Is selective attention really that surprising? The US murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and then, after obliterating the country, let it descend into civil war and genocide. Why are the campus protesters not attending to this injustice? It seems even more pressing than the war in Gaza. After all, the injustice was perpetrated not by an ally of the US, but by the US itself!
This, by the way, is not an attempt at whataboutism. I am quite sympathetic to the protester's cause, although not their methods (which seem counterproductive), nor to their opposition to a two state solution. I'd really like to see the Left live up to its lofty morals.
Progressives of the US, you don't have to engage in performative acts of protest. You can effect real change. The people of Iraq are owed trillions in reparations, and if you really believed in justice, you'd set aside a large portion of your salary, let's say 30%, and pay it to Iraqis for the rest of your life.
>I do think it is interesting, though, how selective and partial the world’s attention can be, especially in a conflict where there really are forward and backward linkages to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and to the larger question of an emerging second Cold War.
Interesting, yes. I wish it were also surprising. If it were, the world would look *very* different.
I want to tie today's post together with part of yesterday's --- the Right's more proper sense of patriotism compared to the Left's discomfort and even disdain for it.
Say what you will about how imperfectly we've lived up to the ideals of the Declaration, there is no one in the conflicts detailed here, nor in pretty much any conflict going on today (with the posiible exception of the Ukrainian side of that war) even trying for some sort of universal valuing of life or equality.
We haven't gotten anywhere near where we could get, but the US has been on a fairly steady upward trajectory of honoring our values in a way no one else has gotten close. Recognizing and celebrating that should come a lot more easier for us than it does.
To take a step back, I've often wondered why some conflicts generate so much more interest than others do. I really think it's the perceived color of the combatants. If it's white vs white, brown vs brown, etc, there's no clear sense of justice. I can't tell you what beef Azerbaijan has with Armenia, though I'm guessing it's some territorial dispute. A second order is major religious difference, which is why we're vaguely aware of Myanmar and the persecution of the Uyghurs.
I'm also curious if you dig far enough into these other conflicts if you'd get the same bitter disputes over minutia of which map was presented at what meeting, or exactly how much ethnic mixing there was in one of three major demographic groups.
Excellent essay and well worth the ten minutes I spent reading it.
And now I know everything I need to know about this conflict and beyond that ten minutes I really don't give a crap. It's bad for the people of Sudan but that's the way of the world forever and forever and one way or another the conflict will end (or pause). It's not our concern.
So should we give more attention to this conflict? No. But what about Gaza? The lesson here is we should be spending infinitely less attention on Gaza and treating it more like Sudan.
I'm not quite as fatalistic about this, but I do think (as some other folks were discussing below), that if there's going to be intervention there needs to be a specific plan for how to decisively end the conflict in one side's favor or another (whichever side that is), rather than simply imposing a ceasefire and trying to maintain the status quo.
My last focus area before I retired as an intelligence analyst was East Africa and that included a deployment there in 2014 right after the South Sudan civil war. Overall, I just want to say how excellent your piece is.
The fact that the most recent map available showing areas of control is four months old really says something about how Africa generally and this war in particular doesn't get a lot of interest in the global media and public, which, unfortunately, isn't anything new. I went looking through my sources to try to find something more recent that's publicly available and couldn't.
I guess the only thing I would quibble with is the extent of US involvement. Sudan has always been unstable and I don't think there is much the US can do to change that. The Obama administration's well-meaning goal to split off South Sudan did not improve things, a nasty civil war began immediately there, and that country is likely not going to see long-term stability either.
Fundamentally, the region has a history of weak state capacity, low levels of nationalism and national identity, and high levels of other group identities among the peoples there that cause intranational conflict and violence. That's not really something the US can solve., especially by picking sides in a conflict that we don't actually know much about and don't understand the long-term implications of our involvement.
"The fact that the most recent map available showing areas of control is four months old really says something about how Africa generally and this war in particular doesn't get a lot of interest in the global media and public."
I never comment on this board. I just want to say thank you to Matt and the Slow Boring crew for putting this one together. I knew virtually nothing about this conflict - except that it is happening - and now I know enough to have a basis to read about it in the dreaded main stream media! Thank you.
PS. The comments are incredible too. This is quite the informed community. Proud to be a subscriber. Kudos!
