trafficking routes remain active.
- Libya: The “Kufra route” via the part of Libya controlled by Khalifa Haftar’s forces has filled the vacuum left by Chad, providing a critical ground conduit for fuel and equipment.
- South Sudan (The Songo-Wau-Juba Route): The central node for the RSF gold economy. Gold from the Songo mines is trucked to Wau, flown to Juba on commercial carriers, and then transferred to private jets destined for the UAE.
- East Africa (Kenya/Uganda): Nairobi has hosted the RSF’s parallel government meetings. However, this has come at a cost; the United States Senate is currently investigating Kenya’s “major non-NATO ally” status due to these links. Technical evidence of this corridor was confirmed in May 2025, when a Kenyan-registered Boeing 737 was destroyed in Nyala (the RSF’s “capital”). Investigations revealed the aircraft was operated from Entebbe, Uganda, where its owner and pilots reside.
- The pivot from Russians and border risks: While Russia’s Africa Corps − a state-controlled paramilitary force overseen by the Russian defense ministry, formerly the Wagner group − initially supplied the RSF with MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) and ammunition via Libya and the Central African Republic, relations deteriorated in 2023 following the death of Wagner’s leader. Cross-border incursions by Russian-linked forces from the Central African Republic into Darfur have further fractured this alliance, forcing the RSF to rely even more heavily on its Emirati-funded aviation network. To mitigate SAF drone strikes, the RSF has constructed dozens of makeshift airstrips near mining sites, allowing light aircraft to bypass the SAF-controlled Civil Aviation Authority.
Although the UAE has publicly denied allegations of aiding the RSF – or any other faction – it is widely believed that it remains the RSF’s most vital benefactor, driven by interests in Red Sea hegemony, food security and gold market dominance. Evidence collected by several international organizations (the United Nations among them) points to Abu Dhabi utilizing humanitarian covers – specifically airfields and hospitals in Chad – to facilitate cargo flights transporting drones and military equipment.
The SAF coalition: State actors and strategic maritime interests
The SAF leverages its status as the “official” government of Sudan to cultivate state-to-state alliances with powers seeking a stable, regime-aligned neighbor, or Red Sea naval access.
Facts & figures
Key state benefactors
- Egypt: Cairo provides the SAF strategic depth. Beyond military hardware, Egypt adjusted its central bank policies to absorb Sudanese gold, providing a financial safety valve for the SAF while bolstering Egypt’s own depleted reserves.
- Turkiye and Iran: These actors provided the decisive edge in 2025, transferring advanced drone technology that allowed the SAF to reclaim parts of Khartoum and push RSF forces west of the Nile.
- Russia: Focusing on a Port Sudan strategy, Moscow in mid-2024 shifted its support from the RSF to the SAF. In May 2025, the SAF allegedly agreed to a Russian logistic supply center on the Red Sea in exchange for an urgent supply of arms, complicating Western efforts to isolate the Kremlin.
This diverse external support has encouraged SAF leadership to go all in. Now emboldened by Russian arms and Iranian drones, General Burhan has frequently rejected ceasefire proposals, operating under the assumption that the war economy can sustain a total military victory, despite the reality of a de facto partition.
Diplomatic deadlock
Diplomatic efforts are currently centered on a group of four countries comprising the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt (referred to as “the Quad” but with no relation to the grouping in the Pacific and Indian Oceans). These four countries can exercise leverage through: imposing targeted sanctions on gold-trading entities to interrupt the conversion of gold into weapons; pressuring Hemedti via the UAE’s financial leverage and Mr. Burhan via Egypt/Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic recognition; and by aligning behind the U.S.-led “humanitarian truce” as a prerequisite for any broader settlement.
However, the friction between Saudi Arabia and the UAE – two Gulf heavyweights with competing visions for the Horn of Africa – continues to undermine hopes for peace.
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A brief window for de-escalation appeared in November 2025, when U.S. President Donald Trump, following a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, signaled a direct personal interest in the issue. However, this signaling has yet to overcome the fundamental lack of trust between the belligerents’ primary sponsors.
The conflict in Sudan is no longer a simple leadership feud. It is a multi-billion-dollar war economy sustained by a global network of interests. The illicit gold trade and uninterrupted weapons supply have created a self-sustaining cycle of violence. Unless the international community, led by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt, moves to sever the financial and logistical arteries linking Sudan’s gold to global markets, the country will continue to be ripped apart by the very resources intended for its development. Without a structural intervention in the gold-for-arms trade, the stalemate of 2025 will become the permanent disintegration of Sudan in 2026.
Scenarios
Most likely: Continued stalemate and de facto partition
The conflict has resulted in a country divided: The SAF controls the east and north (including the interim capital, Port Sudan), while the RSF holds sway over most of the west. There has been no strategic military breakthrough despite years of fighting, and both sides have hardened their positions. The war economy, particularly the gold smuggling to markets like the UAE, provides both factions with a continuous source of revenue to purchase weapons and drones, creating a massive incentive to prolong the conflict rather than compromise.
Probable: Regional escalation and spillover
The risk that the conflict will spread to the wider Horn of Africa should be considered. The war is increasingly internationalized, with external actors like the UAE, Egypt, Russia and Turkiye providing sophisticated weaponry. Neighboring countries such as Chad, Libya, South Sudan and the Central African Republic are already being used as logistics corridors for arms and gold trafficking. This creates a network of collusion that risks merging multiple regional conflicts with Sudan at the epicenter.
Less likely: Formal secession and international recognition
Although a parallel state has been declared by the RSF in Nyala, and Sudan is split “east-west,” formal independence for the west is currently improbable. The international community has not recognized the RSF’s self-proclaimed government, and its appointed officials currently have limited authority and mostly live in exile. Without formal legitimacy or international diplomatic support, the RSF remains a paramilitary force dependent on illicit trade rather than a recognized sovereign state.
Unlikely: Negotiated settlement
While high-level multilateral engagement by the Quad remains the best hope for de-escalation and a roadmap to peace roadmap exists, it has been largely neglected by the warring parties. Negotiations are stalled by the intransigence of the belligerents and the SAF’s refusal to talk to the RSF. Moreover, rising diplomatic tensions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE further complicate the possibility of a unified pressure campaign.
But most importantly, as the same regional Arab states that possess meaningful leverage over Sudan’s rival factions are simultaneously providing them with financial, political or material backing, the incentives for those factions to compromise are significantly reduced. Continued external support lowers the immediate costs of war, strengthens each side’s belief that further battlefield gains remain possible, and this diminishes the urgency of entering serious negotiations.
Unlikely: Decisive military victory for either side
Neither the SAF nor the RSF appears capable of achieving a total military win in the near future. Outside support ensures that neither side runs out of resources; whenever one side approaches a stalemate, renewed external support can shift calculations and encourage them to keep fighting. While the SAF regained parts of Khartoum in early 2025, the RSF responded by consolidating its grip on the west and launching long-range drone attacks on the SAF’s eastern strongholds.
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