Profiting From Instability: Disaster Capitalism and Accountability in Sudan’s Civil War

Introduction

The 2023 escalation between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is often portrayed as yet another chapter in a cycle of domestic failures and has been widely narrated as a domestic struggle for power in the aftermath of Omar al-Bashir’s fall in 2019. Such interpretations emphasize governance collapse and resource mismanagement but risk narrowing responsibility to Sudan’s internal structures alone. This framing misses a deeper truth: conflict in Sudan has become not only a tragedy, but also a marketplace. This paper challenges that narrative by comparing two theoretical frameworks, Resource Curse Theory and Disaster Capitalism, to examine how each assigns blame and influences proposed solutions. While the common framework of Resource Curse Theory interprets instability as the inevitable consequence of internal dysfunction, it obscures the global systems that thrive on crisis. This paper asks: How does Disaster Capitalism reshape perceptions of responsibility in Sudan’s conflict compared to Resource Curse Theory?

Using qualitative content analysis of Sudan’s gold economy, international partnerships, and policy discourse, this paper establishes that by highlighting internal vulnerabilities, Resource Curse Theory legitimizes policy approaches that overlook systemic profiteering. Disaster Capitalism, instead, exposes how foreign governments, corporations, and financial institutions actively benefit from instability, requiring a redefinition of accountability in conflict zones. The final sections of this paper address how adopting this new conceptual framework when analyzing global conflict can reshape and reinvigorate international conflict resolution efforts.

Methods

This paper adopts a qualitative content analysis approach, focusing on three domains: (1) Sudan’s gold economy, (2) foreign interventions by actors such as the UAE and Iran, and (3) international policy discourse, including reports from the UN, IMF, and World Bank. Sources include peer-reviewed scholarship, UN and NGO reports, and policy frameworks. By systematically comparing how Resource Curse Theory and Disaster Capitalism interpret these materials, the analysis identifies how theoretical frameworks shape responsibility and policy recommendations.

Literature Review

This section formally introduces and critically assesses the two main theoretical frameworks used in this paper: Resource Curse Theory and Disaster Capitalism. It reviews foundational and contemporary literature, identifies the limitations of each theory, and highlights how they shape academic and policy narratives about responsibility in conflict.

What is Resource Curse Theory?

Resource Curse Theory posits that countries with abundant natural resources often face slower development, weaker institutions, and more frequent conflict than countries with fewer resources, a problem often referred to as the “paradox of plenty.” A foundational contribution is The Resource Curse by Syed Mansoob Murshed (2018), which outlines how resource-rich economies tend to become dependent on volatile commodity sectors, fall into rent-seeking dynamics, and experience institutional breakdown. Recent studies, including Mira Sabna Ali et al. (2024), has expanded the theory’s application to postcolonial and fragile state contexts, like Sudan. These studies highlight how elites capture resource rents and mismanage natural wealth, perpetuating cycles of violence and governance failure.

Resource Curse Theory is largely internally focused, attributing conflict to domestic governance failures and internal power struggles. In both academic and policy discourse, the current conflict in Sudan has frequently been framed as a product of its own dysfunction: corrupt leadership, competition between elites for oil revenue, and weak institutions incapable of managing state power. The Guardian characterized Sudan as a “failing state” caught in a cycle of coups, displacements, and collapsed public infrastructure (Townsend, 2025); implicitly diagnosing the crisis as homegrown. As a result, the theory often supports a perception, both in scholarly literature and public discourse, that resource-driven conflict is primarily self-inflicted, reinforcing narratives of local failure rather than international responsibility.

Global Perspectives and External Blindspots

This tendency is amplified in the language used by global think tanks and diplomatic statements. Recent policy reports like public anti-corruptions overviews describe “Sudan’s chronic failure to responsibly govern its oil wealth,” without interrogating the international networks that have long profited from its extraction (Resimić, 2025). Similarly, official diplomatic language in press releases tends to emphasize “corruption” and “lack of institutional capacity” as root causes, subtly positioning the international community as neutral rather than complicit (Resimić, 2025). The repetition of this framing across scholarly and political spaces reveals how Resource Curse Theory can become a tool for distancing external responsibility, reproducing narratives that prioritize local failure and obscure systemic international influence.