Not much to add, here, but wanted to point out that these conflicts are heavily fueled by extractive economies--gold and oil, but I would also include some less traditional stuff like shipping lanes in the Red Sea--where civilian populations are at best largely unnecessary and at worst an active impediment to exploitation of a valuable location-based resource that doubles as financial fuel for the conflict.
The resource curse concept has been a bit over-extended and beaten to death at this point, but I think a lot of the underlying logic about conflict in the modern world holds up well, in the worst possible way. And I feel like you could add a coda onto this article to connect it to yesterday's article: one of the things that makes America truly great and successful is our government's reliance on citizen tax regimes as its primary source of revenue. Tax Day should really be a national holiday.
Adam Tooze made a well-researched post about the origins and stakes of the Sudan conflict that readers here might find interesting. A key piece of context: the Sahel saw a huge gold rush over the course of the 2010s, and “who gets to control the revenue flow from the gold?” has been a major conflict driver both across the region and in Sudan in particular.
Americans don't want to have anything to do with Sudan. Okay.
The problem is, Americans don't want anyone else to have anything to do with Sudan, either. And to achieve that, America now must have something to do with Sudan.
We want to have cake, not eat it, and not have anyone else eat it. It's nonsensical.
Not really. It seems that the United States position is that external power should not be funding an arming military militias to do genocide and that instead the focus should be on a diplomatic effort to resolve the conflict. I think that’s pretty straightforward.
The SAF seen liie like fairly normal corrupt authoritarians while the RSF are crude villains committed to mass murder by policy rather than military necessity with a personality cult, pro-Putinism and indiscipline attached.
In 2008, I was in South Sudan less than a year after the peace agreement with the North (eg the Khartoum government). I previously knew nothing about the Sudanese civil war - I was just there working with a global health contractor firm on a brand-new USAID project. Got up to speed quickly. I learned that close to a million people had died in the Sudanese civil war in the last few decades, and my mind swam that absolutely no one in the U.S. knew or even cared.
I spent a lot of time with our country director. One night, she mentioned to me that she slept with her loaded AK-47 under her bed. I asked... why? She shrugged. "So when war comes again, we will be ready."
"Do you think war will come again?"
She smirked. "Yes. And then we will kill them, and then kill their children, just like they did to us."
That really stuck with me.
I spent a lot of time working in Africa. The vast majority of the continent is nothing like Sudan. But most Americans dismiss pretty much all of it, and certainly the Sudanese conflict, in a way they would never do to, say, what happens in central Asia or the Middle East, and it's hard to see it once you realize it.
"It is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world right now, and it’s not particularly close." Are you sure about that? True, Sudan has been shockingly bad, but I'm under the impression that the long-term war(s) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been the worst by a long shot.
Unfortunately, it's harder for people to be concerned about a war where two warlords are using a country as their playground for power. Without an "oppressor-oppressed" narrative or a clear "good guy," it's more difficult for people to support a side.
For those who believe "America shouldn't be involved in every conflict," Sudan serves as a poignant example. When America doesn't take a commanding role, middle powers step in to fill the vacuum. Americans must decide if they are comfortable with that. Of course, more nuanced discernment mechanisms are at play.
Similarly, there's the largely ignored decade-long civil war in the Central African Republic, right beneath Sudan and Chad. You can explore more about this conflict in the economic history of the Central African Republic here.
The UN is a lame duck, it can't lead an intervention without Russia's consent, which it won't.
Siding with either side means accepting their atrocities. Unilaterally attacking either one, or even both, even if it's just a bunch of airstrikes might change the balance of power, but could just as easily lead to more chaos and atrocities. Decapitation strikes are likewise frowned upon and prone to chaos as well.
Pretty much the only thing left is the boring diplomatic solution, which takes too long, is frustratingly opaque as to whether it's actually working -- in fact, it won't look like it's working until it finally DOES -- and requires us to rely on an absolutely depleted State Department.
I'm definitely not trying to pooh-pooh you here; I personally HATE when all a person does is shoot ideas down and not contribute any of their own. But I'm genuinely curious if you see a viable solution path here.
I didn't give an opinion either way. But my stance is America is doing the right thing by not choosing a side and by choosing the boring diplomatic resolution.
