Understanding the Conflict in Sudan

For more than two years, Sudan has been in the throes of a violent civil war following attempted civil-military rule. Fighting has been intense between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group with origins in the Janjaweed militia that was previously accused of atrocities in the war-ravaged Darfur region.

The war has been taking on a new dimension as additional actors have appeared on the geopolitical scene. Countries such as Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Qatar, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have all been accused of supporting one side or the other of the conflict depending on their strategic interests. Join Perry World House as we seek to explain some of the background of this entrenched conflict, who the key players are and what are their motivations in Sudan, and what we expect to see in the short-, medium-, and long-term.

Ali B. Ali-Dinar is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Africana Studies. Dr. Dinar obtained his B.A. and M.A. from University of Khartoum, Sudan, and his Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife from University of Pennsylvania.

His research interests include Sudanese popular culture, the politics of identity, and the history of colonial and post-colonial Africa. Among the courses he taught are: "African Conflicts", "Sudanese Arabic I, II", "Reading Historical Arabic Manuscripts", "The Darfur Conflict", "Sudan Civil Wars", "Dress and Material Culture."

His publications include: "Historical Perspective on Darfur Geopolitical Status in the Context of Modern Sudan ", in Darfur Political Economy: A Quest for Development, Hamid Eltgani Ali (ed), forthcoming 2011, "The Darfur Conflict: A Natural Process or War by Design?", in: Darfur and the Crisis of Governance in Sudan: A Critical Reader, Salah M. Hassan & Carina E. Ray (Eds.), Cornell University Press, 2009.

Mark Malloch-Brown has had a long career in international affairs, development, business, and communications. At the United Nations, Mark Malloch-Brown led the global promotion of the UN Millennium Development Goals as head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP). At the UNDP, and previously as vice president of external affairs at the World Bank, he led reform efforts to increase the impact of both organisations. He later served as Kofi Annan’s chief of staff, and then as UN Deputy Secretary General, before joining the British government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, as minister responsible for Africa and Asia from 2007 to 2009. Most recently, he was president of the Open Society Foundations, the world’s largest private funder of independent groups working for justice, democratic governance, and human rights. Mark Malloch-Brown is a Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics (LSE), he was knighted for his contributions to international affairs, and is currently on leave from the British House of Lords.

Marie Harf comes to Penn with two decades of varied experience in the U.S. federal government, higher education, media, and politics. Previously she worked as senior advisor for strategic communications to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and deputy spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, as the foreign policy director on Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, and as a Middle East analyst and spokesperson at the Central Intelligence Agency. She has also held senior roles at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and for Congressman Seth Moulton’s political organization. Since 2017, Harf has been an on-air commentator for Fox News. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Indiana University with concentrations in Jewish Studies and Russian and Eastern European Studies, and a master’s degree in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia.

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