Islamism and Sudan's Conflict

[John Ashworth]

1. Why Sudan disappeared from global headlines - until the Iran war

Recent geopolitical reframing of the Sudanese crisis distorts the true
picture, and risks entrenching the three-year conflict

Osama Abuzaid
Middle East Eye
18 May 2026

There are wars that dominate the global imagination - and others that
quietly fall out of it. Sudan has become the latter.

For more than three years, Sudan has been living through a catastrophe
that would dominate global headlines under different circumstances.

The country has been collapsing in slow motion. More than 14 million
people have been displaced. Entire cities have emptied. Markets barely
function. Hospitals have shut down or operate without electricity,
medicine or staff.

None of this is new. What is new is when Sudan suddenly reappears in
international headlines - and why.

That is exactly what happened in March, when the US Department of
State announced plans to designate the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood as
a foreign terrorist organisation.

The justification was explicit: Washington accused the group of
receiving support from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

That moment was revealing. Sudan did not return to global attention
because of famine warnings, or because civilians were being killed in
markets and displacement camps. It returned because it could be
inserted into the larger geopolitical confrontation centred on Iran.

This was not a coincidence. It highlighted how attention works. Sudan
is not invisible; it is conditionally visible.

Balance of power

The war in Sudan is still, at its core, a domestic conflict. It is
rooted in a failed political transition, a militarised state, and
competing armed forces fighting for control over power and resources.

Yet it has been deliberately accelerated and rendered far more lethal
by the opportunistic involvement of outside players, who see Sudan’s
fragmentation not as a tragedy to be resolved, but as a theatre to be
exploited.

None of that changed in 2026. What changed was the lens through which
the war is viewed.

As tensions escalated between the United States and Israel on one
side, and Iran on the other, Sudan was increasingly reframed: not as a
country in crisis, but as a space within a broader confrontation.

Armed groups were no longer just local actors, but extensions of
regional influence. Military developments - especially the use of
drones - were read as signals of alignment in a wider conflict.

But this reframing distorts more than it explains. Sudanese actors are
not proxies in the simple sense. They operate within their own
political logic, shaped by years of internal fragmentation. External
support may shift the balance of power, but it does not define the war
itself.

And yet, once Sudan is absorbed into a larger geopolitical narrative,
the priorities shift. The question is no longer how to end the war. It
is how to manage its implications.

That shift has consequences, because a war that is managed is rarely a
war that is resolved.

Economic chaos

If the geopolitical reframing of Sudan is one layer of the crisis, the
economic consequences are another - and they are accelerating.

The Iran war has triggered a global energy shock. Oil prices have
surged past $100 per barrel, driven by disruptions along key shipping
routes, particularly the Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant
portion of the world’s oil supply passes.

For fragile economies, this is not a distant problem. It is immediate.
Sudan, heavily dependent on imported fuel, has been hit hard.

Fuel prices in the country have surged dramatically. On the parallel
market, the price of gasoline jumped from around 18,000 Sudanese
pounds ($30) per gallon to nearly 30,000 in less than a week. This is
not a marginal increase; it is a shock that ripples through every
sector of daily life.

Fuel drives transport. Transport drives food supply. Food supply
determines survival. When transportation costs rise, food prices
follow. Entire supply chains slow down or collapse. In Sudan, where
the margin between survival and hunger is already thin, these
pressures are devastating.

In cities like Omdurman and Wad Madani, some traders have suspended
sales altogether, unable to price goods in a market where costs are
changing daily. A 50kg sack of sugar increased by thousands of pounds
within days, while construction materials have surged by more than 50
percent.

This is how economic crises unfold in war zones - not as single
events, but as cascading failures.

Inflation in Sudan was already severe. Official figures placed it
above 56 percent in early 2026, even before the latest shocks. Now,
with rising fuel prices and disrupted imports, the real cost of living
is climbing far faster than official statistics can capture.

And fuel is only part of the story. Global disruptions linked to the
Iran war have also affected fertilisers, shipping and supply chains.
Medication is becoming harder to access as pharmacies struggle to
restock. For civilians, this means a simple infection or chronic
condition can become life-threatening.

Pushed to the margins

There is a paradox at the heart of Sudan’s current situation. The
country has become more geopolitically relevant - and less humanly
visible.

It is overshadowed by larger conflicts, particularly the escalation
involving Iran. At the same time, within discussions about Sudan
itself, civilians are pushed to the margins, replaced by narratives
about security, alliances and strategic positioning.

This is not just neglect. It is a form of distortion. Sudan is being
seen, but not on its own terms.

The consequences are already visible. Humanitarian needs continue to
outpace funding. The country’s economic collapse is deepening. Armed
actors are consolidating power in the absence of a credible political
process.

And yet, international responses remain fragmented - reactive rather
than strategic, shaped more by external concerns than internal
realities.

The longer this continues, the harder it becomes to reverse. Conflicts
like Sudan’s do not remain contained. They reshape regions, drive
displacement across borders, and entrench systems of violence that
outlast any single war.

Ignoring this does not stabilise the situation. It merely delays the
moment when the costs become unavoidable.

Sudan’s tragedy today is not only the scale of its suffering, but the
way that suffering is interpreted. The war is no longer understood
primarily as a Sudanese crisis. It is filtered through external
conflicts, particularly the Iran war.