By not choosing a side, middle powers will support their side and there will be more deaths, but if America interferes, the regime that wins will look illegitimate and look like a US puppet.
I think America is at its best when it doesn't intervene directly.
Indeed, I think that America’s role should always be the balancing power and never the direct interventionist except for crucial conflicts that directly affect its interest
I've written about the economic and geopolitical histories of various African countries, spanning from pre-colonial times to the present day. While I haven't published my article on Sudan yet, I have covered Niger and Chad in a multi-part series.
Mali and Niger are grappling with internal issues, including the secessionist ambitions of the nomadic Tuareg Amazigh, corruption, weak governance, and pervasive poverty(They are both agrarian societies with terrible agricultural productivity). Externally, they face threats from jihadists affiliated with Al-Qaeda (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and JMIN) and the Islamic State (Islamic State in the Greater Sahara). The extremist problem initially emerged after the Algerian Civil War ended in 2002, but it exploded following the Libyan Civil War, drawing more jihadists to the Sahel region around Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. Chad has also been dealing with extremists in the aftermath of the First Libyan Civil War.
Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso have shifted from relying on France to seeking military support from Russia. They perceive France as ineffective in combating guerrilla fighters, despite a decade of French assistance. While France successfully dismantled the secessionist Azawad state in Mali in 2013 during Operation Serval, its efforts against guerrilla fighters in Operation Barkhane were less effective. After nearly a decade of French involvement, local populations began to view France as a neocolonial power. Consequently, the coup leaders garnered popular support by removing French and Western influence.
Is selective attention really that surprising? The US murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and then, after obliterating the country, let it descend into civil war and genocide. Why are the campus protesters not attending to this injustice? It seems even more pressing than the war in Gaza. After all, the injustice was perpetrated not by an ally of the US, but by the US itself!
This, by the way, is not an attempt at whataboutism. I am quite sympathetic to the protester's cause, although not their methods (which seem counterproductive), nor to their opposition to a two state solution. I'd really like to see the Left live up to its lofty morals.
Progressives of the US, you don't have to engage in performative acts of protest. You can effect real change. The people of Iraq are owed trillions in reparations, and if you really believed in justice, you'd set aside a large portion of your salary, let's say 30%, and pay it to Iraqis for the rest of your life.
>I do think it is interesting, though, how selective and partial the world’s attention can be, especially in a conflict where there really are forward and backward linkages to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and to the larger question of an emerging second Cold War.
Interesting, yes. I wish it were also surprising. If it were, the world would look *very* different.
I want to tie today's post together with part of yesterday's --- the Right's more proper sense of patriotism compared to the Left's discomfort and even disdain for it.
Say what you will about how imperfectly we've lived up to the ideals of the Declaration, there is no one in the conflicts detailed here, nor in pretty much any conflict going on today (with the posiible exception of the Ukrainian side of that war) even trying for some sort of universal valuing of life or equality.
We haven't gotten anywhere near where we could get, but the US has been on a fairly steady upward trajectory of honoring our values in a way no one else has gotten close. Recognizing and celebrating that should come a lot more easier for us than it does.
To take a step back, I've often wondered why some conflicts generate so much more interest than others do. I really think it's the perceived color of the combatants. If it's white vs white, brown vs brown, etc, there's no clear sense of justice. I can't tell you what beef Azerbaijan has with Armenia, though I'm guessing it's some territorial dispute. A second order is major religious difference, which is why we're vaguely aware of Myanmar and the persecution of the Uyghurs.
I'm also curious if you dig far enough into these other conflicts if you'd get the same bitter disputes over minutia of which map was presented at what meeting, or exactly how much ethnic mixing there was in one of three major demographic groups.
Thank you for this!
Excellent essay and well worth the ten minutes I spent reading it.
And now I know everything I need to know about this conflict and beyond that ten minutes I really don't give a crap. It's bad for the people of Sudan but that's the way of the world forever and forever and one way or another the conflict will end (or pause). It's not our concern.
So should we give more attention to this conflict? No. But what about Gaza? The lesson here is we should be spending infinitely less attention on Gaza and treating it more like Sudan.
