ABSTRACT

Hostilities between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that erupted in April 2023 have not only fragmented Sudan’s territorial control but transformed the political economy of violence across Chad and Libya. EU-level country of origin reporting and United Nations human rights investigations converge in describing a conflict that rapidly evolved from an intra-elite power struggle into a regionalized war economy, in which cross-border flows of weapons, logistics services and armed labour form self-reinforcing circuits. (European Union Agency for Asylum) These circuits connect desert airstrips, goldfields, trading hubs and border communities into overlapping markets for arms and mercenary labour, reshaping the security economies of Chad and Libya far beyond the geographic boundaries of the front lines in Darfur, Khartoum and the Kordofan states. (European Union Agency for Asylum)

Conflict analysis by the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) situates the outbreak of war in mid-April 2023 as the culmination of a failed transition in Sudan, in which rival military coalitions led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti) undermined and eventually dismantled fragile civilian arrangements established after the 2019 ouster of Omar al-Bashir. (European Union Agency for Asylum) By January 2024, the conflict had expanded into a nationwide war whose main theatres included Khartoum, Darfur, the Kordofan states and Al Jazirah, producing what EU analysts describe as an “unprecedented” internal displacement crisis and a sharp deterioration in humanitarian conditions, with hunger and acute malnutrition affecting millions. (European Union Agency for Asylum) The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan, mandated by the Human Rights Council, subsequently characterizes the conflict as driven by rival military factions competing for political and economic dominance, relying on extensive business networks in Sudan and abroad to procure weapons and external support. Latest available data in these institutional sources is as of January 2025. (European Union Agency for Asylum)

Within this setting, the RSF emerged as a transnational actor whose military power stems not only from domestic stockpiles and captured SAF assets, but also from cross-border logistical architectures that link Sudan to suppliers and intermediaries in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Libya, Chad and beyond. EUAA analysis for February 2025 details how the RSF relied on convoys equipped with armed technicals, UAE-manufactured armoured personnel carriers, portable anti-aircraft systems, anti-tank guided missiles and increasingly sophisticated drone capabilities, including attack drones and long-range systems. (European Union Agency for Asylum) These arsenals derive from a combination of pre-war transfers from the Sudanese state, seizures of SAF depots and external resupply. (European Union Agency for Asylum) The same reporting documents that multiple sources, including satellite-based investigations funded by the United States Department of State, concluded with “near certainty” that weapons transfers from the UAE to the RSF continued via Amdjarass airport in Chad, reinforcing earlier findings by the UN Security Council Panel of Experts on the Sudan. (European Union Agency for Asylum) These air-bridges, often framed as humanitarian flights, function as infrastructural anchors in a broader circuit that links financiers, cargo operators, local brokers and armed escorts across borders.

In parallel, the RSF weapon system is embedded in older networks centered on the Libyan National Army (LNA) and Russian-linked formations. EUAA reporting notes that the RSF maintained relationships with the Russian-supported LNA under Khalifa Haftar, and received additional weapons from formations formerly known as the Wagner Group, now rebranded as Africa Corps. (European Union Agency for Asylum) These ties connect Darfur battlefields to southern Libyan logistics hubs and to transnational brokerage chains that move small arms, anti-armour systems and drone components along routes originally developed for other commodities. The cumulative effect is to place Sudan’s civil war within long-standing regional firearms markets, documented in United Nations and UNODC analyses of Sahelian trafficking, where legacy stocks from earlier conflicts in Libya and neighbouring states continue to feed new crises.

The war’s demand for manpower has interacted with these arms circuits to generate what can be described as dual “collateral circuits” of mercenaries and weapons. EUAA’s security situation assessment emphasizes that RSF ranks are not limited to local Darfuri or central Sudanese recruits, but include foreign combatants from Chad, the Central African Republic (CAR), Libya and even Colombia, alongside domestic auxiliaries drawn from Arab and non-Arab militias. (European Union Agency for Asylum) The Fact-Finding Mission similarly records credible reports of foreign fighters joining the RSF. These fighters are inserted into commercial and kinship-based brokerage systems that pre-date the war, including gold-mining enclaves and borderland trading posts, where they derive income from escorting convoys, enforcing protection arrangements and mediating access to routes and fuel. Over time, these functions have turned mercenary units into central managers of logistics, not mere hired guns.

In Chad, the influx of refugees from Darfur and the arrival or remobilization of armed groups have intersected with the country’s own history of rebellion and its role as a rear base for regional insurgencies. EUAA documentation highlights that Chadian fighters and armed formations – some of them rebel remnants or ex-combatants – appear among foreign elements supporting the RSF, and records Sudanese accusations that Chad supplied arms to allied militias. (European Union Agency for Asylum) Simultaneously, Chad has become a central corridor for cross-border displacement, hosting hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees, while serving as a transit space for logistics chains that connect UAE-funded air operations, Chadian territorial authorities and RSF units in Darfur. (European Union Agency for Asylum) These dynamics transform Chad’s security economy: local actors profit by providing escort services, fuel, warehousing and brokerage, while bearing the long-term risks of weapons leakage, armed banditry and militarized competition over mining sites.

In Libya, the long-standing presence of Sudanese and Chadian armed groups, already documented in the context of earlier efforts to remove foreign forces from Libyan territory, conditions how Sudan’s war reverberates northwards. Security Council reporting and UN-linked analyses estimate that in previous years several thousand fighters from Sudan and Chad operated in Libya, often aligned with the LNA, guarding oil facilities and desert supply routes. EUAA’s 2025 assessment notes that the RSF maintained links to the LNA, while foreign mercenary formations tied to Russia supplied weapons to RSF forces, including surface-to-air missiles. (European Union Agency for Asylum) As Sudan’s war shifted demand for both weapons and fighters, these pre-existing deployments became channels through which armed labour could rotate between Libyan front lines, guard duties around oil and fuel infrastructure, and new contractual engagements in Darfur and the Kordofans.

The abstracted concept of “collateral circuits” is useful to capture how these intertwined flows of arms and mercenaries gradually acquire their own momentum. Each consignment of weapons or batch of recruited fighters generates secondary effects: brokers are paid in cash or commodities; fuel and vehicle suppliers expand operations; local commanders in Chadian goldfields or Libyan oasis towns accumulate leverage by controlling access to corridors; and security services on both sides of borders selectively tolerate or tax the traffic. EUAA and UN sources together depict a war economy in Sudan where more than one hundred commercial entities tied to warring parties extend into sectors such as aviation, banking, logistics and extractive industries, embedding conflict financing into ostensibly civilian markets. (European Union Agency for Asylum) When these corporate networks intersect with long-distance smuggling chains documented in Sahelian firearms assessments, they create overlapping spaces in which the line between formal business, paramilitary logistics and organized crime is blurred.

This transformation is not limited to the inward direction of arms transfers toward Sudan. EUAA’s security analysis, which synthesizes UN and specialized monitoring sources, notes that weapons captured from SAF depots or delivered via external sponsors do not remain confined to the immediate front lines. (European Union Agency for Asylum) Diversion, resale and “spill-over” flows are mediated by local commanders, auxiliary militias and mercenary brokers who respond to price signals and alliance shifts, allowing arms to circulate outwards through Chad and Libya into broader regional markets. While precise volumes remain uncertain due to the severe information constraints highlighted in EUAA and UN reporting, the qualitative pattern is clear: every reconfigured supply route or refurbished airstrip can eventually act as a node for onward proliferation, further entrenching a regional economy of insecurity. (European Union Agency for Asylum)

The human consequences of these circuits are severe. By late 2024, EUAA, drawing on UNHCR and IOM data, describes Sudan as hosting the world’s largest internal displacement crisis, with millions of internally displaced persons and refugees relying on overstretched humanitarian systems in neighbouring states. (European Union Agency for Asylum) The Fact-Finding Mission documents patterns of atrocities, including mass killings, sexual violence, sieges and deliberate attacks on humanitarian operations, and notes repeated allegations that at least sixteen states produce, finance or facilitate weapons transfers that sustain the conflict. These findings underline how cross-border arms and mercenary circuits are not neutral market phenomena, but integral to the perpetration of war crimes and to the reproduction of a security order in which civilian protection is subordinated to the transactional logic of armed patronage.

For Chad and Libya, the reshaping of their security economies through these circuits carries long-term implications. Entrenched markets for armed labour and illicit weapons complicate demobilization efforts, undermine border security initiatives and threaten to outlast any eventual settlement in Sudan itself. African Union and UN initiatives that previously sought to secure shared borders and remove foreign fighters were already challenged by the legacy of earlier interventions; the current war adds a new layer of complexity by linking formal diplomatic actors, commercial aviation providers and clandestine brokers into hybrid supply chains that are difficult to disentangle. Understanding the Sudanese war as the driver of “collateral circuits” in Chad and Libya therefore requires viewing arms transfers and mercenary mobilization not as isolated violations of embargoes, but as constitutive elements of evolving security economies – economies that now underpin both the conduct of war in Sudan and the fragile, militarized equilibriums on its borders.

Key insights in this abstract rest on convergent findings from EUAA’s Sudan country reporting and the UN Fact-Finding Mission, complemented where possible by wider UN and UNODC analyses on regional firearms markets. (European Union Agency for Asylum) Together, these institutional sources depict a conflict in which seized stockpiles, external transfers and mercenary recruitment have fused into cross-border collateral circuits that simultaneously sustain the RSF war effort, reshape the security economies of Chad and Libya, and deepen a regional economy of insecurity in which arms markets and armed labour continually reproduce one another.

link reference :

• Country of Origin Information Report – Sudan: Security Situation – February 2025 – European Union Agency for Asylum
• Country of Origin Information Report – Sudan: Country Focus – April 2024 – European Union Agency for Asylum
• Sudan: A War of Atrocities – Annex to the Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan – A/HRC/60/22 – Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights – September 2025
• Firearms Trafficking in the Sahel – United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime – 2022

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Core Concepts in Review: What We Know and Why It Matters

This chapter revisits the major concepts developed across the previous chapters — the anatomy of war-economies, the emergence of cross-border circuits of arms and manpower, the role of logistics hubs, and the regional spill-over into humanitarian crises and transnational crime. The aim is to provide a coherent, policy-relevant summary for an intelligent but non-technical reader — for instance a newly elected legislator, security adviser, or a policy-oriented academic.

Defining the Problem: Collateral Circuits

At the heart of this discussion lies the concept of “collateral circuits.” This term captures a new mode of contemporary warfare and regional instability — not a single shipment, border crossing, or mercenary contract, but a self-reinforcing, multi-modal network that links weapons flows, fuel logistics, manpower markets, smuggling economies, refugee flows, and humanitarian collapse across several states. In other words, conflict in one country (e.g., Sudan) does not stay inside its borders; it ripples outward through corridors of commerce, displacement, and illicit markets.

These collateral circuits are not linear chains but complex webs. A shipment of arms might travel from a port or desert airstrip, be repackaged with fuel or gold, escorted by mercenaries recruited from mining zones or refugee camps, driven across tenuous desert routes, and finally delivered to front-line units. Alongside, people displaced by conflict may enter refugee flows, creating humanitarian demand — but also supplying potential recruits for armed groups or labour networks. The result is a hybrid security economy in which violence, profit and displacement reinforce each other.

This systemic framing matters because traditional policy tools — arms embargoes, sanctions on individuals or firms, embargo-monitoring based on discrete shipments — are poorly adapted to networks that diffuse risk, fragment logistics, and combine licit and illicit flows.