However, some international bodies explicitly reject this internally focused view. A 2024 report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur emphasizes that sustained foreign profiteering in conflict zones should be recognized as a form of structural violence (Resimić, 2025; OHCHR, n.d.). It states that when corporations and foreign states extract resources during times of war or political collapse, they are not passive observers, they are active agents contributing to harm. This framing significantly broadens the understanding of responsibility in conflict zones beyond the borders of the affected state, suggesting that violence is often enabled and incentivized by transnational systems of economic interest. To capture this dynamic, a better framework for understanding is needed, one that acknowledges crises not as incidental losses, but as opportunities for economic and political gain. The framework of Disaster Capitalism provides a framework for describing the deliberate strategies through which instability is leveraged for economic and geopolitical advantage.

What is Disaster Capitalism?

Disaster Capitalism was coined by Naomi Klein in “The Shock Doctrine” (2007) and refers to a framework that explains how crises are exploited by governments, corporations, and international financial institutions to implement profit-driven policies. During these vulnerable conflict periods, rapid privatization, deregulation, and cuts to public services are often pushed through while populations are distracted or unable to resist. This process typically benefits elites and multinational corporations, concentrating wealth and power at the expense of ordinary communities.

Although the theory is most commonly associated with natural disasters, there are clear examples of its applicability to armed conflicts. Its most common application to the rapid privatization of public housing and education systems following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans illustrates how crises can be systematically leveraged to deepen inequality and concentrate power (Klein, 2007). However, similar dynamics occurred in South America during the 1980s and 1990s, such as in Chile under President Augusto Pinochet and in Colombia’s conflict zones, where rapid neoliberal reforms and privatizations took place amid political violence and repression. These processes benefited elites and multinational corporations, often worsening inequality and displacement. Although the term “Disaster Capitalism” was not used at the time, the logic aligns closely with the concept; yet, it has not been recognized as a formal theory applied to conflict settings, nor has it been utilized as a framework for designing conflict resolution and prevention approaches.

What Disaster Capitalism Adds to Resource Curse Theory?

While Resource Curse Theory centers on internal factors such as governance failures and elite competition within resource-rich states, it largely overlooks the active role of external actors and global systems in shaping conflict dynamics. Disaster Capitalism addresses this gap by emphasizing how crises are exploited to advance profit-driven agendas. Disaster Capitalism shifts the focus from solely blaming internal dysfunction to recognizing how global economic and political structures can possibly facilitate and benefit from prolonged instability. It highlights patterns of rapid privatization, deregulation, and resource extraction implemented during vulnerable periods. By doing so, it shifts blame for prolonged conflict from internal failure to external exploitation.

The following sections of this paper will demonstrate how Disaster Capitalism provides a more comprehensive framework that accounts for the external drivers and systemic incentives behind conflict, redirecting the blame that Resource Curse Theory places on countries that justifiably rely on their natural resources. It will then go on to illustrate why Disaster Capitalism’s addition as a framework for understanding conflict is crucial for approaching conflict resolution in complex cases where international actors play a significant role in sustaining or profiting from resource-driven violence.

Case Study

The 2023 civil war in Sudan offers a compelling case study for examining how theoretical frameworks shape understandings of conflict and, in turn, policy responses. Following the 2019 ousting of President Omar al-Bashir, Sudan entered a fragile transition marked by power-sharing arrangements between civilian leaders and military factions. That fragility collapsed in April 2023, when fighting broke out between the SAF and the paramilitary RSF, plunging the country into full-scale civil war. While mainstream analyses often highlight elite competition, corruption, and state weakness as key drivers, applying Resource Curse Theory and Disaster Capitalism provides two distinct interpretations, each influencing where responsibility is assigned and what kinds of solutions are pursued.

Resource Curse Theory Application

Recourse Curse Theory frames Sudan’s instability as the inevitable result of internal dysfunction, specifically the mismanagement of natural wealth and fragile state institutions. This narrative has shaped much of the international response, which often centers reform efforts on domestic governance, promoting transparency, anti-corruption initiatives, and institutional capacity building. While these strategies may appear neutral or technocratic, they effectively depoliticize the crisis by identifying the source of instability as solely inside of Sudan’s borders. In doing so, they obscure the longstanding and ongoing entanglement of global actors that have not only exploited Sudan’s resources but have also directly benefited from the complex conflict and collapse of national sovereignty. By focusing blame inward, however, these frameworks deflect attention from the international systems of extraction and profit that both shape and prolong crisis conditions in Sudan. This, in turn, allows external stakeholders to position themselves as apolitical helpers rather than complicit agents. The following sections will elaborate on these dynamics.

