A bloody clash between rival generals has resulted in mass slaughter and starvation, while much of the world looks away.

What's happening in Sudan? 
For the past 15 months, the nation's military, the Sudanese Armed Forces, and a paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been locked in a brutal battle for control of the northeastern African nation. Sudan is no stranger to strife, having endured two previous civil wars and 35 coup attempts since it gained independence from Britain and Egypt in 1956. But the current civil war has unleashed an unprecedented nationwide frenzy of killing, rape, destruction, and forced starvation. Some 11 million Sudanese civilians — about a fifth of the population — have fled their homes, making it the world's worst displacement crisis. Tom Perriello, the U.S. special envoy for Sudan, estimates up to 150,000 have been killed in the conflict so far; the Clingendael Institute, a Dutch think tank, estimates 2.5 million will die of hunger by September. "The situation in Sudan can scarcely be described as anything short of apocalyptic," said Kholood Khair, a Sudanese political analyst who is now based in London. "And the situation is only getting worse." 

What caused the conflict? 
In large part, it's the poisonous legacy of former dictator Omar al-Bashir. After taking power in a 1989 coup, the army officer turned president maintained control by pitting various ethnic and religious groups against one another. Most infamously, al-Bashir dispatched Arab Janjaweed militias against ethnic-African tribes in Sudan's western Darfur region in 2003, sparking a genocide that killed some 300,000 Sudanese. In 2013, al-Bashir turned the Janjaweed into a semi-organized paramilitary outfit under the leadership of Gen. Mohamed Hamdan "Hemedti" Dagalo, a former camel trader and Darfur militia leader. Six years later, Hemedti joined forces with the military to oust al-Bashir amid massive protests over soaring food prices, corruption, and lack of political freedoms. The army and the RSF promised a transition to democracy, but in 2021 Hemedti and army commander Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan staged a second coup that toppled Sudan's interim civilian government. Al-Burhan became de facto ruler, but his uneasy alliance with Hemedti — who has accumulated huge wealth by exporting gold from illegal mines — soon fractured. Hemedti resisted plans to incorporate the RSF into the military, and in April 2023 his fighters assaulted the capital, Khartoum. 

Who won that battle? 
The RSF overran most of the capital, and its fighters — a majority of whom come from impoverished western Sudan — were stunned by its oil-funded riches. "Air conditioners cool the air. The fridge has water so cold it cools your heart," one RSF fighter said in a video. "It's not like in the provinces." The militia went on a looting, killing, and raping spree in the once gleaming, luxury hotel–studded Nile city. "They don't have any [political] goal here," a young woman in the capital told Al Jazeera. "It's revenge." The RSF also controls Darfur and the central breadbasket province of El Gezira, and last week opened a new front in the country's southeast, possibly to carve a path to Port Sudan on the Red Sea — where the government is now based. Other forces have joined the fight: ethnic militias, rebels from Darfur, and Islamist militants once loyal to al-Bashir. Many of these groups are supporting the military against the RSF. But neither side seems poised to achieve total victory. 

What's life like for ordinary Sudanese? 
In a word, agony. Indiscriminate attacks and a lack of supplies have forced nearly 70 percent of the country's hospitals and the majority of its schools to shutter. The use of torture appears widespread: In Omdurman, one of three cities that make up greater Khartoum, the RSF turned the headquarters of the national radio and TV station into a detention center where prisoners were hung from walls and beaten with iron rods. In Darfur, the RSF targets the ethnic-African Masalit tribe for massacres, torture, rape, kidnapping, and sexual enslavement. In El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, RSF forces killed up to 15,000 civilians last year. "They piled up the children and shot them," said one 17-year-old witness. "They threw their bodies into the river." Meanwhile, the army and the RSF are both using hunger as a weapon. Farms are pillaged, flour mills destroyed, and food aid blocked from entering enemy territory. In North Darfur's besieged capital, El Fasher (population 1.8 million), trucked-in food aid meets only 2 percent of the city's needs. In a nearby refugee camp, a child dies of malnutrition every two hours. "He's not walking, he's not eating," Badria Ahmed, 23, said of her young son Noureldeen. "It's been like this for 12 months." 

