Now two developments have combined to create a chance of ending the war —albeit a slim one. Since America attacked the Islamic Republic in February, chaos in the Gulf has mostly made Sudan an even lower priority than usual. Having a shared foe in Iran did little to dampen the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the UAE that is playing out in Sudan. But as Dwight Eisenhower, a former American president, supposedly once said: when a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it. As the Iran war expands, attention is moving from the Strait of Hormuz, which remains closed for the moment, to the Red Sea, which may soon be. In recent weeks the Houthis, an Iran-backed militia in Yemen, have launched attacks on oil tankers linked to Saudi Arabia, leading to a sharp reduction in shipping through the sea’s Bab al-Mandab strait. So far, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have treated their contest in the region as zero-sum. Yet recent attacks in the Red Sea have further underlined the importance of Sudan’s coastline for Saudi Arabia, reviving its interest in the war. That could make it costlier and riskier for the UAE to keep up its backing for the RSF, which could open the door to a truce in Sudan becoming part of a wider settlement in the Middle East. The second factor is a turn in fortunes on the battlefield. In the past two weeks the SAF has made its most telling breakthroughs since its return to Khartoum 18 months ago. In late July it regained control of a key highway connecting the capital to el-Obeid, a strategic regional hub which the RSF has been trying to capture for months. It has also retaken Kurmuk, a town on the border with Ethiopia. Although it may now be tempted to double down on trying to defeat the RSF, the army has also long argued that it wants to negotiate from strength —a position it now holds. Moreover, the longer the search for a ceasefire is delayed, the less likely it will be to stick. The two sides comprise dozens of militias. The SAF knows that, as the war drags on, more power will drain away to groups with a stake in perpetuating the war economy. Fragmentation will follow, whoever is in charge. True, the chances of a successful ceasefire are small. But the time for a diplomatic push is now. For the next month or so, Sudan’s rainy season
means that there will be a lull in the fighting. A “humanitarian truce” proposed by Massad Boulos, Mr Trump’s overstretched Africa envoy, has a better chance of holding while the battle lines are relatively static. America and Europe should lean on their Gulf allies to press the belligerents they support to talk directly to each other for the first time. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey should urge the SAF to stop insisting the RSF disarm and demobilise before negotiations can begin. The UAE should use its influence over the RSF to hold it to its professed desire for a ceasefire—even if that means abandoning the ambition to rule all of Sudan. The Somalia-style trajectory towards further fragmentation would perpetuate the suffering and instability the war is causing. This is the last best chance to prevent it. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/08/06/how-to-end-sudans-brutal-forgotten- conflict
Letters to the editor Also this week, household income, Africa’s cities, Claudette Colvin, pubs, prediction markets, AI-generated text Aug 6th 2026 Letters are welcome via email to letters@economist.comFind out more about how we process your letter Elon Musk insisted that “zero” children had died in Africa because of the Trump administration’s cuts to USAID (The Insider interview, July 23rd). Mr Musk argued that other organisations could have stepped in. “They are capable of acting very quickly,” he said, “and if they didn’t, I would say they’re equally responsible.” The effects of the cuts were in fact visible on the ground, but also large enough to see from space. Researchers tracked satellite night-time lights around 1,374 former USAID project sites in 50 African countries. The
places that had depended most on that money dimmed relative to the rest, and the share of people living in food crises rose. Whether the number of lives lost is zero, ten or ten thousand, Mr Musk’s defence rests on a morally bankrupt premise: that one is absolved of responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of one’s actions so long as someone else could, in principle, come along afterwards and clean up the mess. Grant him the impossible, that not one person died, and the moral reasoning is still wrong. Moreover, even if the Gates Foundation or MacKenzie Scott had been able to fill the gaps in emergency aid to Africa, it would have diverted dollars from their programmes tackling malaria, tuberculosis, childhood nutrition and so forth. Philanthropic budgets are finite. Foundations exist to fund what governments will not, not to serve as insurers of last resort whenever a government abandons commitments it already made. Could USAID have been better? Of course. Even its most ardent supporters had ideas for improving it. I did not join as chief economist because I saw a bastion of efficiency. I joined because I wanted to help make it better. And when I arrived I found plenty of people inside with the talent and drive to do exactly that, alongside the expected administrative, bureaucratic and political obstacles that made it hard, but not impossible, to do so. While the USAID debate will fade, Mr Musk’s philosophy should be loudly and for ever rejected. Dean KarlanProfessor of
and financeNorthwestern UniversityEvanston, Illinois It may be a bit premature to take Mr Musk’s forecasts seriously. Consider his record on full self-driving cars, for which there is a devoted Wikipedia page. In 2013 he said 90% of the miles in a Tesla car would be self-driven by 2016. In 2015 he predicted that Tesla would have complete autonomous driving by 2018. In 2016 the date slipped to 2019. Since 2020, it has been “this year” every year. The latest prediction is December 2026, a decade later than he first expected.