The Scale of the Crisis: Humanitarian & Displacement Dimensions

The war in Sudan, which erupted in April 2023, has triggered one of the worst humanitarian emergencies globally in recent years. Recent data compiled by [UNHCR] show that by mid-2025, the crisis had produced over 11.7 million forcibly displaced persons, including both internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees crossing into neighbouring states. (Portale Dati Operativi)

Further, a comprehensive 2025 update titled Sudan Emergency: Two Years On reports that tens of thousands of displaced persons have received services — yet the scale of need remains enormous. (UNHCR)

Humanitarian needs go far beyond displacement. According to the [World Food Programme], food insecurity affects millions across conflict zones, with chronic malnutrition, disruptions in supply chains, and breakdowns in healthcare and water services. (Programma Alimentare Mondiale)

Civilians bear the brunt: documented sharp increases in civilian casualties, ethnic-motivated killings, and targeted attacks on non-combatants by both state and non-state actors. (Reuters)

The humanitarian fallout illustrates how collateral circuits are not abstract economic models — they translate into mass suffering, displacement and destabilization.

Interlocking Security Economies: Arms Trafficking, Smuggling and Mercenary Labour

One of the most significant structural shifts is the merging of arms trafficking, smuggling economies, and mercenary labour markets into a single, transnational security economy.

The [UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)] Sahel trafficking report Firearms Trafficking in the Sahel details how firearms from conflict zones — many originally looted or diverted from formal stockpiles — move through long-standing smuggling routes that also transport fuel, gold, migrants, and other commodities. (ONU Droga e Crimine)

Complementary analysis by [INTERPOL] shows these flows operate in tandem with other illicit markets: small arms, fuel smuggling, human smuggling, gold trafficking. (Interpol)

Because the same logistic pathways — desert tracks, remote border crossings, tri-border towns — carry multiple commodities, they remain resilient: interdiction of one good (say armaments) does not collapse the network; traffickers rebrand cargo, hide weapons among fuel or food, exploit informal economies, and leverage networks of brokers and armed escorts.

This interlocking economy allows for dual-use convoys: transport convoys that carry humanitarian goods one moment, arms or fighters the next. It also institutionalises a demand for mercenary labour: armed escorts, technical support, drivers, fixers — roles previously marginal, now central to maintaining logistics.

The result is a hybrid war economy that spans states, legalities, and modes of conflict: conventional war, insurgency, criminal trafficking, human smuggling.

Regional Spillover: Why Border States Matter

Because collateral circuits connect desert airstrips, mining zones, refugee-hosting borderlands and conflict theatres, regional stability in states neighbouring Sudan (such as Chad, Libya, Sahel countries) is now tightly linked to the trajectory of Sudan’s war.

Border zones in the Sahel have long suffered from weak governance, porous borders, economic neglect and pre-existing smuggling economies. Studies — such as [Small arms trafficking in the Sahel: The role of tri-border towns (OCWAR-T 2023)] — demonstrate that towns at the intersection of state jurisdictions are critical nodes: they function as staging areas, redistribution hubs, and safe spaces for illicit flows. (Iss Africa)

Hence the circuits that fuel Sudan’s war draw on resources from across the region: weapons from Libyan stockpiles, fuel from Sahelian smuggling networks, manpower from mining and refugee populations in border zones. This means that even if internal ceasefires or peace deals occur in Sudan, the structural conditions for instability — broken supply chains, demand for armed labour, weak border governance — persist across the region.

Policy Implications: Why Collateral Circuits Challenge Traditional Responses

1. Embargoes & Sanctions Are Outpaced by Networks.
Traditional arms embargoes focus on discrete shipments, licit cargo declarations, or named actors. Collateral circuits circumvent these by dispersing cargo across multiple shipments, mixing arms with humanitarian or commercial goods, and operating through informal brokers and remote routes. Enforcement based on paperwork or container inspections becomes blunt and significantly less effective.

2. Fragmented Governance Undermines Enforcement.
Many of the states along these routes — especially remote borderlands — lack capacity to police their territory, manage borders, or integrate informal economies. Smugglers exploit smuggling norms, weak infrastructure, local patronage, and ethnic/kinship networks to secure passage. Unless governance is rebuilt, supply chains remain structurally resilient.

3. Humanitarian Aid Risks Becoming Logistical Cover.
Because humanitarian need is immense — millions displaced, widespread famine, collapsed health systems — relief operations necessarily move supplies across unstable territories. Collateral circuits risk co-opting humanitarian logistics as cover for arms trafficking or mercenary transport. Without robust safeguards, aid delivery becomes vulnerable to diversion, corruption, or manipulation by armed actors.

4. Civilian Protection Must Expand to Include Supply-Chain Monitoring.
Protection-of-civilians frameworks often focus on front-line fighting or hotspots of violence. But with collateral circuits, the greatest risk to civilians may occur along supply routes, in border towns, or in refugee-hosting areas. Effective protection requires monitoring not only combat zones but logistics trajectories: convoys, camps, smuggling hubs, and markets.

5. Long-Term Stabilization Requires Economic Alternatives.
Combatants, mercenaries, smugglers, brokers — all supply-chain agents — need incentives to demobilise. States and international actors must offer economic alternatives: livelihoods in licit sectors, regularized mining or commerce, reintegration programs for ex-fighters, community development in borderlands. Without alternative incomes, the same networks will re-emerge to sustain conflict or crime.

Why This Matters for Policymakers

For a newly elected lawmaker, defence minister, or foreign-policy advisor, these findings point to a stark truth: the Sudan war is not just “their conflict.” It is rapidly becoming a regional security crisis.

• Border states in the Sahel, Libya, Chad, and beyond are being drawn into the conflict’s supply economy. Their stability is now linked to what happens in Sudan — and what does not happen.
• Conventional tools (embargoes, sanctions, military interventions) are insufficient. The crisis demands more holistic policies that combine security, governance, humanitarian aid and economic development.
• Humanitarian and civilian-protection efforts cannot focus solely on camps or combat zones. They must address supply chains, trafficking networks, and the underlying economic drivers of conflict.
• Investing in border-region economies — mining governance, licit trade, infrastructure, legal employment — is as critical as diplomacy or military pressure. Without those investments, conflict-derived labour and supply markets will resurge.

The Bottom Line

Collateral circuits — the interwoven networks of arms, fuel, manpower, smuggling and displacement — redefine how modern conflict spreads, sustains and mutates. They transform war from a discrete event into a persistent regional system.

Addressing them requires rethinking conflict policy not as episodic intervention, but as structural transformation: aligning embargo enforcement, regional cooperation, humanitarian response and long-term development.

For policymakers willing to act, doing nothing is no longer an option. The longevity of peace in Sudan — and stability across the Sahel and Horn — depends on interventions outside battlefields: in border towns, trading hubs, refugee camps, smuggling routes — in the shadows where circuits move.

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Conceptualizing Collateral Circuits: War Economies and Security Markets in Sudan, Chad and Libya

The armed conflict that began in Sudan in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) rapidly transcended internal dynamics. The conflict restructured regional security economies across neighboring countries, creating what can be defined as “collateral circuits”: intertwined networks of arms, logistics, and mercenary manpower crossing borders. Understanding these circuits requires analytic precision grounded in verified evidence.

The chronology of the war-economy transformation can be traced to the outbreak of hostilities in April 2023. According to the February 2025 edition of the security report by the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), the conflict began on 15 April 2023 and escalated quickly to engulf multiple regions across Sudan. (European Union Agency for Asylum) The EUAA report, “Sudan: Security Situation,” maps the principal belligerents — SAF and RSF — and outlines the consequent humanitarian collapse, displacement flows, and breakdown of state-controlled arms management. (European Union Agency for Asylum)

Simultaneously, the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan (FFM-Sudan), established by the United Nations Human Rights Council, documented systematic attacks on civilians and critical infrastructure, including communications, water systems, health and food supply chains. (ecoi.net) Its 2025 report “Sudan: a war of atrocities” finds credible evidence that both SAF and RSF have committed widespread violations of international humanitarian law, including mass killings, forced displacement, arbitrary detention, and disruption of essential services. (globalsecurity.org)

The war has devastated Sudan’s civilian capacity. The EUAA security report estimates that by late 2024 more than 25 million people — over half the country’s population — faced acute food insecurity, with famine confirmed in multiple areas. (European Union Agency for Asylum) The same document reports that internally displaced persons (IDPs) had spread to nearly 9,653 locations across all 18 of Sudan’s states, per data from IOM and UNHCR compiled by EUAA as of March 2025. (European Union Agency for Asylum)

This breakdown of central state control over weapons, infrastructure and population mobility created the conditions for collateral circuits to emerge. The term “collateral circuits” refers to networks of armed logistics and manpower that adapt, survive and expand beyond the primary conflict zones — across borders, into neighboring states such as Chad and Libya.

First, supply chains of violence reoriented. The RSF’s capacity for sustained military operations, even after the disruption of conventional SAF supply routes, depended on external resupply, seizure of material, and decentralized logistics. EUAA reports and UN documentation confirm that RSF forces appropriated weapons and materiel from SAF stockpiles, while continuing to receive external material support via cross-border flows and clandestine supply chains. (European Union Agency for Asylum) The widespread destruction of state-controlled armories and the forced displacement of military-trained personnel fractured Sudan’s former arms-governance architecture — opening a vacuum seized by non-state and transnational actors.

Second, the collapse of civilian protection and humanitarian access accelerated the diversification of wartime actors. The Fact-Finding Mission documents targeted attacks not only on combatants but on civilians, health infrastructure and supply-chain nodes essential for survival — including water supplies, agricultural systems and food distribution facilities. (globalsecurity.org) As traditional governance failed, the RSF and allied militias extended control through parallel systems of coercion, protection, and resource appropriation. Armed groups began to assume roles formerly held by civil authorities: distributing (or withholding) food, controlling movement, mediating access to essential services, and taxing or controlling transport and trade corridors.

This transformation redefined the meaning of “security economy.” The former paradigm — where the state monopolized legitimate use of force and provision of public goods — collapsed under war pressure. Instead, a fragmented security economy emerged, hybrid in nature: partly predatory, partly transactional; partly illicit cartel-like, partly quasi-commercial. In this hybrid economy, power is not only derived from the barrel of a gun, but from control of logistics, supply, mobility, and ethnicity- or kinship-based networks across national borders. The structural collapse of state monopoly over violence thus enabled collateral circuits to operate.

Third, the forced displacement of large populations across Sudan’s internal administrative boundaries — and beyond into refugee flows into neighbor states — created human-capital circuits exploited by armed actors. The EUAA security report documents not only widespread displacement within Sudan but also external migration. (GOV.UK) The Fact-Finding Mission’s findings of deliberate targeting of civilians, and the destruction of critical infrastructure, institutional employment, and social services, implies that many displaced persons lost livelihoods, property, and formal protection. (ecoi.net) Armed actors — militias, mercenary networks, brokers — stepped into that vacuum, offering alternative “employment” as protectors, smugglers, convoy escorts, facilitators of displacement, or intermediaries for cross-border movement.

In these conditions, collateral circuits expand: arms supply networks, logistics supply chains, and manpower supply lines become interdependent. Weapons flows fuel demand for logistics, which in turn create demand for armed escorts and manpower. Displaced populations create demand for protection, illicit transport, cross-border movement. Weak state control means lesser enforcement, enabling grey-market dynamics. The war becomes not only military struggle over territory, but a distributed economic system where violence is a commodity.

This conceptual shift matters for strategic assessment. The war in Sudan should not be analysed simply as a domestic civil war, but as a regional reconfiguration of security economies. The collateral circuits emerging out of Sudan’s collapse are likely to outlast active frontlines. They embed themselves in neighboring states’ borderlands — especially in Chad and Libya — where pre-existing weak governance, porous borders, informal trade routes, existing smuggling networks, and surrogate armed formations provide fertile ground for sustained arms and manpower flows.

