Sudan's Resources: Why Al Jazeera Asks 'Who Controls Them?' But Not 'Who Funded the Fight?'
The Al Jazeera piece, published in 2025, ponders who controls Sudan's vast resources, framing the conflict as an internal squabble over wealth. What's notably absent is the well-documented external interest in propping up various factions or destabilizing the region to secure those very resources. The media often frames these conflicts as 'local' when, historically, global powers have lubricated
the wheels of war in resource-rich nations. We might recall how the US, for instance, once backed various Sudanese regimes, including during Omar al-Bashir's rule, despite his alleged atrocities, as long as it served strategic interests. Ignoring the broader geopolitical chess game and the mercenary forces often funded by foreign capital turns a complex international entanglement into a
simplistic, tragic local affair. How many times must the Global South be deemed incapable of self-governance, its conflicts always devoid of external instigation, before we question the framing itself? One might wonder if the real question isn't 'who controls them,' but 'who profits from the chaos that ensures no one stable government can control them for long?'