State Fragmentation and the Crisis of Governance in Post-Bashir Sudan

Sudan is the site of the world's largest humanitarian crisis, yet the war that produced it is widely treated as the sudden eruption of a personal feud between two generals. This talk argues, instead, that the fighting that began in April 2023 is the culmination of a longer political history. The talk will trace the war’s seeds within the Islamist regime of Omer al-Bashir (1989–2019), the 2018–19 revolution that over-threw him, the 2021 counter-revolutionary coup, and eventually the rupture between the coup plotters. The talk closes by examining Sudan’s present reality—a fragmenting state with rival administrations, a war economy sustained by gold and foreign patrons, and civilian and mutual-aid networks still carrying the revolution’s unfinished claims—while considering possible pathways beyond the conflict and what a sustainable peace might require.