Resource Curse Theory, when applied directly to Sudan, suggests that the country’s oil and mineral wealth have distorted political incentives, fostered corruption while undermined long-term institutional development. A central example of the resource curse in Sudan often touched on by commentators is the country’s gold sector, which makes up a large portion of national exports but operates mostly outside formal state control. Instead of contributing to fair economic development, gold has become an impetus for power struggles between political and military elites. The RSF, in particular, has gained control over key gold mines in Darfur and other remote regions (Financial Times, 2025). Profits from these mines often bypass the national government, going directly to RSF leadership. This not only weakens the authority of the state but also allows the RSF to grow more independent from the SAF, fueling instability.

Because Sudan’s gold industry lacks centralized oversight and financial transparency, it fits what Resource Curse Theory calls a “lootable resource”, one that’s easy to extract and sell without strong institutions. This kind of resource strengthens local war economies, empowers armed groups, and makes national economic coordination nearly impossible. It also creates incentives to prolong conflict, since armed actors can make more money through informal extraction than they could through peace and legal regulation (BTI 2025). As war becomes a more profitable path than peace, the cycle of violence continues, with informal resource flows undermining any attempt at durable governance.

Conflict’s framing under Resource Curse Theory in this way has policy consequences. The World Bank’s 2022 Transitional Assistance Framework for Sudan focuses on strengthening state institutions, increasing budget transparency, and fighting corruption. Similarly, the IMF’s Enhanced General Data Dissemination System promotes monetary reform, subsidy cuts, and better public finance management (World Bank, 2023). These strategies assume Sudan’s crisis is mainly a result of internal dysfunction, framing reform as a matter of domestic responsibility.

Importantly, this perspective overlooks the international systems that support and benefit from Sudan’s disordered gold economy. While Resource Curse Theory offers a useful lens for understanding internal failure, it ignores the foreign players like smuggling networks, offshore gold refiners, and global commodity firms that help keep this system running. This omission weakens the potential for holistic solutions. If only Sudanese actors are held accountable, while international profiteers operate with impunity, the structural drivers of conflict remain untouched. Viewing the conflict through this lens, existing policy frameworks minimize global involvement and fail to account for the deeper transnational structures that turn Sudan’s natural wealth into a driver of instability.

Not only does this undermine the accuracy of our understanding of the conflict, but it also helps drive further instability, as these policies focus on fixing surface-level problems while ignoring the deeper systems that allow violence to continue. They emphasize transparency and institutional reforms but overlook the international economic networks that profit from instability. As a result, these reforms can unintentionally propel conflict dynamics. For example, international donors often channel humanitarian aid through state centered frameworks that require recipient governments to meet transparency benchmarks. In Sudan, this meant routing most aid through Khartoum, even after the central government’s control collapsed in many regions. As a result, groups like the RSF were able to block and divert aid deliveries in contested areas, using access to humanitarian aid supplies as leverage over local populations. These reforms, while framed as neutral, sidelined informal community networks and gave armed groups greater control over survival resources. This not only undermined central authority but also allowed external actors to claim they were supporting reform, all while enabling conditions that let the crisis deepen. In this way, global systems helped fuel instability even as they appeared to address it with policy efforts derived from Resource Curse Theory’s logic.

Disaster Capitalism Application

In comparison to Resource Curse Theory, looking at this conflict through the lens of Disaster Capitalism would reframe the conflict as a profit-driven opportunity for external actors. Naomi Klein’s theory, combined with findings from the OHCHR’s 2024 report, demonstrate how international players, including foreign governments and corporations, exploit crisis conditions to deepen extraction and privatization. At its core, Disaster Capitalism assumes that crises are not just unfortunate disruptions, but rather tools that create openings for external actors to quickly reshape a country’s economy in ways that benefit themselves. In a conflict setting like Sudan, this means that the state collapse, humanitarian disasters, and institutional weaknesses are not simply consequences of civil war, but are also actively being used to enable deregulation, privatization, and unwelcome foreign intervention.

In Sudan, this exploitation is evident in the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) material support for the RSF and Iran’s growing economic footprint, both of which complicate current simplistic narratives that solely focus on local failures. The OHCHR’s 2024 report on “economy of occupation” reinforces this, showing how global actors take advantage of institutional collapse to entrench resource extraction and control. Framing the Sudanese conflict through the lens of Disaster Capitalism shifts the focus from internal failure to external profit, arguing that crises are used as moments to impose exploitative economic agendas, is especially relevant here.

The UAE has provided consistent material support to the RSF, including weapons, drones, and logistical backing, often under the guise of humanitarian or commercial partnerships. Investigations by Reuters (2023) and the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan (2024) document arms shipments funneled through Chad and Libya to gold-rich areas controlled by the RSF. In return, the UAE has gained privileged access to Sudanese gold markets through companies like Al Gunade, which is tied to RSF leadership and reportedly exports gold directly to the UAE, bypassing Sudan’s central bank. This arrangement mirrors Klein’s core idea: the crisis becomes an opportunity for deregulated extraction and offshore profiteering.

