The horror of the Sudanese civil war is not exhausted by the enumeration of its atrocities, though those alone are staggering: mass killings, ethnic cleansing, systematic rape, the razing of villages, famine used as a weapon, and the deliberate destruction of the conditions of life

What distinguishes Sudan’s catastrophe—stretching from earlier civil wars through Darfur and into the present conflict between rival military powers—is not only the scale of suffering, but the way violence has become structural, embedded in the very organization of political power. The war is not merely a breakdown of order; it is the triumph of a particular conception of order itself.

At the center lies a grim philosophical insight: when power is divorced from accountability, violence ceases to be instrumental and becomes expressive. In Sudan, armed actors—whether state forces or militias—do not simply commit atrocities; they do so in pursuit of clear political ends.

Violence itself becomes the message

One of the central principles of just war theory is discrimination: combatants may be targeted; civilians must not. In Sudan, this distinction has broken down. Markets, funeral homes, hospitals, schools, and refugee camps—all civilian spaces—have been repeatedly attacked. Drone strikes on gatherings such as funerals and children in homes exemplify indiscriminate violence that fails to distinguish between combatant and non-combatant.

This moral and military failure signifies a war that treats human beings as interchangeable obstacles rather than as persons with intrinsic........

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