I'm not quite as fatalistic about this, but I do think (as some other folks were discussing below), that if there's going to be intervention there needs to be a specific plan for how to decisively end the conflict in one side's favor or another (whichever side that is), rather than simply imposing a ceasefire and trying to maintain the status quo.
Wow, great piece.
My last focus area before I retired as an intelligence analyst was East Africa and that included a deployment there in 2014 right after the South Sudan civil war. Overall, I just want to say how excellent your piece is.
The fact that the most recent map available showing areas of control is four months old really says something about how Africa generally and this war in particular doesn't get a lot of interest in the global media and public, which, unfortunately, isn't anything new. I went looking through my sources to try to find something more recent that's publicly available and couldn't.
I guess the only thing I would quibble with is the extent of US involvement. Sudan has always been unstable and I don't think there is much the US can do to change that. The Obama administration's well-meaning goal to split off South Sudan did not improve things, a nasty civil war began immediately there, and that country is likely not going to see long-term stability either.
Fundamentally, the region has a history of weak state capacity, low levels of nationalism and national identity, and high levels of other group identities among the peoples there that cause intranational conflict and violence. That's not really something the US can solve., especially by picking sides in a conflict that we don't actually know much about and don't understand the long-term implications of our involvement.
"The fact that the most recent map available showing areas of control is four months old really says something about how Africa generally and this war in particular doesn't get a lot of interest in the global media and public."
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:War_in_Sudan_(2023).svg is only about a week out of date, although of course it doesn't have legible institutions committed to its accuracy.
I never comment on this board. I just want to say thank you to Matt and the Slow Boring crew for putting this one together. I knew virtually nothing about this conflict - except that it is happening - and now I know enough to have a basis to read about it in the dreaded main stream media! Thank you.
PS. The comments are incredible too. This is quite the informed community. Proud to be a subscriber. Kudos!
Not much to add, here, but wanted to point out that these conflicts are heavily fueled by extractive economies--gold and oil, but I would also include some less traditional stuff like shipping lanes in the Red Sea--where civilian populations are at best largely unnecessary and at worst an active impediment to exploitation of a valuable location-based resource that doubles as financial fuel for the conflict.
The resource curse concept has been a bit over-extended and beaten to death at this point, but I think a lot of the underlying logic about conflict in the modern world holds up well, in the worst possible way. And I feel like you could add a coda onto this article to connect it to yesterday's article: one of the things that makes America truly great and successful is our government's reliance on citizen tax regimes as its primary source of revenue. Tax Day should really be a national holiday.
Adam Tooze made a well-researched post about the origins and stakes of the Sudan conflict that readers here might find interesting. A key piece of context: the Sahel saw a huge gold rush over the course of the 2010s, and “who gets to control the revenue flow from the gold?” has been a major conflict driver both across the region and in Sudan in particular.
https://adamtooze.com/2023/04/18/chartbook-209-the-sudan-crisis-and-the-sahel-gold-rush/
Americans don't want to have anything to do with Sudan. Okay.
The problem is, Americans don't want anyone else to have anything to do with Sudan, either. And to achieve that, America now must have something to do with Sudan.
We want to have cake, not eat it, and not have anyone else eat it. It's nonsensical.
Not really. It seems that the United States position is that external power should not be funding an arming military militias to do genocide and that instead the focus should be on a diplomatic effort to resolve the conflict. I think that’s pretty straightforward.
Why isn't it a bad guy v goodish guy split?
The SAF seen liie like fairly normal corrupt authoritarians while the RSF are crude villains committed to mass murder by policy rather than military necessity with a personality cult, pro-Putinism and indiscipline attached.
I think it’s very risky to call “normal corrupt authoritarians” “good guys”. They have a tendency to not remain “good”.
Why is it risky?
I can't predict what they will be like in 10 years but I can't predict for any other group.
I doubt corruption correlates with other bad things outside the normal all bad things correlating effect.
In 2008, I was in South Sudan less than a year after the peace agreement with the North (eg the Khartoum government). I previously knew nothing about the Sudanese civil war - I was just there working with a global health contractor firm on a brand-new USAID project. Got up to speed quickly. I learned that close to a million people had died in the Sudanese civil war in the last few decades, and my mind swam that absolutely no one in the U.S. knew or even cared.