Meanwhile, Iran has reestablished its presence in Sudan, capitalizing on the SAF’s need for allies. In late 2023 and early 2024, Iran resumed arms shipments and struck infrastructure agreements, particularly in Port Sudan, in exchange for port access and possible oil concessions. According to Middle East Eye (2024) and Carnegie Middle East Center (n.d.), these deals are part of Iran’s strategy to gain leverage in the Red Sea region. Both examples illustrate how foreign governments embed themselves economically and militarily during times of chaos, benefiting from disorder while shaping the battlefield in ways that prolong it.

Policy Responses and Implications

Despite the clear application of Disaster Capitalism to the Sudanese case, international policy towards Sudan largely reflects the assumptions of Resource Curse Theory, framing the country’s instability as a result of internal corruption, weak institutions, and poor economic management. Programs led by the IMF, World Bank, and UNDP have focused on governance reform, economic liberalization, and state-building. For example, the IMF approved Sudan for debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, tied to measures such as cutting fuel subsidies and liberalizing trade. The World Bank’s Sudan Transition and Recovery Support program emphasized macroeconomic stabilization, monetary discipline, tax restructuring, and reduced public-sector spending. The UNDP’s Peacebuilding Framework (2022–2024) prioritized strengthening rule of law, administrative reform, and national dialogue, treating political violence primarily as a consequence of institutional failure. Peace agreements such as the 2020 Juba Peace Agreement also sought to integrate rebel groups into government structures and restructure power-sharing arrangements.

While these efforts are often presented as technocratic and stabilizing, a Disaster Capitalism lens reveals their limitations. By narrowly focusing on domestic reform, international actors overlook the global networks that profit from instability. Aid conditionality, austerity measures, and liberalization can entrench inequality, reward opportunists, and create long-term dependencies, ultimately prolonging conflict rather than resolving it. Humanitarian aid routed through central government frameworks often fails to reach contested regions, allowing armed groups like the RSF to manipulate access for leverage over local populations. In effect, policies designed to promote stability, and governance can simultaneously deepen systemic vulnerabilities, leaving structural incentives for conflict unaddressed.

To counter these dynamics, international measures should enforce targeted sanctions on actors engaged in conflict resource exploitation and promote trade transparency within global gold markets by requiring documentation that verifies sources and extraction conditions. Multilateral accountability mechanisms must also be established to monitor foreign involvement in resource-fueled conflicts and ensure that external actors are held responsible for contributing to instability. By addressing the incentives of external actors while linking domestic reforms to protections for vulnerable populations and oversight of informal economies, these interventions can reduce the ability of global powers to profit from instability and support more sustainable local stability.

Lessons for Policy and Analysis

Understanding Sudan’s conflict through both Resource Curse Theory and Disaster Capitalism highlights how analytical frameworks shape not only explanations of instability but also the international responses that follow. Resource Curse Theory channels attention inward, framing solutions around institutional reform, anti-corruption measures, and governance strengthening. Disaster Capitalism, by contrast, exposes how external actors exploit crises for strategic and economic gain. Together, these perspectives illustrate a critical tension: interventions that appear neutral or technocratic may inadvertently reinforce patterns of inequality and violence if they ignore the transnational systems that benefit from instability.

This dual lens emphasizes the need for policy approaches that recognize both domestic vulnerabilities and the structural incentives of external actors. Effective strategies would not only support institution-building but also address the international flows of arms, finance, and resources that perpetuate conflict. By integrating these insights, analysts and policymakers can move beyond simplistic narratives of internal dysfunction, acknowledging how global structures of extraction and profit are embedded in local crises. In Sudan, such an approach could inform more comprehensive peacebuilding strategies; ones that couple governance reforms with accountability for international profiteers, aiming to disrupt the systems that make war profitable.

Seen from this perspective, Sudan’s war economy reveals how deeply local violence is embedded within global geopolitical and economic networks. Sudan’s conflict cannot be understood in isolation from the global geopolitical and economic structures that sustain it. The UAE’s financing of the RSF and control over Sudanese gold markets stabilizes its role as a global commodities hub, indirectly benefiting Washington and Brussels by maintaining oil markets, shipping routes, and broader financial networks. Iran, meanwhile, leverages Sudanese resources and strategic ties to extend its influence in the Red Sea corridor, support proxy networks, and circumvent international isolation. Gulf monarchies gain extractive rents and geopolitical power, while Western democracies profit from stabilized global markets and indirect access to cheap commodities.

