Raw materials, geopolitics and the supply chain of genocide

Let’s stop hiding behind language that has outlived its usefulness. Those familiar phrases – recycled, polished, and repeated – don’t clarify anything any-more; they blur responsibility.
    There is nothing inherently confusing here, nothing so complicated that it escapes understanding. Calling it “complex” or labelling regions as “fragile” doesn’t explain reality – it softens it. It creates distance. It turns something concrete and accountable into something vague and untouchable.
    And above all, this is not one of those carefully crafted diplomatic stories designed to comfort audiences and preserve appearances. It’s not meant to reassure – it’s meant to be seen clearly, without the cushion of euphemisms.
    This is logistics. A system. A pipeline. A supply chain.
    Efficient. Streamlined. Globalised. Raw materials go in. Bodies come out.
    Profits circulate.
    And somewhere in the middle – air-conditioned, well-dressed, fluent in the language of “diplomacy” – sit the people who made it all possible, issuing statements while quietly billing genocide as a line item.

Start in Sudan.

The RSF¹ didn’t wake up one day and decide to industrialise atrocity for fun. They were enabled. Armed. Funded. Enter the UAE – a country that has somehow perfected the rare trick of being both a five-star vacation spot and the FedEx of other people’s wars.
    The arrangement was almost beautiful in its ugliness:

• Weapons, cash, logistics go in.
• Gold comes out of RSF-controlled mines.
• That gold gets refined, monetised, and politely rebranded somewhere far from the screaming.

Seventy per cent of Sudan’s gold. Traveling first-class through this pipeline. refined, sanitised, and reborn in global markets where no one asks inconvenient questions about fingerprints.
    If you’ve ever wondered what genocide looks like when run through Excel, this is it: clean columns, upward trends, and absolutely no mention of mass graves. Then geopolitics did what geopolitics always does: got bored and wandered off.
    February 28. Iran and Israel start exchanging missiles like toxic Valentine’s Day gifts. Suddenly the UAE has bigger worries than its Sudanese investment portfolio. Supply lines dry up. Battlefields shift. And we are all reminded of a simple truth: even genocide depends on good logistics and financial pipelines: No trucks, no bullets. No bullets, no “complex conflict.”

But Sudan isn’t just about gold. It’s geography.

A corridor. A choke point. A place where you can watch, intercept, or quietly reroute whatever flows between Iran, Gaza, and everywhere else.
    Which explains the obsession with alignment. With “stability.” With making sure Sudan fits neatly into the expanding architecture of normalised relationships. Therefore, a Sudan waving the Abraham Accords flag – was so desirable.
    Indeed! The Abraham Accords brought to you by the United States in 2020. Marketed as “peace.” Delivered as a clearance sale. Fine print included.
    The deal was simple: Arab states normalise with Israel. Israel gets legitimacy, spies, and weapons markets. The UAE gets shiny military tech and Western approval stamps. And Palestine? Palestine gets a beautifully illustrated pamphlet about coexistence – printed while homes are demolished in real time.
    Before the Accords, Arab opposition – inconsistent as it was – gave Palestinians some leverage. After? That leverage disappeared faster than a press release following a bombing.
    Peace is very profitable when you remove the people it’s supposed to protect.

Now zoom out. Because the architecture scales.

Welcome to the Congo. Same script. Different cast:

• Rwanda backs it proxy the M23 armed group and it satellites secure mineral-rich land, from the Rubaya area for example…
• Civilians absorb the cost – rape, displacement, the usual vocabulary politely filed under “humanitarian concern.”
• And beneath the chaos: coltan, cobalt, Lithium, gold or nobium… the minerals humming the heart of your phone, your laptop, your entire technological power, your digital existence and your entire green revolution – get extracted.

And then? Laundered through Rwanda. Exported to the UAE, to Asia, the US and Europe. Why disrupt a functioning business model?
    Just when you think the moral floor couldn’t possibly sink lower, someone proposes a “peace deal.” Enter Donald Trump, brokering what can only be described as a minerals-for-peace arrangement. Diplomatic code for: “We will pressure the perpetrators – lightly, with a feather – while ensuring the extraction continues smoothly.”
    Rwanda President Kagame’s soldiers despite well documented links to atrocities and high scale massacres of Congolese civilians, walks away not as a suspect but as a partner. A peace partner.
    That phrase deserves its own wing in the Museum of Audacious Euphemisms.

So, let’s connect the dots, since that’s apparently still controversial.

The same network: Arms Sudan’s RSF, Profits from Sudanese gold, Buys Israeli weapons, Benefits from the political architecture that sidelines Palestine, Launders Congolese minerals extracted through blood for their “green shift”.
    Different continents. Same spreadsheet. A loop. A franchise. With regional managers. This is not coincidence. It is design.
    And then, inevitably, someone raises a hand and says:
    “But what about the Conflict in Nigeria?” or the Niger, or Mali … in Mozambique? Venezuela? or Cuba? “But what about the Christians?” “But what about …”
    As if these are separate conversations. As if the world is not one interconnected marketplace where suffering is simply categorised by region for easier inventory management.
    Here’s the uncomfortable truth: these are not competing tragedies. They are coordinated outcomes. So, when people say “Free Palestine,” it’s not a slogan floating in isolation.
    It’s a pressure point too. Because Palestine sits at the symbolic and political centre of this machine as well – the place where normalisation, militarisation, and profit have been most aggressively fused and publicly justified.
    Pull that thread. Really pull it. The rest starts to unravel. The deals. The alliances. The convenient silences. And suddenly the supply chain doesn’t look so stable anymore.
    But of course, that would require something radical. Not another summit. Not another carefully worded statement about “deep concern.” Just one simple act:
    Calling the system by its name.
    And refusing – collectively, stubbornly – to keep buying what it sells. And never to be its customer again. Cancel the subscription. Permanently. •

¹ The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are a Sudanese paramilitary group which, until his overthrow, were under the command of President Omar al-Bashir and subsequently formed part of the military government. Since mid-April 2023, the RSF have been attempting to gain control of Sudanese territory; in many parts of the country, they are attacking facilities belonging to the Sudanese armed forces and the government. Analysts estimate that there are between 70,000 and 100,000 RSF fighters in Sudan. The RSF was formed in 2013 and consists largely of the Arab-nationalist Janjaweed militia, which fought on the side of the Sudanese government in the Darfur conflict and is held responsible for numerous human rights violations and war crimes. Its commander is Lieutenant General Mohammed Hamdan Daglo. (Editor’s note)

Source: https://rboneza.substack.com of 22 April 2026

* Raïs Neza Boneza (born 1979, Zaire – now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) is a writer, poet, and peace researcher based in Norway. His life traces the fault lines he writes about: from eastern and western Congo to the Africans Great Lakes, across borders where history rarely stays still. Multilingual and transnational, he works across African and European languages, carrying oral memory into written form. He has collaborated with Johan Galtung, one of the founders of modern peace research, and continues to operate at the intersection of scholarship, activism, and artistic expression. Beyond his roles as consultant and lecturer for international NGOs and institutions, he is co-convener of Transcend Global Network, a global platform dedicated to peace, development, and environmental justice. His work moves between poetry and political analysis, exile and return, memory and resistance. Selected publications include Peace by African’s Peaceful Means (2005), Nomad: Sounds of Exile (2006), Nomad: A Refugee Poet (2019), White Eldorado, Black Fever (2019), Black Emeralds (2020), and Formless (2024).