Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, an article on some of the stakes in Sudan’s war:

The fate of some of Africa’s most important strategic resources is hanging in the balance as Sudan’s top two generals vie for supremacy, from the waters of the Nile and access to crucial shipping lanes to some of the continent’s largest gold mines.

These riches have long caught the eye of outside powers, including Russia, Egypt and the petrostates of the Gulf. Now, some are trying to influence the outcome of the conflict, by offering weapons and other military support to the rival factions, moves that could drag out a lethal confrontation between Sudan’s military and a state-sponsored militia in which hundreds of people have already been killed.

Thousands have been wounded and many more have either fled or remain trapped in their homes amid airstrikes and street-level exchanges of gun and artillery fire that continued on the first day of Eid, when Muslims around the world celebrate the end of Ramadan.

Russian paramilitary group Wagner has offered heavy weapons to the Rapid Support Forces, the militia run by Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, The Wall Street Journal has reported. A person close to the general said he has declined the offer for now.

Gen. Dagalo’s rival, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the commander of Sudan’s military and the country’s de facto head of state, meanwhile, has received support from neighboring Egypt, the Journal has also reported.

Sudan’s allure has brought suffering to its people in the past, including during Britain’s colonial conquest of the country in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Now, experts and Western officials worry, the two warring generals’ geopolitical entanglements could plunge the country—which is larger than France, Germany, Spain and Italy combined—deeper into a messy conflict and further destabilize a strategic but fragile region.

“Sudan really sits at the intersection of the Arab and the African worlds,” said Giorgio Cafiero, chief executive of Gulf State Analytics, a Washington-based risk consulting firm. “If a country can obtain a lot of clout in Sudan, this offers many opportunities for local supply chains, trade routes and networking links to other African countries.”

For Sudan’s more than 45 million people, the conflict between the two generals and their armed factions exacerbates a devastating humanitarian and economic crisis that, even before the fighting started, had one in three Sudanese suffering hunger. The promise of a more peaceful future that came with the fall of dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019 is in tatters.

But for the two generals’ external allies, their battle for political and military dominance could decide what happens to billions of dollars in investments, and their ability to project power across the region.

Egypt has a more immediate interest than most in how the drama unfolds.

Sudan’s northern neighbor wants Khartoum’s help to oppose a massive dam and reservoir farther south on the Nile by Ethiopia. Cairo fears the project could choke off the freshwater for millions of Egyptians and cripple its agriculture.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi has thrown his weight behind Gen. Burhan, who, like the Egyptian leader, seized power through a coup. He has already sent jet fighters and pilots to support Sudan’s air force, bolstering Gen. Burhan’s control over the country’s skies and his ability to strike his rivals’ positions from the air.

In addition to Wagner’s offer of weapons, including shoulder-mounted antiaircraft missiles, Gen. Dagalo has received at least one shipment of ammunition from a Libyan militia leader backed by Russia and the United Arab Emirates, the Journal also reported.

There were no indications that Moscow or the U.A.E. had a hand in ordering the reinforcements sent by Khalifa Haftar, the commander of a faction that controls eastern Libya. But both nations have in recent years forged close ties to Gen. Dagalo, a former camel herder better known by his nickname, Hemedti.

Gen. Dagalo’s RSF paramilitary group grew out of the Janjaweed militia, which the U.S. and others have accused of war crimes in Sudan’s southwestern Darfur region, before aligning with Gen. Burhan to topple Mr. Bashir.

The U.A.E., like Saudi Arabia, has spent billions of dollars buying up farmlands irrigated by Sudan’s section of the Nile to secure food for its own desert-dwelling population. It hired the RSF to fight in Yemen, supplying the militia with extra resources to take on Gen. Burhan and the military.

In December, a U.A.E.-based consortium signed a $6 billion deal to build a new port facility on Sudan’s Red Sea coast.

Sudan’s ports are the only point of export for around 135,000 barrels of oil a day produced inside the country and neighboring South Sudan. They are also the main gateway for goods to and from landlocked, mineral-rich Central African nations such as Chad and the Central African Republic.

For the U.S., the bigger concern is Russia’s potential impact on the conflict and Moscow’s ability to use Sudan to exert power in the region and help fund its campaign in Ukraine.

Gen. Dagalo has close ties with Russia and the Kremlin is awaiting final signoff from Sudan’s leadership on a 25-year lease for a naval base in Port Sudan, around 1,000 miles north of the biggest U.S. military base in Africa. The Russian base would hand the Kremlin’s warships access to the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean in the middle of Moscow’s greatest confrontation with the U.S. and Europe in a generation.

U.S. military officials say they believe that Russia sees the base as a way to facilitate the extraction of gold, rare-earth minerals and other resources from Sudan and Central Africa.

Companies controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a key ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the owner of Wagner, have been mining gold in Sudan for several years, according to the U.S. government, the European Union and Sudanese officials. The companies rely on RSF fighters to protect the sites in east and west Sudan, Sudanese officials and diplomats in the region say.

Wagner has also provided weapons and training to the militia, these people say, while Gen. Dagalo’s family controls a company that processes tailings from Russian-run mines.

In response to questions from the Journal, Mr. Prigozhin said the paramilitary group “is in no way involved in the Sudanese conflict.”

A statement posted this week on the official channel of Mr. Prigozhin’s holding company, Concord, on messaging app Telegram said that none of his affiliated companies had any financial interests in Sudan.

An adviser to Gen. Dagalo said the general denies working with Wagner.

Russian investments have helped increase Sudan’s annual gold production to around 100 tons in 2021 from as little as 30 tons five years ago, according to Finance Ministry data. Officials at the Sudanese central bank and the state mining company say they estimate that around 70% of the country’s gold is exported to Russia, often via middlemen in the U.A.E. and other countries.

In recent months, the U.S. has encouraged Egypt to lobby Gen. Burhan to stop working with Mr. Prigozhin, according to current and former Western security officials. Weeks before the fighting broke out, Sudanese authorities arrested dozens of Russian miners on suspicion of gold smuggling.

Wagner’s involvement could bolster Gen. Dagalo in the battle for Sudan, said Sean McFate, a war and international-relations expert at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School.

“Hemedti has always been very ambitious, and Prigozhin can play the role of kingmaker,” Mr. McFate said. “In exchange, he would provide Russia the Red Sea port it craves.”