Ultimately, this case study underscores a broader lesson for global politics: the frameworks we use to interpret crises shape the solutions we pursue. Recognizing the interplay of local and international factors is essential for crafting interventions that do more than manage symptoms but go further to challenge the structural drivers of conflict itself.

Disaster Capitalism and Pathways to Accountability

The previous sections have demonstrated how the frameworks through which conflict is interpreted shape both diagnosis and response. The question, then, is what policies might emerge if conflict resolution abandoned the logic of Resource Curse Theory and, instead, adopted solutions guided by the framework of Disaster Capitalism. The following sections outline what an international approach to conflict resolution might look like if this were the case.

Resurgence and Rethinking Solutions

The Disaster Capitalism lens helps explain why conflict repeatedly resurfaces in Sudan despite peace settlements. Rather than resolving underlying inequalities or dispossessions, agreements such as the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the 2020 Juba Peace Agreement restructured access to resources in ways that disproportionately benefited armed groups, foreign investors, and state elites. Periods of temporary stabilization thus created new profit opportunities, making renewed conflict less an aberration than an anticipated outcome of Sudan’s war economy.

Breaking this cycle requires interventions that simultaneously address domestic governance deficits and constrain the international exploitation of crises. Strengthening community-level institutions and ensuring that humanitarian aid reaches contested regions would reduce the leverage of actors such as the RSF. Increasing transparency in gold and mineral markets is equally critical to disrupt informal financing streams that perpetuate violence. Implementing traceability mechanisms, such as the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains, and strengthening regulations on conflict minerals like the U.S. SEC’s Conflict Minerals Rule or the EU’s Regulation 2017/821, can help ensure that gold and other minerals are sourced responsibly and do not fund armed groups by requiring companies to track the origin of their minerals, report on supply chain risks, and conduct independent audits to verify compliance (European Union, 2017; OECD, 2016; U.S. SEC, 2012).

At the international level, external support should be explicitly conditional on civilian protection, supplemented by independent monitoring mechanisms capable of tracking arms flows and resource extraction and reporting directly to multilateral bodies such as the UN Security Council. By linking local reforms to international accountability, these measures target the systemic incentives that make violence profitable. The Sudanese case demonstrates that conflict resolution cannot rest on domestic reforms alone: sustainable peace depends on coordinated policy approaches that transform crises from sites of wealth accumulation into opportunities for resilience, equitable development, and long-term stabilization.

Conclusion

“For every complex problem, there is a simple solution that is wrong.” — H. L. Mencken

Complex conflicts around the world demonstrate that instability cannot be resolved through simple interventions or be explained by a single political theory. Local crises are deeply entangled with international economic systems, foreign interventions, and global power dynamics. Efforts to resolve the Sudanese conflict through governance reform, economic liberalization, or short-term aid, such as the IMF’s debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, the World Bank’s Sudan Transition and Recovery Support program, and the UNDP Peacebuilding Framework, often appear logical, yet fail to create sustainable peace since they do not address the deeper structural dynamics that sustain instability. The collapse of agriculture, gold revenues, and state services has deepened civilian hardship in Sudan while empowering armed groups that profit from crisis conditions. International interventions frequently reinforce these dynamics by eroding social protections and embedding the country in systems of external dependency, all while global power blocs exploit instability through trade, resource flows, and financial networks that prioritize market stability over civilian security.

The final step of this analysis demonstrates how incorporating Disaster Capitalism into the study of conflict reshapes both understanding and practice in international relations. This research moves beyond Resource Curse Theory by highlighting how international actors, profit motives, and global economic structures actively sustain and exploit crises. In doing so, it challenges not only the explanatory logic of Resource Curse Theory but also the conventional tools and assumptions of conflict resolution, which often focus narrowly on state-building, governance reform, or mediation within national borders.

Building on this framework, this paper proposes a set of policy solutions that depart from traditional approaches: targeted sanctions against actors profiting from conflict resources, mandatory trade transparency for Sudanese gold and minerals, and conditional aid mechanisms that prioritize civilian protection while bypassing exploitative networks. These measures confront the structural incentives of external profiteers and link domestic reform to international accountability, reflecting the logic that sustainable peace cannot rely solely on internal governance improvements.

The Sudanese case exemplifies that durable conflict resolution depends on the dual approach of strengthening institutions internally while, simultaneously, addressing the global systems that make instability profitable. By reframing responsibility beyond national borders employing the concept of Disaster Capitalism, this research contributes a comprehensive lens for understanding and resolving conflict, offering insights that extend beyond Sudan to all modern conflicts.