A Conversation With Mai Hassan and Ahmed Kodouda

Sudan’s Intractable War

A Conversation With Mai Hassan and Ahmed Kodouda

Published on May 29, 2025Play

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The war in Sudan gets only a fraction of the attention that conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and to potential conflicts elsewhere get. But after two years of fighting, it has created the biggest humanitarian crisis ever recorded. And as the two sides in the conflict, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, vie for control of the country and its resources, there is little hope of a conclusion any time soon. As the war goes on, and a growing number of outside powers look for advantage in the carnage, the consequences are likely to get even worse, argue Mai Hassan and Ahmed Kodouda in a recent Foreign Affairs essay—not just for Sudan, but for the rest of its region as well.

Both Hassan, an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Kodouda, a humanitarian policy expert who was based in Sudan until March 2023, have spent years watching what is happening in Sudan. They joined senior editor Eve Fairbanks to discuss the roots of what has become an intractable conflict, and whether a path out of it is possible.

Source: “Sudan Is Unraveling,” by Mai Hassan and Ahmed Kodouda

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The Foreign Affairs Interview is produced by Julia Fleming-Dresser, Molly McAnany, Ben Metzner, and Caroline Wilcox, with audio support from Todd Yeager and original music by Robin Hilton