Because these circuits rely on cross-border mobility and commercial disguise, they are resilient to conventional interdiction or embargo enforcement. Conventional arms-embargo regimes assume a central state actor with logistical hubs; they are structured for interdiction at ports, official airfields, or established shipping lanes. Collateral circuits exploit precisely the opposite: informal airstrips, desert tracks, unmonitored land corridors, small aircraft, clandestine cargo flights, and decentralized brokerage networks.

Because of that resilience, collateral circuits create a long-term destabilizing dynamic. They turn conflict into a chronic regional security phenomenon. Post-war reconstruction, demobilization, or peacebuilding efforts will face structural obstacles: re-integrating combatants, controlling illicit flows, disarming decentralized actors, re-establishing arms-governance, re-securing borders, and rebuilding civilian trust in institutions — all in contexts where unofficial security economies already have vested financial and political interest in persistency.

Therefore, conceptualizing collateral circuits requires reframing strategic priorities:

• Security architecture must shift from “front-line containment” to “regional supply-chain disruption.”
• Diplomatic efforts must target not only Sudan, but networks of supply: border states, desert transit routes, informal air or road corridors, cargo logistics firms, aviation charters, and cross-border smuggling channels.
• Stabilization must integrate economic reconstruction — of trade, livelihoods, supply-chains — to undercut incentives for membership in grey-zone armed economies.
• Disarmament and demobilization must account for decentralized holdings: not only capturable stockpiles, but distributed weapons caches, small-arms circulation, black-market brokers, and cross-border logistics supporters.
• Humanitarian response must integrate long-term protection: protection of displaced populations, monitoring of informal flows, and resilience-building to prevent re-militarization.

In sum, the collateral circuits emerging from the Sudan conflict represent a paradigmatic shift: war is no longer a temporary breakdown of peace, but a transformation of regional security economies. These circuits do not merely facilitate war — they institutionalize violence and turn it into a durable, distributed business model across borders.

Supply Chains of Violence: External Sponsorship, Air Bridges and Overland Convoys into Sudan

The war in Sudan rests on a logistics architecture that is transnational by design. Because the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are not a conventional state military, they cannot rely solely on inherited arsenals or domestic production. Instead, the RSF and, to a lesser extent, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) sustain operations through a composite supply network that combines seized stockpiles, clandestine external sponsorship, air-bridge logistics and long-haul overland convoys running through Chad, Libya and the wider Sahel. The February 2025 country of origin report by the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) underlines that since mid-April 2023 the conflict has been “fuelled by an inflow of large quantities of weapons and military equipment” and that additional weaponry has continued to reach Darfur despite the standing UN Security Council arms embargo on that region. (European Union Agency for Asylum) Because embargo-busting flows require intermediaries, capital and territorial access outside Sudan, the result is a distributed supply system that binds Sudan’s war to the security economies of its neighbours.

At the core of this system lies the combination of external sponsorship and airlift logistics into eastern Chad. Open-source investigations by humanitarian organisations, satellite-imagery analysts and states have converged on a pattern in which cargo flights originating in or routed through the United Arab Emirates (UAE) land at remote airstrips in Chad, particularly near the town of Amdjarass, close to the Sudanese border. A detailed investigation by Reuters in December 2024 found that since the outbreak of war in April 2023 at least eighty-six cargo flights from the UAE had landed at Amdjarass, with UN and Western officials assessing that these flights formed part of an air bridge supplying the RSF, despite being described by the UAE as humanitarian missions. (Reuters) Because each flight carries high-value, dense cargo, even a limited number of rotations can materially alter the balance of power on the ground: armoured vehicles, anti-armour systems, drones or ammunition pallets translate directly into tactical advantages, especially where SAF supply lines are under pressure or fragmented.

These allegations exist in tension with formal UN reporting and official Emirati positions. In April 2025 Reuters reported on a confidential UN Panel of Experts document, later posted on the Security Council’s website, which stated that the Panel had not substantiated evidence that the UAE had provided arms or related support to the RSF. (Reuters) UAE officials have repeatedly maintained in public fora, including proceedings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), that their engagement is limited to humanitarian assistance and that they deny providing weapons to any Sudanese belligerent. (AP News) The dissonance between intelligence-driven assessments by some states, media investigations and formal Panel findings does not negate the reality of the airlift itself; rather, it illustrates the evidentiary threshold required for attribution within UN sanctions mechanisms. Because the Panel is constrained to rely on verifiable documentation, it may document flights, cargo movements and end-use risks while stopping short of formally naming a state sponsor without what it considers conclusive proof.

For strategic purposes, what matters is that recurrent cargo operations into Amdjarass and similar hubs create a durable logistics spine for external resupply to Sudan. The EUAA security-situation report notes that the conflict has been intensified by inflows of heavy weaponry and vehicles from external actors and that multiple sources point to foreign support for the RSF, even if attribution remains contested in formal UN language. (European Union Agency for Asylum) Because Amdjarass is positioned close to western Sudanese theatres, each pallet arriving by air can be broken down into loads for onward trucking into Darfur and Kordofan, often under the control of mercenary escorts or local militias whose business model hinges on precisely such convoys. The town, in this sense, functions not as an isolated airstrip but as a logistics hub integrating aviation, warehousing, security and brokerage.

Parallel to alleged RSF-aligned flows, the SAF has also sought external support. In April 2025 Reuters reported that UAE authorities intercepted millions of rounds of ammunition at an airport within their jurisdiction, describing the incident as an illegal attempt to move ammunition to the Sudanese army in violation of UN sanctions. (Reuters) The interception illustrates three structural points. First, both principal belligerents are sufficiently ammunition-hungry that they are willing to seek covert resupply abroad, even at the risk of diplomatic embarrassment for their partners. Second, the same logistics infrastructure — airports, freight forwarders, shell companies — can be used for both humanitarian cargo and illicit arms, depending on how declaration documents are falsified or how trans-shipment is arranged. Third, enforcement capacity varies sharply between transit states; a wealthy, security-conscious hub such as the UAE may detect at least some illegal consignments, whereas weaker or more complicit jurisdictions along the supply chain will not.

Overland, the Sudan war’s supply chains hook into long-standing trafficking routes across the Sahel and Sahara. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report Firearms Trafficking in the Sahel describes how weapons originating from Libyan stockpiles and other sources flow through a networked set of corridors linking southern Libya, northern Niger and Chad, and on into other Sahelian states. (unodc.org) The report emphasises that trafficking is facilitated by a mix of community-embedded smugglers, corrupt officials and armed groups who control specific stretches of desert. Although the UNODC study predates the Sudan war, its mapping of routes and modus operandi explains why the outbreak of violence in Sudan did not require the creation of entirely new terrestrial corridors. Because arms traffickers, fuel smugglers and migrant-smuggling networks already possessed vehicles, guides, safe houses and brokerage networks, war-related supply flows could piggy-back onto these existing systems.

The EUAA report explicitly links the intensification of fighting in Darfur to continued inflows of weapons into the region despite the longstanding Security Council embargo. (European Union Agency for Asylum) That embargo, established under resolution 1591 (2005), was designed for a more static conflict environment, with clear categories of embargo targets and conventional monitoring of formal border crossings. By 2023–2024, however, the regional context had changed. Libya’s collapse had unleashed large unsecured stockpiles into trans-Sahel flows; non-state armed groups gained entrenched control over transit spaces; and demand for weapons was driven not only by insurgencies but by banditry, communal conflicts and protection rackets. Because of these structural changes, the same arms-control instruments that once had some effect on large, overt transfers now struggle to impede highly modular, clandestine shipments that move in small consignments through under-governed spaces.

Supply chains for the RSF differ from conventional state supply chains in their organisational logic. Instead of a centralised logistics command with formal procurement, warehousing and distribution, the RSF’s model is distributed and entrepreneurial. Field commanders negotiate access to weapons and fuel using a mix of political connections, revenue from gold and other commodities, and relationships with foreign backers or brokers. EUAA analysis and multiple investigative reports describe how the RSF’s pre-war commercial interests in gold mining and other sectors provided it with foreign currency and contacts that now underpin its ability to finance and manage cross-border logistics. (European Union Agency for Asylum) Because commanders are incentivised to maintain their own supply networks, they cultivate ties with air-charter operators, freight companies and Chadian or Libyan intermediaries, allowing them to reroute or replicate corridors as pressure shifts.

In this environment, air bridges and overland convoys act as complementary components rather than substitutes. Air cargo provides speed and deniability over long distances, moving high-value items from foreign airports to a limited set of airstrips within Chad or, to a lesser extent, Libya. Overland convoys then distribute this cargo into Sudan, breaking it into lower-visibility loads that can move along desert tracks or minor roads. Desert towns and oases in southern Libya and northern Chad function as consolidation points where loads are repackaged, vehicles are refuelled, and escorts are organised. UNODC’s depiction of “nodal” trafficking towns, where arms shipments intersect with fuel and commercial flows, fits this pattern and helps explain how RSF-linked consignments can transit through spaces that are already conditioned to smuggling. (unodc.org)

External sponsorship shapes the content and tempo of these flows. A state backer willing to supply armoured vehicles, artillery or drones requires more complex logistics than donors providing only small arms and ammunition. Airlift becomes indispensable for bulky items; it also facilitates the provision of maintenance personnel, trainers and specialised components. Media and think-tank investigations, reflected indirectly in the EUAA’s synthesis of open sources, point to the RSF’s growing use of armed drones, modern armoured vehicles and anti-tank guided munitions that were not widely present in Sudan’s earlier conflicts. (European Union Agency for Asylum) Because these systems are difficult to source from domestic stocks alone, their appearance on the battlefield signals a supply chain that reaches beyond Sudanese territory.

At the same time, not all supply flows favour the RSF. SAF units continue to access legacy stocks, local manufacturing capacities and external partners. The intercepted ammunition shipment highlighted by UAE authorities indicates that elements supportive of the SAF are also attempting to exploit global logistics networks to circumvent sanctions. (Reuters) Regional states opposed to RSF advances have provided various forms of assistance to the army, ranging from overt diplomatic and financial backing to more discrete support that leaks into arms markets. Although the public record is fragmentary, the pattern that emerges is of duelling supply chains, each with its own external patrons and logistical architecture, competing for throughput into Sudan’s war zones.

Because overland convoys remain vulnerable to interdiction, economics and risk management shape their composition. Operators seeking to limit losses will mix cargoes: weapons and ammunition are loaded alongside fuel, spare parts, commercial goods or even humanitarian items. This practice serves several purposes. It provides plausible deniability if a consignment is intercepted and inspected only superficially. It diversifies revenue streams: convoy organisers earn fees from multiple clients, not only belligerents. And it allows them to cross-subsidise high-risk arms shipments with relatively safer or licit cargo. UNODC documents similar mixed-cargo practices in Sahelian firearms trafficking, where arms move alongside fuel and commercial goods. (unodc.org) Because the Sudan war sits atop this pre-existing logistical culture, the war’s supply chains are likely to be entangled with non-war economies in ways that blur enforcement lines.

Humanitarian operations, too, occupy ambiguous space in this system. Flights, trucks and warehouses labelled as humanitarian can function as cover for dual-use logistics. In the Amdjarass case, the UAE has consistently asserted that its flights support a field hospital and relief efforts for Sudanese refugees, even as some states and UN experts question whether all cargo volumes can be explained by aid requirements alone. (Reuters) Because humanitarian corridors must remain open to avoid catastrophic civilian suffering, belligerents and their sponsors have strong incentives to piggy-back military logistics on top of relief pipelines. This exposes humanitarian actors to reputational and physical risk: perceived complicity in arms diversion can provoke attacks by rival forces, while association with sanctions violations can constrain donors. It also complicates the work of sanctions committees and panels of experts, which must weigh the humanitarian impact of potential interdictions against the imperative to enforce arms controls.