I spent a lot of time with our country director. One night, she mentioned to me that she slept with her loaded AK-47 under her bed. I asked... why? She shrugged. "So when war comes again, we will be ready."
"Do you think war will come again?"
She smirked. "Yes. And then we will kill them, and then kill their children, just like they did to us."
That really stuck with me.
I spent a lot of time working in Africa. The vast majority of the continent is nothing like Sudan. But most Americans dismiss pretty much all of it, and certainly the Sudanese conflict, in a way they would never do to, say, what happens in central Asia or the Middle East, and it's hard to see it once you realize it.
"It is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world right now, and it’s not particularly close." Are you sure about that? True, Sudan has been shockingly bad, but I'm under the impression that the long-term war(s) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been the worst by a long shot.
Unfortunately, it's harder for people to be concerned about a war where two warlords are using a country as their playground for power. Without an "oppressor-oppressed" narrative or a clear "good guy," it's more difficult for people to support a side.
For those who believe "America shouldn't be involved in every conflict," Sudan serves as a poignant example. When America doesn't take a commanding role, middle powers step in to fill the vacuum. Americans must decide if they are comfortable with that. Of course, more nuanced discernment mechanisms are at play.
Similarly, there's the largely ignored decade-long civil war in the Central African Republic, right beneath Sudan and Chad. You can explore more about this conflict in the economic history of the Central African Republic here.
https://yawboadu.substack.com/p/the-economic-history-of-central-african
At the same time, what can actually be done?
The UN is a lame duck, it can't lead an intervention without Russia's consent, which it won't.
Siding with either side means accepting their atrocities. Unilaterally attacking either one, or even both, even if it's just a bunch of airstrikes might change the balance of power, but could just as easily lead to more chaos and atrocities. Decapitation strikes are likewise frowned upon and prone to chaos as well.
Pretty much the only thing left is the boring diplomatic solution, which takes too long, is frustratingly opaque as to whether it's actually working -- in fact, it won't look like it's working until it finally DOES -- and requires us to rely on an absolutely depleted State Department.
I'm definitely not trying to pooh-pooh you here; I personally HATE when all a person does is shoot ideas down and not contribute any of their own. But I'm genuinely curious if you see a viable solution path here.
I didn't give an opinion either way. But my stance is America is doing the right thing by not choosing a side and by choosing the boring diplomatic resolution.
By not choosing a side, middle powers will support their side and there will be more deaths, but if America interferes, the regime that wins will look illegitimate and look like a US puppet.
I think America is at its best when it doesn't intervene directly.
Thanks for all the input and context. Your comments have been very informative
Indeed, I think that America’s role should always be the balancing power and never the direct interventionist except for crucial conflicts that directly affect its interest
Great article.
I've written about the economic and geopolitical histories of various African countries, spanning from pre-colonial times to the present day. While I haven't published my article on Sudan yet, I have covered Niger and Chad in a multi-part series.
Mali and Niger are grappling with internal issues, including the secessionist ambitions of the nomadic Tuareg Amazigh, corruption, weak governance, and pervasive poverty(They are both agrarian societies with terrible agricultural productivity). Externally, they face threats from jihadists affiliated with Al-Qaeda (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and JMIN) and the Islamic State (Islamic State in the Greater Sahara). The extremist problem initially emerged after the Algerian Civil War ended in 2002, but it exploded following the Libyan Civil War, drawing more jihadists to the Sahel region around Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. Chad has also been dealing with extremists in the aftermath of the First Libyan Civil War.
Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso have shifted from relying on France to seeking military support from Russia. They perceive France as ineffective in combating guerrilla fighters, despite a decade of French assistance. While France successfully dismantled the secessionist Azawad state in Mali in 2013 during Operation Serval, its efforts against guerrilla fighters in Operation Barkhane were less effective. After nearly a decade of French involvement, local populations began to view France as a neocolonial power. Consequently, the coup leaders garnered popular support by removing French and Western influence.
Niger Series: https://open.substack.com/pub/yawboadu/p/nigers-modern-economic-and-geopolitical?r=garki&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Chad Series: https://yawboadu.substack.com/p/the-economic-and-geopolitical-history-8d6
I'm still working on Mali but here's part 1:
https://yawboadu.substack.com/p/the-economic-and-geopolitical-history-26c