The Economics of Revenge, Historical, Ethnic, and Governance Roots of Sudan’s SAF RSF Conflict

Abstract

Issam AW Mohamed*

The economics of revenge examines how vengeful motives perpetuate conflict persistence, resource misallocation, and inefficiency. This paper extends greed grievance models by embedding emotional retaliation into rational choice theory, then applies the framework to Sudan’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF)–Rapid Support Forces (RSF) war. It uniquely integrates historical relations (colonial centralism, post independence Arabization), racial and ethnic causes (Arab versus African identity as political capital), demographic and environmental pressures (desertification, population growth, resource scarcity), and bad governance (predatory rent seeking, legal pluralism failure). A two period game theoretic model with spite dependent revenge utility shows that even moderate spite (*r* = 0.3) reduces welfare by 40%, trapping belligerents in a Pareto inferior equilibrium. Calibrated with RSF’s $260 M annual gold revenue, the model predicts a 42% GDP contraction—matching empirical forecasts. Policy simulations indicate that gold sanctions (raising cost *c*) and inclusive mediation (lowering spite *r*) can shift the equilibrium toward cooperation. The paper provides 12 tables and 3 mermaid diagrams to visualize causal chains, historical timelines, and equilibrium dynamics.

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