The Rapid Support Forces’ (RSF) high-profile assault on Sudan’s presidential palace marks a critical juncture in the nation’s conflict, even though the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) ultimately retained control. What began as a military-paramilitary power struggle has evolved into a multifaceted contest for control, not merely of state institutions but of Sudan’s position in global geopolitics. Although humanitarian concerns rightfully dominate headlines, amid devastated hospitals, ransacked communities, and displaced civilians, a more profound narrative unfolds beneath the surface. Sudan exemplifies warfare’s modern evolution: a theater where traditional state actors increasingly compete with non-state entities empowered by cross-border corporate partnerships operating with minimal transparency or oversight.
The RSF, originally Janjaweed militias during Darfur’s violence, has transformed into a formidable military force. Its influence depends on external relationships with regional governments, multinational corporations, and transnational commercial networks.
The war in Sudan is no mere contest between generals; it represents warfare’s global transformation. Worldwide, armed non-state groups are forming alliances beyond traditional military partnerships to engage with extraction industries, logistics companies, and private military contractors. These unconventional collaborations are redefining contemporary conflict, creating protracted situations that challenge conventional diplomacy and peacekeeping approaches while generating substantial profits for stakeholders.
A New Kind of War Economy
In modern conflicts, corporations and armed groups increasingly form sophisticated networks that operate across borders, outside traditional oversight. These relationships encompass comprehensive support systems, financing, logistics, intelligence-sharing, and access to cutting-edge technologies including drones and surveillance systems.
In Sudan, the RSF reportedly maintains significant financial connections to the country’s profitable gold mining industry, using these revenues to arm and compensate fighters. International businesses involved in extraction and commerce inadvertently strengthen such groups by providing crucial economic foundations.
This pattern repeats globally across Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. Companies, often based in minimally regulated offshore jurisdictions, provide militant organizations with essential services, resources, and legitimacy, creating conflict ecosystems that resist traditional diplomatic solutions.
What makes these partnerships particularly dangerous is their lack of transparency. Corporate-backed militant groups operate in regulatory blind spots where accountability fails. Financial transactions route through offshore havens, equipment arrives via intermediaries, and contracts carefully sidestep legal vulnerabilities.
Although corporations profiting from conflict rarely engage in direct violence, they provide the essential ecosystem, ammunition supply chains, vehicle maintenance, resource extraction operations, and infrastructure that enable armed groups to persist and expand their influence.
In Yemen, Libya, and the Central African Republic, such relationships have prolonged conflicts well beyond their original causes. Traditional responses—sanctions, diplomatic initiatives, peacekeeping missions—consistently fail to address the powerful economic incentives perpetuating these wars.
Sudan’s conflict revolves around gold, but elsewhere it’s oil, diamonds, timber, or rare minerals. The pattern remains consistent: armed groups with reliable economic resources become more entrenched, pose greater threats to civilian populations, and find fewer incentives to pursue peace.
Not Just about Money and Guns
Today’s conflicts feature cyber operations, drones, AI-enhanced surveillance, and digital propaganda, with non-state actors increasingly acquiring these capabilities. These advanced technologies flow through commercial channels. From consumer drones to spyware applications, armed groups can now deploy state-level capabilities at minimal cost.
In Sudan, the RSF enhances traditional tactics with modern technology that would have been inaccessible just years ago. Evidence indicates that they utilize encrypted communications, aerial surveillance, and sophisticated recognition software, technologies imported through global corporate networks rather than developed locally. This technological diffusion represents a profound security challenge. As non-state actors acquire increasingly sophisticated capabilities, conventional military responses become less effective at containing threats, forcing a fundamental rethinking of conflict resolution strategies in this new landscape.
Sudan represents not an anomaly but a prototype of modern conflict. Traditional boundaries between state/non-state actors, legal/illegal activities, and domestic/foreign influences have eroded. Groups like the RSF function simultaneously as military forces, economic enterprises, political entities, and technological innovators, integrated into global commercial and influence networks.
International Institutions Unprepared
The UN, African Union, and Western diplomatic powers continue approaching these conflicts as traditional disputes between military leaders amenable to negotiation. However, when warfare generates transnational profits, peace becomes financially unattractive compared to continued conflict.
Conventional peacekeeping operations cannot match corporate-backed militias’ financial and logistical capabilities. Sanctions frequently miss crucial funding sources. International legal frameworks have failed to adapt to the emergence of corporate-supported non-state actors reshaping global security dynamics. This transformation demands innovative approaches to conflict resolution that address the complex economic incentives perpetuating modern warfare and that move beyond traditional diplomatic frameworks toward more comprehensive engagement with the commercial dimensions of conflict.
To effectively address complex conflicts like Sudan’s, the international community must fundamentally reimagine its approach to warfare. This begins with systematically exposing corporate interests profiting from instability. Although conventional economics views conflict as disruptive, specific sectors like extractive industries, private security contractors, weapons manufacturers, and data companies see lucrative opportunities in fragile states.
To develop innovative accountability frameworks targeting corporations that fuel violence requires developing international legal mechanisms that address corporate complicity, implement robust transparency regulations in conflict zones, and impose sanctions that target logistical networks rather than merely military leadership.
Peacekeeping strategies must similarly evolve beyond traditional approaches. Modern missions should prioritize financial disruption tactics, comprehensive supply chain monitoring, and sophisticated tracking of militant groups’ funding and communications infrastructure. Conventional ground-based peacekeeping proves ineffective against conflicts financed through global banking centers.
Sudan serves as a critical warning: without addressing the modern funding and equipping mechanisms of armed groups, conflicts will continue indefinitely, devastating civilian populations and threatening global stability. The international community must develop holistic approaches integrating diplomatic, economic, legal, and technological strategies to effectively manage and resolve today’s complex security challenges.
Evolution of Warfare
The crisis in Sudan is not just another civil war. It is a blueprint for how conflicts are evolving in the twenty-first century. Traditional diplomacy and peacekeeping struggle to adapt because the fundamental nature of power is changing.
Non-state actors are gaining unprecedented influence. According to UN reports, since 2010, over 70 percent of major conflicts worldwide have involved at least one non-state armed group. Corporations have become essential wartime partners, private military and security sector has grown into a $224 billion global industry. Commercial drone sales to conflict zones have increased by 340 percent since 2018. Conflicts persist not through ideology alone, but through profit-driven ecosystems.
If the international community hopes to effectively address conflict prevention and resolution, it must look beyond generals and governments in order to scrutinize boardrooms, banking networks, and business relationships. In Sudan specifically, gold exports, largely controlled by armed groups, account for 40 percent of the country’s exports, worth approximately $2.5 billion annually. The weaponization of legitimate commerce creates complex challenges for humanitarian response. Financial flows that appear routine often mask deadly intentions. Digital spaces become battlegrounds alongside physical territories. And the victims of these new conflicts face threats that transcend traditional war zones.
In Sudan, as elsewhere, the future of warfare has already arrived. It’s not just being fought with bullets. It’s built into spreadsheets, coded in algorithms, hidden in supply chains, and financed through seemingly legitimate business ventures.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized Sudan’s presidential palace. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) retained control during that battle.