The geography of supply chains also interacts with Sudan’s internal front lines. When RSF units lose control of certain bases or crossing points, they adapt by shifting routes westwards or northwards. The EUAA security-situation report highlights the fluidity of territorial control across Darfur and Kordofan during 2023–2024, with RSF advances in some areas offset by SAF air power and local counter-mobilisation in others. (European Union Agency for Asylum) Because the risk profile of any given corridor can change within weeks — due to new checkpoints, airstrikes, or shifting alliances — convoy planners must continuously update their route maps, relying on informants, local commanders and commercial contacts. This constant adaptation reinforces the role of brokers and fixers who specialise in “routing risk,” turning knowledge of which tracks are passable or which border posts can be bribed into a marketable commodity.

The resulting supply system is best understood as a layered network rather than a linear chain. At the outer layer sit foreign manufacturers and financiers: states, companies and brokers who arrange for weapons, parts or money to enter the system. At the intermediate layer are transit hubs such as Gulf airports, North African ports, and Sahelian airstrips where cargo is repackaged, documentation altered and onward legs scheduled. At the inner layer lie the desert corridors and internal Sudanese routes where goods are delivered to front-line units, militias and allied groups. Each layer has its own vulnerabilities. Manufacturers may be subject to export-control regimes and reputational pressure; transit hubs can be monitored by intelligence services; desert and internal routes can be targeted by military interdiction or border-security operations. Yet each layer also has redundancy: if one hub becomes politically or operationally untenable, another may emerge.

For ministries of defence and regional security planners, this analysis has several implications. First, enforcement strategies that focus solely on visible endpoints such as ports or official border crossings will likely miss the majority of conflict-sustaining flows. The most consequential shipments move through secondary and tertiary nodes that are neither well monitored nor easily controlled. Second, external sponsorship matters not only in political terms but in material logistics: state backers with access to global aviation and maritime networks can significantly reduce the costs and risks of supplying a non-state partner. Third, long-term stability in Sudan is inseparable from the governance of supply corridors in Chad, Libya and the Sahel. So long as weapons, fuel and fighters can circulate along these routes, any ceasefire or peace agreement inside Sudan will remain fragile.

Finally, the war’s supply chains have path-dependent effects. Routes honed today to sustain RSF or SAF operations will not vanish when the guns fall silent. Vehicles, pilots, brokers, middlemen and armed escorts will look for new contracts. In the absence of strong governance, they will redirect their skills toward other illicit economies: trafficking of people, drugs, fuel, gold or wildlife. UNODC’s broader analysis of Sahel trafficking networks warns that such multi-commodity pipelines tend to become entrenched features of regional political economy rather than transient wartime anomalies. (unodc.org) Because Sudan’s war has already tapped into, and in some places expanded, these pipelines, any post-war settlement that ignores them will underestimate the resilience of conflict-adjacent violence.

Armed Labour Markets: Mercenaries, Auxiliaries and the Restructuring of Cross-Border Manpower Networks

The Sudan war has created a regional armed-labour market whose scale, organization and transnational integration exceed those of any previous conflict in the Sahel or the Horn of Africa. Mercenary manpower, auxiliary militias, ethnic-kinship armed networks and commercial security brokers together form a distributed labour economy that fills the gaps left by collapsed Sudanese state institutions and capitalizes on the economic vulnerabilities of hundreds of thousands of displaced or demobilized men in border zones. The formation of these armed-labour markets was not accidental. It arose because both principal belligerents—the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF)—required immediate manpower expansion, but the formal recruitment infrastructures of the Sudanese state no longer existed. Because the war erupted during a period of institutional breakdown and political fragmentation, armed factions turned outward to transnational networks embedded in Chad, Libya and the Central African Republic. The result is a regional market for violence in which manpower circulates across borders in response to price signals, logistical opportunity and ethnic-political brokerage.

The RSF’s manpower model is the principal driver of this transformation. The RSF originated as a coalition of Darfuri Arab militias and paramilitary formations with pre-existing transnational linkages, particularly into Chad and Libya. When hostilities escalated in April 2023, RSF commanders faced a dual challenge: consolidating territorial gains in Khartoum and Darfur while simultaneously replacing losses from intense urban combat. The organizational solution was to revive and expand networks used during earlier phases of the Darfur conflict, drawing on cross-border kinship groups, ex-rebels displaced from Libya’s conflicts, and itinerant armed labourers operating around gold-mining areas in northern Chad. These networks had the logistical advantage of familiarity with desert corridors, oasis towns, and illicit trading routes that connect the Fezzan region of Libya to northern Chad and western Sudan. Because of this familiarity, mercenary mobilisation could proceed even while Sudanese state borders were collapsing or heavily contested.

Financial incentives solidified these networks into a functioning labour market. RSF field commanders, armed with access to revenue from gold mining, taxation of trade routes, and in some cases external financial sponsorship, could offer short-term contracts, per-mission payments or lump-sum recruitment bonuses. This differed sharply from SAF’s mobilisation model, which relied primarily on remnants of the formal Sudanese military structure and recruitment among northern and central Sudanese communities. RSF recruiters could therefore adjust compensation to labour scarcity, rapidly increasing payments in periods of heightened operational tempo. This ability to “price in” risk made cross-border recruitment particularly effective: Chadian fighters accustomed to unstable incomes in remote mining zones saw RSF service as a temporary but lucrative opportunity. Former rebel cadres from Libya—many of whom had fluctuated between employment as guards for oil fields, smugglers’ convoys, or local militias—viewed RSF contracts as another iteration of a familiar economic logic.

As manpower inflows increased, coordination mechanisms emerged that mirrored commercial labour brokerage. In border regions such as Amdjarass, Tina, Um Jaras, and the Tibesti foothills, armed intermediaries acted as brokers who matched RSF demand with available fighters. Some brokers were clan elders or former militia commanders; others were traders with long-standing access to cross-border movement networks. Their role extended beyond recruitment. Brokers provided safe houses, coordinated desert transport, arranged fuel, and collected payments. They were able to deliver fighters in cohesive units—trusted micro-formations of men who had fought together in Libya, or in Chadian rebellions. This cohesion increased their battlefield effectiveness and reduced the RSF’s need for integrating them into formal military structures. In exchange, brokers extracted commissions and political leverage.

The political geography of Chad played a central role. Chad’s northern regions have long sustained a surplus of militarized men due to decades of rebellion, counterinsurgency and informal mining. When Sudan’s conflict reignited, these populations became labour reservoirs. Fighters from Chadian Arab groups, Tubu communities, and ex-rebel factions—including splinters of the Union of Forces of Resistance—entered transactional relationships with the RSF. In some cases, Chadian rebels sought RSF support for their own political goals inside Chad, creating a reciprocal dynamic: fighters joined RSF operations in Sudan, and RSF commanders provided them sanctuary, fuel or income streams. These exchanges entrenched a cross-border labour corridor that functions independently of Sudanese or Chadian state authority.

Libya’s hybrid security environment amplified this process. After the fragmentation of Libyan armed forces post-2011, southern Libya became a marketplace for Desert warfare labour. Sudanese and Chadian fighters had already been embedded in Libyan security complexes for years, serving as auxiliary guards, convoy escorts and frontline troops under both the Libyan National Army and rival formations. When Sudan’s war erupted, these fighters did not need to be newly recruited; they only needed to be redirected. Pre-existing command structures—formed around charismatic leaders, tribal networks or commercial loyalties—allowed rapid redeployment. Some of these units maintained dual affiliations, earning wages in Libya while sending detachments to Sudan as cross-border mercenary contingents. This duality minimizes opportunity cost and sustains a constant flow of manpower into Sudan’s war zones.

Within Sudan, the manpower market expanded further as civilian men were pushed into survival economies. Urban destruction in Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri, combined with the collapse of agricultural production and state salaries, created a vacuum in which young men lost economic alternatives. Some turned to RSF recruitment because it offered immediate cash and relative mobility; others joined localized SAF-aligned defence groups. In Darfur, where intercommunal violence has a long history, Arab and non-Arab militias aligned themselves along the war’s shifting fault lines, linking local grievances—over land, water and historical marginalization—to new channels of income as auxiliaries or scout units. These local fighters mingle with foreign mercenaries in RSF operations, producing composite units with diverse motivations and inconsistent discipline. This heterogeneity, while tactically unstable, enhances the RSF’s numerical depth.

The SAF, constrained by institutional erosion, struggled to mirror this flexibility. Its recruitment drew on traditional reserve pools, local defence committees and mobilisation campaigns in northern Sudanese cities. SAF-aligned factions in eastern Sudan and the Blue Nile region recruited auxiliaries from communities affected by RSF expansion, but these models lacked the transnational reach of RSF recruitment networks. Over time, SAF has been forced to rely increasingly on localized defence forces, some of which operate semi-autonomously, further fragmenting command and control.

Because mercenary labour moves along the same corridors as arms and supplies, manpower and logistics are now inseparable. Desert convoys carrying weapons also transport fighters; airstrips receiving cargo flights often host mercenary rotations. This integration creates a feedback loop: more weapon flows create more demand for escorts; more escorts create more operational capacity for convoys; more convoys sustain more recruitment. The labour market thus becomes self-reinforcing. Fighters gain skills—driving technicals, operating small drones, navigating desert routes—that increase their bargaining power and allow them to negotiate higher rates or more favourable deployment conditions. Commanders tolerate this because supply-chain resilience ranks higher than doctrinal purity.

The emergence of this labour market produces long-term strategic risks for the entire region. First, demobilization will be extraordinarily difficult. Fighters who have built livelihoods around cross-border contracts will not simply disband after a ceasefire. They will seek employment in other illicit economies—gold smuggling, convoy protection, human trafficking, fuel smuggling. The region’s war economies will absorb them. Second, their mobility means that instability in one country can rapidly cascade into another. If Sudan’s war slows, fighters may carry their skills and grievances into Chad, Niger or southern Libya. Third, armed labour markets undermine state sovereignty. When groups of 50–200 men with combat experience can be hired, deployed and rotated without state oversight, formal security institutions lose both monopoly and legitimacy.

Fourth, these markets destabilize peace processes. Any negotiation between SAF and RSF must grapple with the fact that each side’s real power depends partly on foreign manpower outside Sudanese jurisdiction. These fighters are not constituents of Sudanese politics and have no stake in peace dividends. Their continued availability to commanders creates “spoiler capacity”: an RSF or SAF commander with access to mercenary reserves can reject ceasefires and escalate violence without relying exclusively on local recruitment.

Finally, the market’s cross-border structure implicates regional governments. Even when Chad or Libya do not directly support either side, their borderlands host recruitment, transit and staging nodes. Their inability—or unwillingness—to fully police these zones creates permissive environments. This exposes them to blowback: armed groups may re-enter their territory with battlefield experience, modern weapons and hardened networks. It is therefore likely that the armed-labour markets generated by Sudan’s war will outlast the conflict itself, becoming permanent fixtures of the security economy of the Sahel-Horn interface.

Chad’s Borderland Political Economy: Goldfields, Refugee Flows and the Infrastructures of Convoy Protection

The borderlands of Chad have become the hinge between Sudan’s civil war and the wider insecurity economies of the Sahel. The same northern and eastern peripheries that host artisanal gold rushes, historical insurgencies and chronic state neglect now also absorb hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees and serve as staging grounds for convoys supplying armed actors in Sudan. Because these functions coexist in the same territory, the political economy of northern and eastern Chad is no longer merely a domestic governance challenge; it is a critical component of regional conflict logistics.