Is anyone trying to stop the war? 
The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have sponsored talks that produced 16 cease-fire declarations — all failed. Malik Agar, a top aide to al-Burhan, now says that the only way the army will return to the negotiating table is for someone "to kill us in our country and take our bodies there." International attempts to address Sudan's humanitarian disaster have also proved largely futile. The U.N. has received only 16 percent of the $2.7 billion it needs to provide humanitarian aid in Sudan. So far, donors have given one-thousandth as much money to Sudan relief as they have to Ukraine. Ignoring the war is "a privilege Sudanese don't have," said political analyst Khair. "Every Sudanese person I know wakes up every morning with dread at the pit of their stomachs that they will get news of family members, friends, and colleagues that have been killed." 

A proxy war for regional dominance 
Sudan's civil war is not just a domestic conflict. It's also a regional power struggle between countries eager to exploit the nation's resources, which include Red Sea ports and plentiful oil and gold reserves. This proxy war has blurry geopolitical lines: Egypt and Saudi Arabia back Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, as does Saudi Arabia's main rival, Iran, which has provided the army with attack drones.The RSF is supported by the United Arab Emirates, which aims to replace Saudi Arabia as the region's hegemon. Russia has played both sides. Its mercenary Wagner Group initially armed and trained the RSF in exchange for gold, but the Kremlin now appears close to striking a deal with the Sudanese army that would exchange port access for arms. The U.S. has pushed for peace and civilian rule in Sudan, but its failure to achieve those goals could be a sign of Washington's waning clout. "Fighting continues, sanctions are not working, and people are dying," said former State Department official Benjamin Mossberg. In East Africa, "U.S. rivals are increasingly setting the terms of engagement."

Donald Trump's "new Big Lie" is even more transparent than the old one, said Will Bunch in The Philadelphia Inquirer. As voters learn more about Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's 922-page "scheme for dictatorship," Trump is ludicrously pleading ignorance. "I know nothing about Project 2025," he posted last week, calling most of its ideas "absolutely ridiculous and abysmal." If you believe that, you'll also believe he didn't have sex with a porn star. At least 25 of the project's 36 authors have participated either in the first Trump administration or his current campaign, and its website features a course taught by current Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Project 2025's central goals are "precisely what Trump has called for" in his campaign speeches, said Robert Reich in The Guardian. That includes replacing some 50,000 federal workers with Trump loyalists, more oil drilling, and mass arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants. He's downplaying this radical document to appear "less bonkers to independents and moderates." 

Trump is right to distance himself, said Sohrab Ahmari in The New Statesman. Project 2025 "presents the same old obsessions" of elite libertarian and conservative intellectuals and donors. Trump is a populist — not a "committed ideologue." It would be politically unwise for him to closely ally himself with far-right Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, who last week threatened a "second American Revolution" that will be bloodless only "if the Left allows it." Still, Trump's attempts to disown this blueprint for Christian nationalism simply aren't credible, said Philip Bump in The Washington Post. He may disagree with parts of it, but Heritage Foundation activists played an outsize role in directing Trump's policy in his first term and will be back in droves in a second. A salesman at heart, Trump shamelessly "tells people what he thinks they want to hear," and then does whatever suits him. 

In this case, that tactic may not suffice, said Noah Rothman in National Review. Democrats are relentlessly focusing on Project 2025, with the Biden campaign website warning it "terminates the Constitution," restricts contraception, and will give Trump "more power over your daily life." To defuse these scary claims, Trump has to "get more specific" about which parts of Project 2025 he rejects. If he doesn't answer that question, "the Biden campaign (or whatever succeeds it) will answer it for him." 

Kevin Bacon pined for anonymity after four decades of fame, said Julie Miller in Vanity Fair, and hatched an unlikely scheme to attain it. "I'm not complaining, but I have a face that's pretty recognizable," says the 66-year-old actor. "Putting my hat and glasses on is only going to work to a certain extent." So, Bacon used his movie connections to get better camouflage. "I went to a special-effects makeup artist, had consultations, and asked him to make me a prosthetic disguise." Outfitted with fake teeth, an altered nose, and glasses, he strolled through one of Hollywood's most tourist-filled haunts — a shopping mall called The Grove. Nobody recognized him, and initially he was thrilled.

But Bacon soon discovered the downside of being invisible. "People were pushing past me, not being nice. Nobody said, 'I love you.' I had to wait in line to buy a f---ing coffee or whatever. I was like, 'This sucks. I want to go back to being famous.'" Bacon confesses that he coveted fame "a hundred percent" when he set out to be an actor. He grew up in Philadelphia, where his father was a prominent urban planner who made the cover of Time. "Frankly, I wanted to be more famous than him. You can lay me down on the shrink's couch. We could talk about that for a while."