In that process, the reality on the ground is distorted. And this is
the danger: because a crisis that is ignored can still be
rediscovered, but a crisis that is misunderstood is addressed in the
wrong way from the beginning.

Sudan does not need to be inserted into someone else’s war to matter.
It already does. The question is whether the world is willing to see
that - before the consequences extend far beyond Sudan itself.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-sudan-disappeared-global-headlines-until-iran-war

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2. Sudan’s War Is Also an Islamist Power Struggle, Activist Warns

Tuesday marks three years since the turning point in the brutal civil
conflict in Sudan, starting in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed
Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF)

i24NEWS
May 18, 2026

Three years after Sudan’s military ruler, Abdel Fattah Al Burhan,
removed his deputy and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commander Mohamed
Hamdan Dagalo, known as "Hemedti", the rivalry between the two men has
plunged the country into a devastating civil war fought over
territory, power, and ideology.

The dispute initially centered on who would control Sudan, how quickly
the RSF would be integrated into the regular army, and who would
command that unified force. But as the conflict deepened, ideological
divisions sharpened alongside the battlefield lines.

The RSF has sought to portray itself as an anti-Islamist force
distancing Sudan from the radicalism associated with former president
Omar Al Bashir. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), by contrast, have
increasingly absorbed Islamist loyalists and allegedly foreign
fighters with extremist ideologies into their ranks.

For Dr. Alaaeldin Awad Nogoud, a prominent Sudanese surgeon and
activist who has long campaigned against political Islam in Sudan, the
growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) over the state is
nothing new.

“Since Sudan’s independence in 1956, this organization has been
working in a manner to overcome any democratic transitions,” Nogoud
says.

He points to the 1989 coup that brought Omar Al Bashir to power as the
turning point. According to Nogoud, the Muslim Brotherhood steadily
infiltrated nearly every sector of Sudanese society, from government
institutions and civil organizations to trade unions and the military
itself.

“It came to a point where the highest-ranked officers in the army
belonged to the MB,” he says. “Those who are not affiliated with them
have zero chance to get promoted or be responsible for something
substantial in the military.”

Nogoud argues that Islamist influence extends far beyond the formal
armed forces. Multiple reports suggest that Brotherhood-linked
networks maintain ties to militias fighting alongside SAF, including
Popular Resistance Committees, remnants of Bashir-era Popular Defense
Forces, and the Al Bara Ibn Malik battalion.

“There are roughly twelve militias within SAF that are linked to the
MB,” Nogoud claims. “So not only do the Muslim Brothers control the
official weapons of the country, including chemicals and drones, they
also hold the non-official weapons—the jihadist militias—in their
hands. That is, of course, a serious problem.”

Both the SAF and the RSF have been accused of unlawful killings,
torture, and attacks on civilians throughout the conflict. But Nogoud
says SAF-aligned forces have shown particular brutality, accusing them
of indiscriminate shelling, aerial bombardment of densely populated
residential areas, and the use of chemical weapons.

Nogoud says he experienced that brutality firsthand.

In May 2023, he was detained by the army on accusations of undermining
SAF. He says his belongings were confiscated, and he was beaten,
tortured, and forced to kneel for hours under the scorching sun,
leaving scars that have still not healed.

“I am a known surgeon who operated on more than 250 people during the
2018 revolution, and my detention stirred a wide national and
international campaign for my release,” he recalls. “In the end, they
let me go after failing to link me to any parts of the conflict.”

For Nogoud, the violence reflects a broader political project:
restoring the Islamist order that dominated Sudan under Bashir.

“They want to come back to power and restore what they had during the
era of Al Bashir,” he says.

Nogoud also argues that Sudan’s Islamists continue to benefit from
backing by powerful regional actors. Turkey and Saudi Arabia, he says,
maintain strong pro-Islamist currents within parts of their
establishments. Egypt, despite designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a
terrorist organization domestically, has also supported
Islamist-linked elements in Sudan while resisting democratic
transition efforts, he claims.

“We often joke that in 1956 Sudan didn’t get complete independence,”
Nogoud says. “The British went out, but the Egyptians remained, and
they have been the ones controlling Sudan’s political, military, and
social decisions.”

Some governments, however, did take active actions against the MB of
Sudan and their control over the country. In March, the US State
Department designated the Brotherhood of Sudan as a terror
organization, and in May, Emirati authorities referred 13 defendants
and six UAE-registered companies to the State Security Court over an
alleged Muslim Brotherhood-linked network accused of smuggling weapons
and millions of rounds of ammunition to SAF.

Yet, such moves remain rare globally, and Nogoud warns that the
consequences of inaction on that front could wreak havoc worldwide.

“Sudan has become a nucleus for terrorists, with extremists coming
from Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the
Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” he argues. “So if the Muslim Brotherhood
continues to play a central part in the military and politics, there
will be no future for Sudan.”

Neither will there be a future for Europe and the US, he emphasized,
saying, “The spread of extremism in Africa will create an idea that
terror has no borders and can be exported to the whole world,
including Europe and the US. This is why it must be stopped.”

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/analysis-opinion/artc-sudan-s-war-is-also-an-islamist-power-struggle-activist-warns

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______________________
John Ashworth

ashwor...@gmail.com

+254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile, WhatsApp and Signal)

PO Box 403 - 00206, Kiserian, Kenya