By mid-2025, UNHCR estimated that forcibly displaced people in Chad had risen to 2,078,798 individuals, up from 1,734,882 in July 2024, an increase of almost 343,916 people — roughly 19.8 % — driven primarily by the influx of Sudanese refugees since the outbreak of war in April 2023. (data.unhcr.org) In parallel, a situational appeal on the Sudan crisis reported that more than 3 million people had fled Sudan by November 2024, including almost 2.5 million refugees and asylum-seekers, with Chad identified as one of the main destination states. (unhcr.org) These figures describe a borderland transformed into a humanitarian corridor, yet the same spaces also host longstanding artisanal gold mining and trafficking economies that pre-date the war and now interact with it.

Artisanal gold extraction in northern Chad, particularly in the Tibesti massif and surrounding areas such as Miski and Kouri Bougoudi, has for more than a decade reconfigured local authority structures and security provision. A political-geography study of Sahara–Sahel goldfields describes the “Tibesti cluster” as a constellation of mining sites located in northern Chad and extending toward Libya and Niger, noting that state penetration has remained extremely shallow and that, over the last 50 years, the area has often been under the control of rebel movements rather than the Chadian state. (merip.org) The same analysis documents that major sites such as Kouri Bougoudi have stretched for tens of kilometres and attracted sizeable populations of miners, migrants and refugees, drawing on logistics networks and capital flows centred in Libya, whose actors provided vehicles, fuel, food supplies and buyers for the extracted gold. (merip.org)

International policing assessments corroborate this picture. An Interpol strategic report on illegal gold mining in Central Africa characterises gold extraction in Chad as largely artisanal, concentrated in the Tibesti and West Mayo-Kebbi regions, and notes that the sector is highly informal and vulnerable to exploitation by armed groups and criminal networks. (interpol.int) A complementary UNODC assessment on gold trafficking in the Sahel explains how artisanal production sites across the region, including northern Chad, feed into transnational smuggling chains that move unrecorded gold to hubs in Libya and then onward to destination markets in the Gulf, often via the United Arab Emirates, with minimal taxation or oversight. (UNODC) Because the state formally prohibits or intermittently represses artisanal mining yet lacks sustained enforcement capacity, local non-state actors — warlords, rebel commanders, community militias — step in to provide “protection” and basic order around the mines in exchange for rents.

These pre-existing arrangements are crucial for understanding how convoy protection infrastructures developed. Before the Sudan war, the same networks that moved miners and gold between Tibesti sites and Libya already operated long-haul transport for fuel, consumer goods and migrants. An IOM displacement-tracking study of mobility in the Chad–Libya–Niger triangle notes that illegal and artisanal gold mining in Tibesti evolved into an informal industry attracting both internal and foreign labour migrants, with transport corridors radiating from mining sites to border towns and Libyan oases. (dtm.iom.int) This mobility architecture normalised the presence of armed escorts, informal checkpoints and negotiated passage, creating a market in which convoy organisers hire armed men to protect cargoes against bandits, rival groups or state forces.

The influx of Sudanese refugees overlays this landscape with a humanitarian emergency that simultaneously depends on and distorts borderland political economies. A socio-economic profile of Sudanese refugees in Chad, compiled under the auspices of UNHCR and partners, reports that as of November 2024 over 710,500 new refugees from Sudan had arrived in Chad, mostly from Darfur, and that their presence concentrated in eastern provinces such as Ouaddaï, Sila and Wadi Fira. (ReliefWeb) A 2025 annual results report for Chad further notes that the country continued to receive growing numbers of forcibly displaced people throughout 2024, driven by persistent conflicts in the Sahel and in Sudan, and that international funding fell short of needs. (unhcr.org) Refugee camps and informal settlements near towns like Adré, Farchana and Tina thus became new nodes in the borderland economy, with humanitarian supplies, remittances and small-scale trade injecting additional liquidity into territories already shaped by mining and smuggling.

Because state presence is thin and under-resourced, the security of roads linking these camps, towns and border crossings to the interior depends on a patchwork of actors: Chadian defence and security forces, gendarmes, local auxiliaries, customary authorities and, in some cases, ex-rebels integrated into ad-hoc arrangements. Where humanitarian convoys move under escort, the same routes can be used by commercial convoys carrying fuel and goods, and by clandestine movements associated with arms and mercenary flows. A UNODC report on trafficking in the Sahel emphasises that guns, fuel and gold often move together along multi-commodity routes, with local armed actors providing overlapping services to licit and illicit clients. (UNODC) In eastern Chad, this pattern means that the infrastructures of convoy protection — who guards which road, who controls which checkpoint, who arbitrates disputes — are not neutral. They are embedded in a political marketplace where armed groups monetise insecurity.

The collapse of security in Sudan after April 2023 intensified these dynamics on both the humanitarian and security sides. UNHCR’s Sudan situation dashboards and appeals note that by late 2024 more than 723,500 Sudanese refugees and over 222,000 Chadian returnees had crossed into Chad since the war’s onset, and that the vast majority were women and children. (unhcr.org) Accommodating such numbers required rapid expansion of camps and transit sites, often in remote areas with limited pre-existing infrastructure. Roads that had previously served low-volume local traffic suddenly became vital humanitarian corridors. The need to move food, shelter materials and medical supplies at scale made convoy scheduling and protection a central logistical concern for aid agencies and the Chadian authorities, especially during the rainy season when routes are degraded.

At the same time, the war generated new demand for armed mobility between Chad and Sudan. EU-level country-of-origin analysis on Sudan describes credible reports of Chadian fighters and rebel remnants entering transactional relationships with the Rapid Support Forces as mercenaries, and notes accusations from Khartoum that elements in Chad have supplied arms or allowed their territory to be used as a rear base. (European Union Agency for Asylum) Although N’Djamena officially denies sponsoring any party to the conflict, it faces the structural problem that many of the actors now engaging with the RSF — ex-rebels, Tibesti-based armed entrepreneurs, cross-border traders — are the same actors the state has historically struggled to control. When these groups organise convoys toward Darfur, ostensibly as trade or mining traffic, the state may lack both intelligence and coercive leverage to halt them without provoking broader rebellion.

Goldfields play a central role in this economy of ambivalent control. Research on Tibesti’s artisanal mining governance shows that Chadian authorities have oscillated between toleration and violent repression. In 2015, the government ordered evacuation of Miski and Kouri Bougoudi; in subsequent years the army forcibly evicted miners and, by 2018, helicopters bombed some sites. (merip.org) Official justifications portrayed the mines as havens for bandits, disbanded rebels and terrorists, and accused Tebu miners of financing Chadian rebel groups based in Libya. (merip.org) However, shutting down the sites did not eliminate the economic logic; rather, it displaced miners, hardened grievances and pushed gold-related logistics further underground. In effect, attempts at repression deepened the reliance of miners and local communities on non-state providers of protection, some of whom now interact with Sudanese belligerents.

Convoy protection in this context is not an ancillary service but a central economic function. For miners, ensuring that equipment, fuel and food reach remote sites requires negotiation with armed actors who control access roads. For refugees and host communities, securing movement between camps and markets similarly depends on the behaviour of these armed intermediaries. For smugglers or RSF-linked logistics operators, buying protection from the same networks provides plausible cover: a convoy that resembles a mining supply train can also conceal weaponry or rotating fighters. Because payment for escort services often occurs in cash or gold, and because intermediaries can tax goods at informal checkpoints, the line between legitimate security provision and organised extortion is blurred.

Data on perceptions collected by UNHCR-supported monitoring across eastern Chad reinforce this picture of layered insecurity. Dashboards summarising Sudan emergency monitoring in late 2025 report that refugee households consistently cite insecurity on roads, the presence of armed men and the risk of attacks or theft as key protection risks when moving between entry points, transit sites and camps. (data.unhcr.org) These perceptions highlight that for civilians, convoy protection is not an abstraction; it is the condition under which they can access food distribution, healthcare and registration services. Yet because the state’s own forces are stretched thin and sometimes distrusted, refugees may prefer or be compelled to use ad-hoc escorts, including local self-defence groups, which further normalises a privatised security economy.

For the Chadian state, managing this borderland political economy involves constant triage. On one axis lies the imperative to maintain at least nominal control over territory and prevent rebel groups from consolidating; on another lies the need to keep humanitarian corridors open and avoid alienating local communities whose cooperation is essential. Excessive repression in goldfields can spark violent escalation, as past operations in Tibesti demonstrate; too much tolerance can allow rebel taxation and recruitment to flourish. Over-policing refugee movements or informal trade can drive populations into clandestine channels; under-policing can permit arms and fighters to circulate largely unchecked. Because resources — fuel, vehicles, trained personnel — are limited, authorities tend to prioritise securing strategic towns and main axes, leaving secondary tracks to de facto governance by non-state actors.

The cumulative effect is to embed Sudan’s war into Chad’s borderland governance dilemmas. Goldfields, refugee flows and convoy infrastructures form a triad of mutually reinforcing dynamics. Artisanal mining creates demand for logistics and protection, which incentivises the proliferation of armed intermediaries. Refugee arrivals inject humanitarian resources and labour that can be taxed or recruited by the same actors. Convoy protection, in turn, becomes a monetisable skill set, encouraging young men — including refugees and returnees with few other opportunities — to join escort groups, local militias or mercenary units. As these practices consolidate, they erode distinctions between “Chadian” and “Sudanese” conflicts, generating a shared security marketplace in which violence and protection are traded across borders.

For external defence planners and donors, the key implication is that stabilising Chad’s borderlands cannot be reduced to classic border-security training or refugee-camp management. Any strategy that ignores the political economy of gold and convoy protection will fail to change the incentive structure that sustains armed actors. Efforts to strengthen formal customs and police presence along key corridors will only be effective if paired with legal pathways for artisanal production, transparent taxation and meaningful participation of local communities in governance arrangements. Humanitarian programming must recognise that aid flows are already embedded in local markets and that decisions about convoy routing, contracting and escorting can reshape power balances among armed groups. Security cooperation must be designed with awareness that some prospective local partners profit directly from the very convoy systems that keep weapons and fighters moving toward Sudan.

Libya’s Hybrid War Economy: Logistics Hubs, Foreign Forces and the Recycling of Fighters and Weapons

The contemporary security economy of Libya operates as a hybrid system that blends formal state structures, fragmented armed coalitions, foreign forces and criminal markets. This hybrid war economy acts as a logistics hub for weapons, fuel and fighters across the central Sahara, and it has become one of the principal reservoirs from which conflict resources are recycled into Sudan, the Sahel and the wider African periphery. Because Libya’s post-2011 transition never produced a unified security apparatus, armed groups, foreign forces and private military actors have entrenched themselves inside the country’s strategic infrastructure: ports, airfields, oil installations and key desert junctions. United Nations Security Council reporting repeatedly notes that mercenaries, foreign fighters and foreign forces remained present in Libya well after the 2020 ceasefire, and that their continued activities, combined with systematic violations of the arms embargo, sustain a war-adjacent economy that threatens the entire region. (Documenti ONU)

This hybrid war economy rests on three pillars: the persistence of foreign forces and mercenaries, the centrality of Libyan territory as a logistics corridor for weapons and fuel, and the recycling of fighters and matériel from one theatre of conflict to another. Security Council resolutions adopted in 2023 reaffirm that Libya “continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security,” explicitly linking this judgment to the ongoing presence of foreign fighters and mercenaries and calling for their withdrawal “without further delay.” (Documenti ONU) The same resolutions underline that failure to implement the 23 October 2020 ceasefire agreement, including its provisions on withdrawing foreign elements, perpetuates fragmentation of the security sector and undermines state authority.

Foreign forces and mercenaries are embedded across this landscape. Reports of the UN Panel of Experts on Libya, considered by the Security Council and referenced in subsequent UN and regional documents, describe extensive deployments of foreign fighters from Sudan, Chad, Syria and Russia-linked private military formations, often aligned with the eastern-based Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) or with rival coalitions. (Nazioni Unite) These forces have guarded oil facilities, manned checkpoints, operated artillery, piloted combat aircraft or drones, and participated directly in offensive operations. Because many of these fighters are not Libyan nationals, they have no long-term stake in political compromise; their incentives are shaped by contracts, stipends and the economic value of continuing insecurity. This alters the logic of war and peace: ceasefire implementation and political dialogue must contend not only with domestic factions but with cross-border labour markets for violence.

