Who bombed this gold mine

Your back and arms hurt. The air is heavy with humidity, worsened by an incessant sun. You’ve been digging through the red, rocky terrain for hours. You and the thousands of other fellow Sudanese miners on site only have one goal: strike gold. 

Then comes a familiar low hum across the horizon. After decades of civil war since independence in 1956, you know low-altitude aircraft are never good news, so you start scrambling down the slick mountain path but — the explosions start.

That’s more or less what just happened on the Sudanese-Egyptian border over the weekend, leaving 72 Sudanese gold miners dead.

Who did it? Why? And where’s this all headed? The main suspects include… 

1. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF)

Sudan’s notorious RSF paramilitary, led by the warlord Hemedti, has been waging war against Sudan’s military since 2023, sparked by a long-brewing power struggle.

Three years on, and Hemedti’s men have now racked up a string of atrocities, including his siege then massacre at El-Fasher that left an estimated 60,000 (not a typo) dead last year. He’s also been besieging El-Obeid (pop 500k) since early 2023, and probably hit a displacement camp near a rival gold site just last week.

But for all his sins, it’s unlikely the RSF bombed those 72 miners over the weekend. Why?

• The hit was 800km (500mi) from the nearest RSF stronghold, and

• The RSF doesn’t have the kinds of fixed-wing aircraft to project that far.

So even if the RSF wanted to hit this rival gold operation, it realistically couldn’t.

Then what about…

2. The Sudanese military 

Sudan’s military technically controls the turf and has the necessary airpower, but really lacks any plausible motive: like the RSF, Sudan’s military finances its war by smuggling gold abroad (no matter the faction, it nearly all ends up in Dubai).

So why airstrike the exact wildcat gold operations filling your own war chest?

That really leaves only one player with the jets, the reach, and the precedent…

3. Egypt

The burden of evidence against Egypt is pretty damning, starting with…

• The location: the remote, Slovenia-sized, resource-rich Halayeb triangle is claimed by both Sudan and its Egyptian allies, hence…

• The patrols: it’s really Egyptian warplanes with air dominance here, plus they have…

• The motive: Egypt has increasingly bristled at the lawless border region, right as Egypt (losing Suez revenue) tries to get its own mining sector in shape, plus…

• The precedent: Egyptian jets literally just hit the same mining area in June, killing 23 random workers. Cairo openly boasted at the time about a “large-scale operation” against illegal border prospecting, which brings us to…

• The admission: shortly after Saturday’s attacks, Egyptian security officials duly acknowledged their “third phase” of an operation to end border “chaos” (though they’re stopping short of claiming this mine hit).

So okay, perhaps Egypt did it, with plenty of reasons to throw its weight around the Halayeb triangle: did we mention the offshore zone is likely also rich in oil and gas?

But it really now puts Egypt’s own ally, Sudan’s General Burhan, in a rough spot: folks across Sudan are outraged, and silence would amount to tacit acceptance of Egypt’s dominance over Sudanese turf. But Burhan can’t really speak out against his primary foreign backer, military lifeline, and diplomatic guarantor in Cairo.

So instead, he’s tried to strike some kind of balance by announcing a meek “fact-finding investigation” — if anyone has his email, just forward him the section above?

Sound even smarter:

• Sudan’s artisanal gold mining sector employs ~two million people.