Welcome to the president's inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States.

I'm Jim Lindsay, Director's Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This week's topic is Sudan's ongoing civil war.

With me to discuss the conflict in Sudan that has killed as many as 150,000 people, and may kill many more, is Michelle Gavin.

Michelle is the Ralph Bunch Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

She was the U.S. ambassador to Botswana from 2011 to 2014, where she served concurrently as the U.S. representative to the Southern African Development Community.

She was also a special assistant to President Barack Obama and the senior director for

Africa at the National Security Council. Michelle is the author of the world's shameful neglect of

Sudan, which you can find on cfr.org. Michelle, thank you for coming back on the president's

inbox. Thank you for inviting me.

We spoke last summer, Michelle, about the origins of Sudan's Civil War, which started in April of

2003. Anyone who wants a deep dive into the power struggle that precipitated that conflict should

listen to that episode.

But I was hoping perhaps you could start with you giving us, in essence, the Cliff Notes version of how the war started.

Well, when a popular uprising made Sudan essentially ungovernable in 2019, the military seized control and ousted President Bashir and his regime.

And that military came to a transitional arrangement with civilians that was intended to steer the country toward democratic elections.

Eventually, it became clear the military was not willing to share power. There was a coup. And then what you had was a government that was not a mix

of military and civilians, but it was a mix of armed actors. You had the Sudanese armed forces, the formal military structure,

and you had the rapid support forces. Essentially a government-created militia force, this is the

force that was primarily responsible for the genocide in Darfur about 20 years ago.

Darfur is in the western part of Sudan. It's a region.

That's right. Darfur is a region in western Sudan.

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