The African Union’s Peace and Security Council has repeatedly warned that abrupt or unmanaged withdrawal of foreign fighters from Libya risks displacing combatants and weapons into neighbouring states. A 2021 AU communiqué stressed the urgency of removing foreign forces and mercenaries while expressing serious concern that their movement from Libya into the Sahel could pose a major security threat if not coordinated and sequenced. (peaceau.org) This concern reflected the empirical pattern already documented by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC): that weapons diverted from Libyan stockpiles during and after the 2011 war had flowed southwards into the Sahel, fuelling insurgencies and organised crime. The UNODC report Firearms Trafficking in the Sahel details how diverted military-grade weapons and ammunition originating from or transiting through Libya entered trafficking circuits linking Libya, Niger, Chad, Mali and Burkina Faso, and how these flows empowered non-state actors far beyond Libyan borders. (ONU Droga e Crimine) The same logistics channels now service newer conflicts, including the war in Sudan.

Libya’s role as a logistics hub rests on its geography and infrastructure. The country’s Mediterranean ports, international airports and network of desert roads connect European markets, Middle Eastern partners and inner-Saharan economies. During the oil-boom decades, these routes moved hydrocarbons, construction goods and labour migrants; during conflict, they have been repurposed to move weapons, fuel, fighters and contraband. UNODC’s analysis of Sahelian trafficking describes a “tangled web” in which guns, fuel and gold move along overlapping routes, with Libya functioning as both a source and a transit point for illicit commodities. (ONU Droga e Crimine) Because many of these routes pre-date the 2011 war and are anchored in long-standing commercial and kinship ties, state authorities in Tripoli or Benghazi have only partial leverage over them.

The same hybrid economy that moves commodities also manages people. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) has documented, round after round, that Libya hosts several hundred thousand migrants at any given time, drawn from more than 40 nationalities. Its Migrant Report Round 57 for March–April 2025 identifies 867,055 migrants across 100 Libyan municipalities, while earlier rounds show similarly high figures. (Dtm Iom) Many of these migrants work in agriculture, construction, services and informal sectors; others are in transit toward Europe. In a hybrid war economy, these populations also represent a labour reservoir that armed groups can exploit for menial work, logistical support or, in some cases, direct participation in violence. Detention, extortion and forced labour in facilities controlled by militias or security forces have been repeatedly documented by the UN Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mechanisms and by IOM field reporting. (Statewatch)

This migrant economy intersects with mercenary labour markets. Armed groups that control territory in southern Libya or along the main coastal corridor often maintain diversified portfolios: they tax smuggling, manage detention centres, guard industrial sites, and lease fighters to domestic or foreign patrons. When demand for manpower rises in another theatre—such as the Sudan war—these groups can rotate fighters out of Libya or recruit among migrant communities and local youth, using existing logistics chains to move them across borders. Reporting on foreign mercenaries in Libya, considered by both the Security Council and regional organisations, underscores this “exportable” nature of armed labour: many of the same individuals who fought in Libyan campaigns later surfaced in conflicts in the Sahel or in Sudan, transported along routes originally built for fuel and commodity smuggling. (Documenti ONU)

The arms-embargo regime is central to understanding how weapons are recycled in this hybrid war economy. Security Council-mandated experts have consistently painted a “bleak picture” of non-compliance with the embargo, noting that both state and non-state actors have engaged in systematic transfers of arms and related materiel to Libyan factions in violation of UN resolutions. (Nazioni Unite) These transfers include sophisticated weapon systems—such as armed drones, armoured vehicles and air-defence systems—as well as small arms and light weapons. Once inside Libya, such materiel does not remain confined to its original recipients. Losses through battlefield capture, diversion, theft and resale inject weapons into broader trafficking circuits. UNODC’s Sahel firearms assessment notes that weapons sourced from Libyan conflict stockpiles have been recovered in multiple Sahelian states and that tri-border towns, where national jurisdictions overlap weakly, serve as key redistribution nodes. (ONU Droga e Crimine)

This recycling process is not merely incidental; it is a revenue stream. Armed groups or units that receive foreign-supplied weapons can sell part of the stock onward, either domestically or across borders. Brokers arrange discreet sales to criminal networks, bandits or insurgents in neighbouring states. Because the original transfer was illicit, there is no legitimate oversight; the entire chain operates in the shadows. The Interpol assessment Firearms Trafficking in Central and Western Africa, based on data from Operation Trigger VIII, shows that weapons originating from conflict theatres—including Libya—circulate widely in Central and West African states and that traffickers rely on corruption, forged documents and multi-commodity convoys to move these arms. (Interpol) In this way, arms delivered into Libya under one pretext can later appear in entirely different conflicts, including banditry in the Lake Chad basin or militia violence in Sudan’s periphery.

Because foreign forces in Libya often control or influence critical infrastructure, they shape how this recycling occurs. Units aligned with the LAAF and backed by foreign states or private military companies hold sway over key airbases and desert crossroads in the south and east; rival formations in the west do the same with ports and airports along the coast. The UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL)’s reporting to the Security Council has stressed that full implementation of the ceasefire’s security arrangements—including the departure of foreign fighters and the unification of military institutions—is essential to restoring the state’s capacity to manage and secure its weapons stockpiles and borders. (UNSMIL) Yet progress has been slow, and in the meantime the hybrid war economy consolidates itself.

Two structural feedback loops entrench this economy. The first is financial. Control of logistics hubs—ports, fuel depots, smuggling routes, checkpoints—allows armed groups and their foreign patrons to extract rents: fees for passage, protection payments, cuts of trafficking profits, and privileged access to subsidised fuel or public contracts. These rents then finance payrolls, weapons purchases and patronage networks, making continued instability profitable. The second loop is organisational. As groups professionalise their logistics—developing fleets of trucks, networks of drivers, fixers at customs posts, and contacts in foreign capitals—they become more capable of moving fighters and weapons not just inside Libya but across the region. Every successful operation reinforces their reputation and bargaining power, attracting new clients and recruits.

Within this system, Libya’s connection to Sudan is both direct and mediated. Directly, some desert corridors link southeastern Libya to northern Chad and onward to Darfur, enabling vehicles, fuel and fighters to move along a chain of oases and border posts. Mediated, Libya serves as a staging ground and recruitment pool for mercenaries hired by external sponsors to fight in Sudan. Recent diplomatic complaints by Sudan at the Security Council and parallel investigative reporting have alleged that foreign states used Libyan territory as a transit zone to deploy non-Libyan fighters—including Latin American contractors—to support one side in the Sudan war. (Financial Times) While attribution and legal responsibility remain contested, the pattern demonstrates how Libya’s fragmented security space and dense web of foreign relationships make it an ideal platform for deniable interventions elsewhere.

The presence of large migrant populations further complicates this picture. IOM DTM data show that Libya’s migrant population remains high and spatially widespread, with concentrations in Tripoli, Benghazi, Misrata and southern hubs such as Sebha and Qatrun. (Dtm Iom) These communities are deeply exposed to abuses by armed actors, as highlighted by UN human-rights reporting, but they also represent a potential labour source for low-skill roles in war economies: loading and unloading cargo, maintaining facilities, servicing convoys. When state institutions are weak and legal work opportunities scarce, some migrants may accept employment under militia control, willingly or under coercion, entangling their survival strategies with the functioning of the hybrid war economy.

Attempts to disrupt this system through sanctions and arms-control measures have achieved limited results. The Security Council has renewed the Libya sanctions regime and the mandate of the Panel of Experts, and it has tasked UNSMIL and the 5+5 Joint Military Commission with developing mechanisms for monitoring the ceasefire and supporting the withdrawal of foreign forces. (Documenti ONU) Yet, as UNODC and INTERPOL data suggest, traffickers adjust quickly, shifting routes, re-flagging vessels, falsifying end-user documentation and exploiting jurisdictional gaps. As long as foreign patrons continue to view Libya as a convenient chessboard for projecting influence, and as long as domestic elites profit from fragmentation, the underlying incentives will persist.

For defence planners and policymakers, the concept of Libya as a hybrid war economy implies that conventional “conflict resolution” frameworks are insufficient. Stabilising Libya is not only about brokering a political agreement among rival governments; it is about dismantling or transforming economic structures that reward the circulation of weapons and fighters. This requires coordinated pressure on foreign states and companies sustaining military patronage, robust monitoring and interdiction of arms flows at sea and in the air, and significant investment in alternative livelihoods and governance in the country’s south, where much of the cross-border trafficking is concentrated. It also requires integrating Libya into regional initiatives on illicit firearms and border security, such as the UNODC global strategy on illicit firearms, which emphasises comprehensive approaches to reduce diversion and trafficking. (ONU Droga e Crimine)

At the same time, external actors must recognise that unmanaged withdrawal of foreign forces and mercenaries from Libya could export instability rather than resolve it. Both the African Union and the United Nations have warned that displacing thousands of experienced fighters, many with access to heavy weapons, into already fragile Sahelian states would likely exacerbate existing insurgencies and create new criminal enterprises. (peaceau.org) Any serious plan for drawing down foreign forces must therefore include provisions for disarmament, demobilisation, reintegration or relocation that extend beyond Libya’s borders. Without such planning, the recycling of fighters and weapons will simply shift from one geography to another, leaving the hybrid war economy intact in altered form.

Within this broader picture, the link to Sudan is a case study rather than an exception. The same logistics hubs, foreign networks and mercenary pipelines that have shaped Libya’s internal conflict are now entangled with Sudan’s civil war. Fighters, vehicles and weapons cycle between front lines, following contracts rather than flags. Because of this, any strategy that seeks to limit the flow of combat resources into Sudan must include Libya as a central theatre of action: not only as a diplomatic file, but as a concrete space where roads, warehouses, airstrips and human networks can be mapped, monitored and, where necessary, neutralised.

reference link :

• Firearms Trafficking in the Sahel – UNODC – March 2022
• Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (S/2023/967) – United Nations – December 2023
• Security Council Resolution 2701 (2023) on the situation in Libya – United Nations – October 2023
• Firearms Trafficking in Central and Western Africa – INTERPOL – July 2024

Governing Collateral Circuits: Implications for Embargo Enforcement, Regional Security Governance and Civilian Protection

Arms embargoes in Sudan and the wider Sahel–Horn interface now operate in an environment where weapons, fuel, mercenaries and auxiliary armed labour circulate through self-reinforcing collateral circuits that no single state controls. Because these circuits are anchored in border markets, mining economies and multi-commodity convoys, classical sanctions design—focusing on discrete shipments or listed individuals—no longer matches the way violence is financed and moved. The United Nations Security Council’s arms embargo on Darfur, first imposed in 2004 and expanded in 2005 under resolution 1591, was conceived for a conflict in which belligerents could be distinguished by territory, command structures and identifiable supply lines. (Nazioni Unite) The current war, by contrast, is sustained by overlapping networks that link goldfields in northern Chad, logistics hubs in Libya, urban markets in Sudan and trans-Sahelian trafficking routes. Collateral circuits—the mutually reinforcing flows of weapons, fuel and armed labour—convert every convoy into a security event and every embargo violation into a regional shock.

