In April 2023, a brutal war erupted in Khartoum and spread to engulf the whole of Sudan. It has since become one of the largest humanitarian crises on earth. Over 11 million people have been displaced. Less than 2 million have fled to neighboring countries. In a nation of 40 million, more than half the population—over 26 million people—now faces food shortages and scarcity. Famine has been declared in at least five regions, including the Nuba Mountains and Darfur. Reports of rape, sexual slavery, and other forms of sexual violence have been consistent since the first day of the war. Some battles have been massacres outright, as in Al-Fasher in October 2025, where the RSF laid siege to the city and slaughtered thousands. The world calls this a "civil war"—a word that implies savagery without cause, Africans killing Africans for ancient tribal hatreds. The world calls Sudan the "forgotten war"—as if its erasure from headlines were an accident, not a choice. In this episode, Pambazuka sits down with Mahder "Mahi" Habtemariam—Vice Chairperson of the Global Pan-African Movement, PhD candidate at Syracuse University, and an associate editor of the Pambazuka News—to refuse both framings. Mahi traces the war's origins not to primordial conflict but to counter-revolution: the violent suppression of a popular uprising that, between 2018 and 2021, brought millions into the streets, built resistance committees in every neighborhood, and drafted a Revolutionary Charter for People's Power through bottom-up democratic deliberation. She shows how the Sudan Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces—once partners in a 2021 military coup—turned on each other not over ideology but over which comprador faction would control Sudan's reintegration into global capitalism. The episode maps the external actors who have sustained this destruction: the UAE's gold extraction and mercenary logistics, Europe's border externalization programs, the IMF's structural adjustments, the Abraham Accords' diplomatic blackmail, and the "Friends of Sudan" coalition that dresses up genocidal forces as potential democratic partners. Mahi explains why Egypt and Ethiopia became allies when the revolution threatened them, why France fears losing the Sahel, and why Russia, Ukraine, and the US all find clients in a war they claim to want ended. Most importantly, the episode centers what the international media ignores: the Sudanese people themselves—journalists risking their lives, health workers operating under bombardment, teachers holding classes under trees, and the mutual aid networks keeping communities alive. Mahi argues that solidarity from the outside must mean supporting Sudanese autonomy, advocating an end to all foreign forces feeding the war, and learning from a revolution that proved, however briefly, that another Sudan is possible. In the episode, we allude to the following sites: Mahi' article on Pambazuka News: https://www.pambazuka.org/Sudan-Crisis Atar Network for news on Sudan: https://atarnetwork.com/ Sudanese Archive documenting the events in country: https://sudanesearchive.org/en/investigations/violence-against-protesters-in-khartoum-on-june-3-2019/
