Sudan’s war is fought inside Sudan. It is not sustained there alone.
At the United Nations this week, officials again described a conflict locked in a zero-sum military logic. Thirteen million people have fled their homes. The UN documented about 1,400 civilian deaths from January to June, including roughly 1,100 people killed by drone strikes.
The United States proposed expanding UN sanctions and the existing arms embargo beyond Darfur, arguing that financial, military and political support to both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces continues to drive the war. Sudan’s army chief said sanctions would not deter his forces from fighting until RSF-held territory was captured.
Sanctions are not a sacrament. Poorly designed pressure can deepen civilian suffering, enrich smugglers and allow powerful states to perform concern without changing their own conduct.
But the weakness of one tool does not erase the responsibility of those supplying the machinery of war.
The hands sustaining a war are not clean because they are far from the blood.
ScriptureJesus calls peacemakers blessed—not peace spectators, and not those who rename domination as order.
Matthew 5:9
Biblical peace is more than a pause between attacks. It is the ordering of life toward truth, justice and neighbourly flourishing. Peacemaking therefore asks who profits, who supplies, who protects an ally from consequence and who treats another country’s civilians as acceptable leverage.
Christ makes peace not by declaring violence unreal, but by bearing hostility and breaking its claim to rule. Christian judgment should likewise resist victory at any cost, whoever promises it.
The responsible question is not simply whether sanctions sound strong. It is whether pressure is targeted at decision-makers and supply networks, protects humanitarian access, is measured honestly and serves a credible path back to civilian life.
South Africans should ask what our diplomacy, trade and regional institutions reward. Peacemaking is not only an attitude toward Sudan; it is scrutiny of every relationship that can lengthen the war.
Sudan needs more than statements from afar. It needs those beyond the battlefield to stop confusing distance with innocence—and to withdraw the support that keeps peace negotiable but war profitable.