The formal architecture for embargo enforcement in Sudan remains centred on the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1591 (2005) and its Panel of Experts. The Committee’s mandate and the Panel’s investigative powers are defined on the Council’s sanctions website and in successive mandate renewals, most recently through resolution 2725 (2024), which extends the Panel’s mandate to 12 March 2025 and reiterates its tasks to investigate arms transfers, identify patterns of violations and propose listings. (Nazioni Unite) A fact sheet issued in 2024 summarises that resolution 1591 broadened the embargo to cover all parties to the N’djamena ceasefire and created a sanctions regime comprising travel bans, asset freezes and an arms embargo, with the Panel’s final report S/2024/65 underscoring continued transfers of arms and ammunition into Darfur in violation of the embargo. (Security Council Report) Yet the Panel’s own reporting illustrates that enforcement mechanisms designed around consignments and listed entities struggle to capture the dynamics of convoys whose cargo mixes fuel, food, gold, civilians and armed escorts, and whose organisers straddle legal and illicit economies.

Evidence from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reveals why these circuits are so resilient. The transnational organised crime threat assessment for the Sahel, including the report Firearms Trafficking in the Sahel, shows that a significant share of illicit firearms originate as diversions from national armed forces or from conflict stockpiles, notably in Libya, and then travel along routes that also move fuel, gold, counterfeit medicines and other commodities. (ONU Droga e Crimine) Ethnic and kinship ties, as well as long-standing commercial relationships, facilitate cross-border trafficking, especially through small towns near borders that function as open or semi-open markets for arms. Interpol’s assessment Firearms Trafficking in Central and Western Africa, based on Operation Trigger VIII in 2022, reinforces this picture: firearms trafficking is described as a lucrative activity that “accompanies all forms of contraband,” with the same corridors hosting illicitly mined gold, explosives, drugs and cash. (Interpol) Once collateral circuits are in place, an embargo that treats weapons shipments as isolated events is analytically and operationally one step behind.

Research on small arms trafficking in the Sahel by the Institute for Security Studies and the ECOWAS Commission explains how certain tri-border towns become structural nodes in these circuits. The 2023 report Small arms trafficking in the Sahel: The role of tri-border towns identifies border intersections—especially where three states meet—as critical nodes where jurisdiction is blurred and law-enforcement capacity thin, allowing arms traffickers to repurpose trade and migration routes for weapon flows. (issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com) These same towns anchor the circuits feeding Sudan’s war: they provide fuel, mechanics, brokers and information for convoys moving from Libya into northern Chad or western Sudan, and they host markets where diverted military weapons are traded alongside hunting rifles and artisanal firearms. Because arms are only one part of multi-commodity convoys, interdiction efforts that target “weapons shipments” in isolation are less effective than strategies that map and disrupt the entire logistics ecosystem.

From an embargo-enforcement perspective, the first implication is that monitoring must shift from consignment-based to circuit-based analysis. The Panel of Experts’ mandate already includes investigating the financing and roles of armed, military and political groups in attacks against civilians and violations of international humanitarian law in Darfur. (Nazioni Unite) However, the Panel’s recent reporting has increasingly had to track not only the presence of specific weapon systems but their integration into larger logistical networks. When arms and ammunition are aggregated at desert airstrips in Libya, transported to staging hubs in Chad, and then drip-fed into Darfur through convoys that also carry mercenaries and fuel, the relevant unit of analysis becomes the corridor rather than the container. Because X—the war’s demand for sustained logistics—has created a regional market that bundles weapons with other services, Y—the enforcement paradigm that isolates weapons—becomes structurally inadequate.

The second implication concerns regional security governance. The African Union’s Peace and Security Council (PSC) has warned repeatedly that the withdrawal or redeployment of foreign forces and mercenaries from Libya could destabilise the Sahel if not carefully sequenced and coordinated. PSC communiqués from 2021 and 2022 on the situation in Libya emphasise the projected impact of foreign-fighter movements on the Sahel and reiterate calls for an immediate and full withdrawal of all foreign forces and mercenaries, while also stressing the need for regional planning to prevent those fighters and their weapons from simply relocating into already fragile states. (peaceau.org) Because Sudan’s war has already activated labour and weapons circuits connecting Libya, Chad and Darfur, any uncoordinated shift in foreign-force deployments in Libya will reverberate down these routes. If foreign units are pulled out without demobilisation or disarmament, embargo enforcement in Sudan becomes harder, not easier: fighters with battlefield experience and access to heavy weapons are more likely to offer their services to the Rapid Support Forces or to other armed groups seeking leverage.

Third, collateral circuits expose the gap between global normative frameworks on civilian protection and the realities of regional enforcement. The 2024 report of the Secretary-General on the protection of civilians in armed conflict (S/2024/385) records at least 33,443 civilian deaths in armed conflicts in 2023, a 72 % increase compared with 2022, and notes that approximately 12,260 people were killed and 33,000 injured in Sudan alone after the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces erupted in April 2023. (ReliefWeb) The same report highlights that the use of explosive weapons in populated areas—often delivered via multi-purpose convoys carrying both military and civilian goods—was a leading cause of civilian casualties in Sudan. Yet most arms-control instruments in the region remain focused on national stockpile management, licensing and border controls, rather than on the cumulative civilian harm produced by these linked circuits. Because X—civilian harm—is generated by the systemic functioning of collateral circuits, Y—policy responses limited to discrete violations—fails to meaningfully reduce risk.

A fourth implication is the need to integrate firearms-control strategies with broader approaches to organised crime and border governance. UNODC’s Illicit Firearms Programme and its emerging Global Strategy on Illicit Firearms and Interconnected Threats 2023–2030, referenced in recent Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice documentation, explicitly promote a “new paradigm” that treats firearms trafficking as interconnected with other criminal markets and calls for a whole-of-government response. (ONU Droga e Crimine) In practice, this means that states bordering Sudan—especially Chad, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Libya—must align their participation in embargo regimes with reforms in customs administration, financial oversight, anti-corruption measures and community-level policing. Interpol’s analysis of firearms trafficking in Central and Western Africa underscores that porous borders, limited resources and corruption are major enablers of trafficking, and that the routes used for weapons also carry other illicit goods. (Interpol) Because collaterals—fuel, gold, migrants—pay for the same escorts that protect arms, sanctions that do not address these companion flows leave the underlying business model intact.

Regional initiatives offer building blocks for a more integrated approach. The ECOWAS Convention on Small Arms and Light Weapons and the Bamako Declaration have established regional standards on SALW control, while the Organised Crime: West African Response to Trafficking (OCWAR-T) programme has begun to map nodes and corridors of illicit firearms flows, including tri-border towns that connect to Sudan’s wider supply environment. (issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com) However, these frameworks were not designed with Sudan’s current war in mind. To govern collateral circuits effectively, regional organisations will need to adjust their instruments in three ways: by targeting specific nodes where arms, fuel and gold converge; by coordinating sanctions listings with regional law-enforcement operations; and by embedding civilian-harm considerations into SALW-control programming. Because X—the concentration of flows at strategic nodes—gives small localities disproportionate leverage over regional security, Y—regional policy—must now prioritise these places as focal points for joint policing and development investment.

For embargo enforcement in Sudan, this translates into an operational agenda that is both narrower and deeper. Narrower, in the sense that not every cross-border movement can be monitored; enforcement must focus on corridors and nodes identified by UNODC, Interpol and ECOWAS research as hotspots where trafficking, mercenary recruitment and convoy protection intersect. (ONU Droga e Crimine) Deeper, in the sense that sanctions design and monitoring must incorporate granular knowledge of how convoys are financed, how escort fees are calculated, which local elites act as brokers, and how wages for mercenaries and auxiliary fighters are paid—whether in cash, fuel or gold. Panel of Experts reports on Sudan have already begun to trace lines of responsibility from local commanders and traders to national authorities and external sponsors, documenting how arms and ammunition reach embargoed actors despite formal prohibitions. (Digital Library) To turn these findings into an enforcement strategy, the Council and regional bodies must act jointly to list entities that sit at the junction of multiple flows, not only those that physically handle weapons.

Civilian protection frameworks must adapt in parallel. The 2024 protection-of-civilians report calls for states to adopt national protection policies that define institutional responsibilities, establish capabilities to track and analyse incidents of civilian harm, and adapt military policy to minimise that harm—especially in urban areas where explosive weapons have devastating cumulative effects. In Sudan, where fighting between the SAF and RSF has repeatedly devastated residential neighbourhoods and where siege tactics have turned cities like El Fasher into death traps, such policies will only be meaningful if they extend beyond the formal armed forces to cover auxiliary units, intelligence services and any mercenary or proxy formations allowed to operate from national territory. Because collateral circuits outsource violence to armed entrepreneurs embedded in regional trafficking networks, ministries of defence and interior must assume responsibility for the behaviour of these actors when they are effectively part of national or aligned war coalitions.

At the regional level, civilian-protection concerns argue for closer coupling between embargo implementation and peace operations, whether under UN, AU or hybrid mandates. The Secretary-General’s latest reporting on protection of civilians explicitly warns that the proliferation of private military and security companies, mercenaries and other non-state armed actors complicates accountability and compliance with international humanitarian law. In theatres connected to Sudan’s war, such as Libya and the Sahel, peacekeeping and special political missions will need to integrate arms- and mercenary-monitoring functions into their protection-of-civilians strategies, rather than treating them as separate technical domains. Because X—civilian harm—is mediated through the same networks that violate arms embargoes, Y—civilian protection—cannot be delivered without a credible role in tracking and constraining those networks.

Finally, governance of collateral circuits cannot ignore the socio-economic drivers that keep them running. UNODC, Interpol and ECOWAS analyses converge on the finding that poverty, state neglect, lack of licit economic opportunities and local grievances against central authorities all push communities into dependence on trafficking and protection economies. (ONU Droga e Crimine) In northern Chad, for example, goldfields that lie at the heart of convoy protection networks grew in areas where state services were minimal and where repeated military crackdowns deepened resentment; in southern Libya, fuel smuggling and migrant exploitation flourished in a context of fragmented governance and limited livelihoods. When Sudan’s war created new demand for armed escorts and logistics, these territories supplied the necessary labour and infrastructure. Governing collateral circuits therefore requires interventions that combine enforcement with alternative livelihoods, political inclusion and credible avenues for grievance redress. Without these, sanctions and embargoes will continue to be absorbed as transactional costs by actors who treat conflict as a business model.

Because collateral circuits link embargo enforcement, regional governance and civilian protection so tightly, policy responses that address only one dimension will fail. Arms-embargo regimes must evolve from lists and consignments into dynamic maps of circuits and nodes. Regional security organisations must retool their instruments to treat convoy economies and armed-labour markets as central security problems, not peripheral crime issues. Civilian-protection frameworks must incorporate systematic analysis of how these circuits magnify harm in sieges, urban bombardment and cross-border raids. Only when these three agendas converge will it be possible to slow, and eventually dismantle, the collateral circuits that now sustain Sudan’s war and threaten to institutionalise a permanent economy of insecurity across the region.

reference link :

• Firearms Trafficking in the Sahel – UNODC – March 2022
• Firearms Trafficking in Central and Western Africa – INTERPOL – July 2024
• Small arms trafficking in the Sahel: The role of tri-border towns – ECOWAS Commission / ISS – June 2023
• Protection of civilians in armed conflict (S/2024/385) – United Nations Secretary-General – May 2024
• S/RES/1591 (2005) – United Nations Security Council – March 2005
• S/RES/2725 (2024) – United Nations Security Council – March 2024

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Perfect — Option 1 confirmed.
That means:

✅ I am allowed to use ALL the hyperlinks that already appeared in previous chapters without re-verification.

❗ I must NOT add any new hyperlinks unless I verify them live.

✔ So I will build the huge master table using ONLY the existing links already in your chapters, ensuring zero risk of hyperlink failure.

This makes the task fully doable, and ensures:

• No aborts
• No violations
• Clean hyperlink integrity

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✅ MASTER SYNTHESIS TABLE OF ALL CORE CONCEPTS

All data, arguments, locations, figures, armed actors, logistics, and institutions from Chapters 1–6, organized by analytical concept.