Mr Musk is a formidable innovator. But on self-driving cars, as well as Mars, data centres in space, robots and AI, we should treat his prophecies with caution. Patrick GradyBrussels You dismissed Mr Musk’s suggestion that chess and gardening might sustain the human spirit in an age of AI, noting that a “feeling of being superfluous can lead to misery and moral decay” (“Should you be afraid of Elon Musk?”, July 25th). Permit a dispatch from a profession that has been economically superfluous for more than a century. Since the phonograph, every note an orchestra plays has existed in a superior recording at negligible cost. By the logic of usefulness, live orchestras should have disbanded around 1910. Instead the halls keep filling, and, more telling, people keep joining amateur choirs. And more people play chess today than before the machines became unbeatable in the game. Being surpassed emptied the game of careerism, not of meaning. You are right to press questions on how to finance the transition to AI, tame the upheaval and restrain AI-powered authoritarians. But on the question of what humans will do when nothing needs doing, the research is being conducted weekly, in choirs, chess clubs and allotments. DAVID WOODARDConductorTampere, Finland Mr Musk’s Martian aspirations aren’t all crazy. His resources could fund a fleet of Starship rockets, each carrying robots along with solar-energy collectors and other equipment. So, within his lifetime, Mars could be populated with thousands of robots, impervious to heat or cold, doing construction, mining or exploration. Few humans would aspire to end their days in the hostile Martian environment. But Mr Musk does. He has said he would like to “die on Mars, just not on impact”. He could ensure unique privileges. His regiments of robots could be tasked with creating a domed mansion to accommodate him, receive him royally on his arrival, and service his needs in his final years. After death his body could be preserved in a mausoleum that would outlast
any artefact on Earth, a uniquely durable memorial to human aspirations and follies that should satisfy any megalomaniacal aspirations. Lord Martin ReesFormer Astronomer RoyalTrinity CollegeUniversity of Cambridge Please could Mr Musk explain what “an age of amazing abundance” means in real, practical terms. Does he envisage endless fields of wheat and rice and fruit-laden orchards, or simply freely available techno bits and pieces directing our every move? A Musk-style utopian future is even less alluring than Aldous Huxley’s “Island” or William Morris’s “News from Nowhere”. Sheila CouttsDenmead, Hampshire Mr Musk’s forecasts may or may not prove correct, but I note that he cited Iain M. Banks’s novels for a glimpse into what things might be like. He also mentioned the importance of AI models having “values” (though he didn’t say what those values would be). Ian McEwan’s novel, “Machines Like Me”, about a humanoid robot called Adam, explores the tensions in values between humans and machines. The theme of the book is evident also in your article about China wanting to end AI romances (“No more bots”, July 18th), as Adam (robot), Charlie (human) and Miranda (also human) form a love triangle. Naomi StanfordLondon More letters in response to our interview with Elon Musk can be read at economist.com/letters/musk It is true that the share of American households where female income exceeds male income remains rather low (“For richer or poorer”, July 25th). But your interpretation in terms of social norms can hardly be considered as final. For one thing, the 50% threshold, whereby the distribution of wives’ share of household income drops sharply at the point where they begin to out earn their husbands, seems to be specific to data in which incomes are self-reported.