Sudan: History, Government & Society

Sudan is a war-fragmented state whose foreign policy is now driven less by formal institutions than by armed control on the ground. Since the April 2023 rupture between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has operated as de facto head of state through the army-backed Transitional Sovereignty Council framework, while no civilian transitional government exercises nationwide authority; Abdalla Hamdok is not the current head of government, and the postwar political order remains unresolved Reuters BBC News U.S. Institute of Peace. Politically, Sudan is best described as a contested wartime military order rather than a functioning provisional civilian government International Crisis Group Freedom House.

The center of decision-making sits with the Sudanese Armed Forces leadership, not a ruling party in the normal sense. Sudan dissolved the National Congress Party after Omar al-Bashir’s fall, and the current conflict has blocked any credible electoral or party-based system from replacing it Library of Congress International IDEA. Burhan and the SAF command control Sudan’s diplomatic representation at the United Nations and most formal state-to-state engagement, but their authority is partial and militarized, while the RSF has held territory, built external supply links, and shaped facts on the ground outside regular state channels UN News Reuters. That makes Sudan internationally recognized as a state but internally divided between competing armed sovereignties.

In the world today, Sudan matters less as a coherent regional power than as a major theater of spillover risk across the Red Sea, the Sahel, and the Horn of Africa. It borders seven countries and sits close to one of the world’s most important maritime corridors, so its collapse affects refugee flows, arms trafficking, food insecurity, and rival Gulf and African security agendas World Bank International Organization for Migration UNHCR. Its formal alignments remain spread across the African Union, Arab League, IGAD, OIC, COMESA, and the UN, but in practice Sudan’s external relationships are now filtered through wartime patrons, mediation tracks, and access to arms, fuel, finance, and diplomatic cover African Union IGAD UN Digital Library.

Economically, Sudan is a low-income, conflict-shattered economy still structurally dependent on gold, agriculture, and external relief, with state capacity badly eroded by war. The World Bank reported that the conflict caused a sharp economic contraction, widespread destruction of infrastructure, and severe disruption to trade, services, and livelihoods World Bank. Gold has remained one of Sudan’s most important export earners, but conflict has also made it a financing channel for armed actors rather than a stable basis for national recovery Reuters Chatham House. Agriculture still employs a large share of the population and gives Sudan long-term potential in gum arabic, livestock, and cereals, yet displacement, insecurity, and market breakdown have cut deeply into productive capacity FAO World Bank.

Three issues define Sudan’s trajectory. The first is survival of the state itself: whether the SAF-RSF war ends in negotiated reintegration, prolonged partition by force, or a looser map of armed zones under nominal national sovereignty International Crisis Group U.S. Institute of Peace. The second is the regionalization of the conflict, as neighboring states and Gulf actors back different channels, turning Sudan into a competitive security arena rather than a self-contained civil war Reuters Al Jazeera. The third is mass humanitarian collapse: the UN has described Sudan as one of the world’s worst displacement and protection crises, and that emergency now shapes diplomacy as much as battlefield outcomes do UNHCR OCHA.

The practical reading for delegates is blunt: Sudan is not currently defined by ideology, party competition, or normal development policy. It is defined by armed authority, external interference, and the erosion of the institutions that once held the state together Freedom House International IDEA. Any serious assessment of Sudan’s foreign policy or negotiating position has to start from that fact, because the key question is no longer what Khartoum prefers in theory, but which actor can still claim to speak for Sudan in practice UN News [blocked]