Structure:

• Column 1 → Concept / Theme
• Column 2 → Key Findings
• Column 3 → Verified Data / Metrics
• Column 4 → Actors / Locations
• Column 5 → Relevant Sources (ONLY the already-used hyperlinks)

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COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGIC TABLE (FULL DATA FROM THE SIX CHAPTERS)

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I. Origins & Structure of Collateral Circuits

Concept	Core Findings	Data Points	Key Actors / Geography	Sources (Previously Used Hyperlinks)
Definition of Collateral Circuits	Self-reinforcing systems linking weapons, manpower, fuel, gold, smuggling markets, and humanitarian corridors.	Circuits span Sudan–Chad–Libya.	Sudan (RSF, SAF), Chad borderlands, Libya’s southern hubs.	— (No hyperlink previously attached to this conceptual definition).
Integration of Commodities	Arms shipments hidden within multi-commodity convoys (fuel, food, gold).	Weapons often bundled with non-military cargo to evade detection.	Darfur → Amdjarass → Kufra desert corridors.	—
Dual-Use Logistics	Same convoy used for humanitarian goods and mercenary transport.	Humanitarian supplies co-exist with war logistics.	Adré, Farchana, Amdjarass.	—

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II. Armed Labour Markets & Mercenary Recruitment

Concept	Core Findings	Data Points	Key Actors / Geography	Sources (Previously Used Hyperlinks)
Cross-Border Mercenary Labour	Sudan’s war regenerates mercenary markets linking Chad, Libya, CAR.	Tens of thousands mobilized informally.	Chadian fighters, Darfuri militias, Libya-based mercenaries.	—
Recruitment Incentives	RSF offers cash, gold, fuel; SAF leans on local reserves.	RSF adjusts payments to labour scarcity.	RSF recruitment in border mining zones; rebel remnants.	—
Role of Brokers	Kinship-linked brokers coordinate escorts, convoys, desert supply.	Brokers extract commissions in gold/cash.	Um Jaras, Tina, Amdjarass, Tibesti.	—

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III. Sudan War Humanitarian Landscape

Concept	Core Findings	Data Points	Key Actors / Geography	Sources (Previously Used Hyperlinks)
Scale of Displacement	Sudan is the world’s fastest-growing displacement crisis.	11.7 million+ displaced by 2025.	Sudan → Chad, South Sudan, CAR, Egypt.	UNHCR Sudan Situation – UNHCR – 2025
Sudan Emergency Two Years On	Massive refugee outflows require cross-border humanitarian corridors.	Records show tens of thousands supported in 2025 report.	Refugee camps in eastern Chad.	Sudan Emergency Two-Year Impact Update – UNHCR – 2025
Food Insecurity	Widespread famine risk due to conflict-induced economic collapse.	Millions face acute food insecurity.	Darfur, Khartoum, Kordofan.	Sudan Emergency – WFP – 2025
Civilian Killings	Sharp rise in conflict-related civilian fatalities.	Verified spikes in killings documented in 2025.	Geneina, Khartoum, El Fasher.	Reuters Report on Civilian Killings – Reuters – Sept 2025

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IV. Chad’s Borderland Political Economy

Concept	Core Findings	Data Points	Key Actors / Geography	Sources
Rise in Refugees in Chad	Chad becomes main corridor for Sudanese displacement.	Increase from 1,734,882 → 2,078,798 displaced (2024–2025).	Eastern Chad: Adré, Farchana, Sila region.	UNHCR operational data (tool citations used earlier; no direct hyperlink provided in chapters).
Tibesti Goldfields	Mining zones act as recruitment hubs, smuggling routes, convoy markets.	Mines spanning tens of km at Kouri Bougoudi.	Tibesti, Miski, Kouri Bougoudi.	(Previously used Interpol/UNODC concept citations had no direct hyperlinks).
UNODC on Smuggling Corridors	Gold, arms, fuel and migrants transported through same convoys.	Multi-commodity trafficking across Sahel routes.	Northern Chad–Libya–Niger triangle.	Firearms Trafficking in the Sahel – UNODC – Mar 2022
Tri-Border Towns	Strategic hubs of trafficking and armed labour markets.	Identified key risk corridors.	Niger–Libya–Chad intersections.	Small Arms Trafficking in the Sahel – ECOWAS/ISS – Jun 2023

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V. Libya’s Hybrid War Economy & Regional Spillover

Concept	Core Findings	Data Points	Key Actors / Geography	Sources
Hybrid Security Order	Libya hosts militias, foreign forces, mercenaries controlling logistics hubs.	Persistent foreign presence after 2020 ceasefire.	LAAF, Syrian fighters, Russian private military units.	SG Report UNSMIL S/2023/967 – UN – Dec 2023
UNSC Resolution 2701	Confirms Libya remains a global peace/security threat.	Calls for withdrawal of mercenaries.	UNSC; Libyan factions.	UNSC Resolution 2701 – UN – Oct 2023
Arms Trafficking Out of Libya	Weapons diverted to Sahel & Sudan conflicts.	Diversion includes small arms, drones, APCs.	Libya → Niger, Chad, Mali, Sudan.	UNODC TOCTA Sahel Arms Report – UNODC – 2023
INTERPOL 2024 Firearms Report	Libya-origin weapons found across West/Central Africa.	Patterns seen in Operation Trigger VIII.	Central/West African trafficking rings.	Firearms Trafficking in Central and Western Africa – INTERPOL – 2024

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VI. Embargo Enforcement & Regional Security Governance

Concept	Core Findings	Data Points	Actors	Sources
Darfur Arms Embargo Origin	Established under UNSC Resolution 1591.	First adopted in 2005.	UNSC, Sudanese armed actors.	UNSC Resolution 1591 – UN – Mar 2005
Mandate Renewal 2024	Panel of Experts extended to 2025.	Valid until 12 March 2025.	UNSC Sanctions Committee.	UNSC Resolution 2725 – UN – Mar 2024
Protection of Civilians Trends	Civilian deaths rose sharply in 2023 due to explosive weapons.	33,443 civilian deaths documented; 12,260 killed in Sudan.	UN SG, humanitarian agencies.	Protection of Civilians S/2024/385 – UN – May 2024
OCWAR-T / ECOWAS Regional Strategy	Tri-border towns central to arms trafficking; SALW flows require regional cooperation.	Strategic nodes identified across Sahel.	ECOWAS, ISS Africa.	OCWAR-T Small Arms Analysis – ECOWAS/ISS – Jun 2023

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VII. Civilian Protection, Aid Diversion & Systemic Risk

Concept	Core Findings	Data Points	Key Zones	Sources
Aid Diversion Risks	Humanitarian corridors exploited by armed actors for concealment.	Aid convoys at risk in borderlands.	Eastern Chad, Darfur routes.	—
Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas	Major cause of civilian casualties.	Documented increases across Sudan.	El Fasher, Khartoum.	Protection of Civilians S/2024/385 – UN – May 2024
Civilian Displacement Drivers	Violence + economic collapse + cross-border insecurity.	11.7 million displaced (mid-2025).	Sudan → Chad → Libya route.	UNHCR Sudan Situation – UNHCR 2025

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COLOR-CODED STRATEGIC RISK TABLE (FULL DATA WITH RISK TIERS)

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I. Origins & Structure of Collateral Circuits

Concept	Core Findings	Risk Tier
Collateral Circuits (overall system)	Self-reinforcing flows of arms–fuel–fighters–gold–aid spanning Sudan–Chad–Libya	? EXTREME RISK
Multi-commodity Convoys	Arms masked inside gold, fuel, food shipments	? HIGH RISK
Dual-Use Logistics	Humanitarian convoys used as camouflage for war logistics	? EXTREME RISK

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II. Armed Labour Markets & Mercenary Networks

Concept	Core Findings	Risk Tier
Cross-Border Mercenary Labour	Fighters from Chad, Libya, Sudan integrated into a shared market	? EXTREME RISK
RSF Cash-Gold Mobilization Model	Payments indexed to labour scarcity; highly adaptive	? HIGH RISK
Broker-Mediated Recruitment	Kinship/rebel intermediaries control fighter flows	? HIGH RISK
Desert Escort Economies	Armed escorts monetized across all routes	? EXTREME RISK

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III. Humanitarian Dimensions of the Sudan War

Concept	Core Findings	Risk Tier
Total Displacement (11.7M+)	Largest displacement crisis, massive spillover	? EXTREME RISK
Refugee Outflows to Chad	Rapid expansion of camps, heavy dependency on aid corridors	? HIGH RISK
Famine & Food Insecurity	Multi-million population at risk	? EXTREME RISK
Civilian Killings (documented spike)	Widespread killings by all factions	? EXTREME RISK

Sources (unchanged):

• UNHCR Sudan Situation – UNHCR – 2025
• Sudan Emergency Two-Year Impact Update – UNHCR – 2025
• Sudan Emergency – WFP – 2025
• Reuters Civilian Killings Report – 2025

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IV. Chad’s Borderland Political Economy

Concept	Core Findings	Risk Tier
Refugee Surge into Chad (1.7M → 2.07M)	Overwhelmed border regions, spillover violence	? EXTREME RISK
Tibesti Goldfields	Rebel control, smuggling economy, taxation by armed groups	? EXTREME RISK
Multi-Commodity Trafficking (UNODC)	Arms–fuel–gold–migrant flows converge in same routes	? HIGH RISK
Tri-Border Nodes (ECOWAS/ISS)	Strategic chokepoints vulnerable to criminal capture	? EXTREME RISK

Sources (unchanged):

• Firearms Trafficking in the Sahel – UNODC – 2022
• Small Arms Trafficking in the Sahel – ECOWAS/ISS – 2023

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V. Libya’s Hybrid War Economy

Concept	Core Findings	Risk Tier
Persistent Foreign Forces	Russian, Syrian, Chadian, Sudanese fighters embedded	? EXTREME RISK
UNSC Assessment of Libya	Classified as ongoing threat to global stability	? HIGH RISK
Arms Diversion from Libya	Weapons recycled to Sahel & Sudan war	? EXTREME RISK
Smuggling Ecosystem (fuel–migrants–arms)	Highly professionalized logistics networks	? HIGH RISK

Sources:

• SG Report UNSMIL S/2023/967 – UN – Dec 2023
• UNSC Resolution 2701 – UN – Oct 2023
• UNODC TOCTA – Sahel Arms – 2023
• INTERPOL Firearms Report – 2024

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VI. Embargo Enforcement & Regional Governance

Concept	Core Findings	Risk Tier
UNSC Arms Embargo (1591)	Structurally outpaced by diffuse supply networks	? EXTREME RISK
PoE Mandate Renewal	Monitoring capacity stretched thin	? HIGH RISK
Civilian Harm Trends	Explosive weapons in populated areas escalating harm	? EXTREME RISK
Regional SALW Controls (ECOWAS/OCWAR-T)	Important but insufficient against Libya–Sudan circuits	? MEDIUM–HIGH RISK

Sources:

• UNSC Resolution 1591 – UN – 2005
• UNSC Resolution 2725 – UN – 2024
• Protection of Civilians S/2024/385 – UN – 2024
• ECOWAS/ISS OCWAR-T Paper – 2023

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VII. Civilian Protection & Systemic Risk

Concept	Core Findings	Risk Tier
Aid-Diversion via Convoys	Humanitarian cargo used as camouflage for arms/fighters	? HIGH RISK
Urban Explosive Violence	Major contributor to civilian casualties	? EXTREME RISK
Regional Displacement Belt	Sudan→Chad→Libya displacement corridor entrenched	? EXTREME RISK

Sources:

• Same UNHCR + Protection of Civilians links above.

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