Sudan’s tragedy echoes those of Libya and Syria

Sudan’s grim war continues with few hopes of resolution. In mid-August, US-sponsored peace talks began in Geneva but, with the army, a key protagonist, refusing to take part, few believe they will lead anywhere. Instead, it looks likely that this civil conflict, now well into its second year and responsible for 40,000 deaths and the displacement of more than 10 million people, will grind on.
Adding to the sense of tragedy is how much Sudan’s war echoes other recent Middle Eastern civil conflicts. It is said that history never repeats itself exactly, but it often rhymes, and Sudan’s war rhymes in a depressingly familiar way with what happened in Libya and Syria.
As in Syria and Libya, Sudan’s war originated in popular protest. While Syrians and Libyans took to the street to protest the dictatorships of Bashar Assad and Muammar Qaddafi, respectively, in 2011, Sudanese protesters helped oust President Omar Bashir in 2019. There was immediate conflict in Libya, between supporters of Qaddafi and his opponents, and, after a few months of government crackdowns, the same eventually happened in Syria. In Sudan, fighting was not immediate, as the army and Rapid Support Forces, which had both turned on Bashir, initially cooperated with civilian leaders representing the protest movement.
However, in another parallel with Syria and Libya, when fighting eventually came to Sudan, the combatants were largely not drawn from the initial protesters. When fighting erupted in Khartoum in 2023, it was the Rapid Support Forces and army turning on one another, with civilian leaders largely sidelined. This echoed the situation in Syria, where many of the protesters had opposed taking up arms against Assad but were eventually overruled by those urging violence. As that war went on, the Islamist militia that came to dominate the opposition, as well as Daesh and the Kurdish forces that captured eastern Syria, had had little to do with the 2011 protests. In Libya, meanwhile, though the 2011 war was largely fought by those aligned with the anti-Qaddafi protesters, the second civil war that erupted three years later was initiated by Khalifa Haftar, who had little to do with the first revolution.
The international community’s reaction to the three conflicts has also been remarkably similar. Western states have, by and large, remained distant. In Libya and Syria, there were moments of Western intervention. Qaddafi was toppled in 2011 after NATO sent a force to protect the protesters, while the Obama and Trump administrations sent US forces into eastern Syria to defeat Daesh. But the main war in Syria, between the rebels and Assad, and in Libya after 2014 between Haftar and the Tripoli government, saw only limited Western engagement.
The same is true of Sudan today. As in Libya and Syria, Western governments, especially the US, have sponsored peace talks but these have been unsuccessful, partly due to a lack of Western leverage on the ground.
Relative Western disinterest has contributed to another feature all three wars share: considerable influence from non-Western powers, especially Middle Eastern regional actors. In Sudan, a recent report from Amnesty International stated that weapons and equipment from China, Russia and Turkiye had all been sent into Sudan. This reflects the situation in Libya, where Turkiye and Qatar backed the Tripoli government, while Russia and Egypt, among others, were believed to sponsor Haftar. Syria was even more complex, with many states, including Russia, Iran, Qatar and Turkiye, lending support to either Assad or his rivals.
As has been shown in multiple conflicts throughout the world, the more states intervening and lending support to sides in a civil conflict, the more difficult it is for that war to end, given how many agendas need to be satisfied. Libya and Syria showed how such external intervention can help to prolong war and Sudan appears to be headed that way.
A final parallel with Syria and Libya has not yet occurred in Sudan, but it serves as a warning: spillover into neighboring states. Syria’s war contributed to instability in Jordan and Lebanon, violence in Turkiye from Kurdish militants and a religious extremist takeover in northern Iraq. Libya’s war contributed to violence across the Sahel, while both conflicts fed the migrant crisis that impacted Europe from 2015 onward.

The longer the war goes on, the chances increase that it could spill over to destabilize an already fragile neighborhood.

Christopher Phillips

Sudan shares borders with seven states: Chad, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Libya and Egypt. Two of these, Libya and the Central African Republic, are already in a state of war, while most of the others have experienced their own coups, conflicts and various instabilities in recent years. With 2.3 million people having fled from Sudan to neighboring countries, the longer the war goes on, the chances increase that it could spill over to destabilize an already fragile neighborhood.
For all the tragic outcomes in Syria and Libya, the implosion of two states into drawn-out conflicts that destabilized their neighbors could act as a warning to the international community. Yet, rather than learn lessons, governments are repeating the same errors in Sudan. Already, as in Syria and Libya, the Sudanese people are paying the price. There is a real risk that the populations in Sudan’s neighborhood could soon follow.

• Christopher Phillips is professor of international relations at Queen Mary University of London and author of “Battleground: Ten Conflicts that Explain the New Middle East.” X: @cjophillips