Sudan’s War and the Swamp of Functional Entities and Agents

Dr. Osama Mohamed Abdelrahim

In modern warfare, national armies are no longer the sole actors on the battlefield. States now confront a wide spectrum of proxies, manufactured fronts, and engineered interfaces through which influence is projected and battles for reshaping maps are fought. The war in Sudan is no exception; it is, in fact, an intensified example of the intersection between foreign interests and entities created to perform predefined functions that override the will of their ostensible owners. This article attempts to examine this structure and analyze its mechanisms.

The war that erupted in Sudan at dawn on April 15, 2023, is no longer a confrontation between a national army and a militia rebelling against state authority, nor a political dispute possible to contain through backroom negotiations. The conflict has exceeded its natural boundaries and expanded into a much wider theater. Sudan has become a crowded arena of functional entities and engineered agents—a swamp of manufactured bodies, guided platforms, and recycled faces deployed to serve agendas that extend far beyond its borders.

What we see on the surface is not the game of the real players but the movement of proxies. The major actors operate behind the curtain, orchestrating influence with precision—defining roles, assigning functions, pushing some to the forefront while concealing the hands that pull the strings.

This war has transformed into a battle over the identity of the state, not merely over power. It is a struggle for Sudan’s resources, ports, corridors, and strategic position. It is an attempt to re-engineer Sudan into a “function” within regional and international frameworks rather than an independent sovereign state.

To understand how Sudan arrived at this moment, and why the bleeding continues, we must deconstruct the architecture of these functional entities and agents: how they are created, who manages them, how they evolve, and why they persist.

The Concept of the Functional Entity

A functional entity is not a decision-maker nor a final stakeholder. It is an engineered structure—not a natural one—created or employed to perform specific tasks within a larger project, one whose trajectory it cannot define or halt.

Such an entity typically rests on three essential pillars:

1. Assigned Function: Tasks serving a higher authority.

2. Dependency of Decision: Strategic decisions are made not internally but by the sponsor or financier.

3. Overlapping Interests: It may gain some secondary benefits, but these remain subordinate to its primary function.

How These Entities Emerge (The Temporal Dimension)

They begin small—an organization, a movement, a pressure group. They are inflated through funding, media amplification, and human rights cover. They gradually expand until they become a “parallel actor to the state.” At advanced stages, they are granted international legitimacy through conferences, initiatives, and platforms.

Thus, a small body grows into a parallel institution—executing a function often without fully grasping the motives of those who designed it.

The Functional Agent

Beyond organizational forms lies the functional agent—an individual thrust into the spotlight, whether through media, politics, human rights circles, or even military framing. This agent becomes a symbolic face performing a human function within an external project—a human mask for a larger design.

Such an agent typically:

Possesses little inherent weight.

Derives value from external backing.

Serves as a soft interface for targeted narratives.

Is instrumental in shaping manipulated public opinion.

The Sociology of the Proxy: How Functional Individuals Are Made

They are usually selected from groups that are easy to polish: articulate, presentable, and recyclable. They are granted platforms—interviews, articles, awards, and foreign trips. A halo is crafted around them: “expert,” “academic,” “independent voice,” “civilian leader.”

Suddenly, without any national project or real weight, they appear as opinion-makers.

With technological advances, these agents are increasingly produced through sophisticated data analytics, sentiment algorithms, image and sound manipulation, and AI-generated personas amplified online—transforming the agent from an individual into a technological product engineered in influence laboratories.

Why Functional Entities Are Created

Such entities serve strategic objectives, including:

Weakening the nation-state and undermining its institutions.

Securing access to Sudan’s resources (gold, ports, trade routes).

Engineering a new political authority aligned with external decision-making.

Sustaining prolonged instability to prevent the rise of a strong, cohesive state.

Reconfiguring society through activist discourse and media ecosystems.

These processes fall within fifth-generation warfare where combat shifts from military confrontation to influence management, from exploding terrains to exploding consciousness.

Methods of Operation

Functional entities typically:

Penetrate state institutions to weaken them from within.

Weaponize human rights discourse as political leverage.

Manufacture media narratives that legitimize militias and criminalize the state.

Mobilize loyalties with heavy funding.

Produce crises and then present themselves as “solutions” or “mediators.”

Establish civilian façades to conceal their real function.

The Dangers to National Security

Despite their inflated appearance, these entities are fragile yet perilous because they:

Extract national decision-making and relocate it to foreign sponsors.

Fragment society through sub-identities and communal antagonisms.

Weaken the army and promote militia alternatives.

Prolong war, as they survive only in chaos.

Mortgage the future to global power competitions.

They gradually transform society into a consumer of externally engineered narratives, not a producer of its own.

Illustrative examples—without naming specific actors—include:

Organizations designed to condemn the army while absolving militias.

Media platforms that amplify one side’s crimes while muting the other’s.

Individuals marketed as “civilian” or “military leaders” to implement externally scripted agendas disconnected from social realities.

Manifestations of Functional Entities in Sudan’s War

The forms vary according to purpose:

1. The Functional State

Examples in Sudan’s war include the UAE and Chad.
Function: financing, arming, shaping influence, training, evacuation, political steering, and logistical facilitation.

2. The Functional Militia

Most clearly represented by the Rapid Support Forces.
Function: combat, resource seizure, societal intimidation, enforcing predesigned outcomes through violence.

3. The Functional Organization

Such as certain civil society clusters (e.g., “Ta’sis”, “Sumood”).
Function: producing narratives, beautifying the militia’s image, offering civilian cover for external intervention.

4. The Functional Party

Examples include specific Sudanese political parties.
Function: legitimizing externally crafted solutions without electoral mandates in exchange for political reward.

5. The Functional Person

Seen ubiquitously across civic, political, and military spheres.
Function: advancing soft components of the project in return for money, gifts, positions, or favors.

6. The Functional Activist

Dominant across social media platforms.
Function: generating hatred campaigns against the army and state, adopting the adversary’s worldview.

7. Regional Functional Institutions

Including research centers, transnational media, pressure groups, and satellite channels.
Function: manufacturing narratives, shaping international perception, blackmailing the state, and manipulating truth.

Who Profits from Continued War?

Three parties benefit:

1. Militias and proxies—their survival depends on chaos.

2. Sponsoring states—they gain ports, gold, influence, and strategic corridors.

3. International networks—they operate regional re-engineering projects through low-cost conflict zones.

Sudan and its people remain the principal losers.

How Can the State Resist Functional Entities?

A strategic framework requires:

Building a national counter-narrative exposing proxies and their functions.

Strengthening strategic national media rather than reactive messaging.

Cutting off foreign funding through law and regulatory capacity.

Reinforcing deterrence institutions and rejecting militia substitutes.

Launching a unifying national project that eliminates the fertile ground where proxies proliferate.

Three pillars are essential:

1. Reclaiming national decision-making within legitimate state institutions.

2. Protecting the unity of the armed forces as the firewall against fragmentation and militias.

3. Dismantling the proxy architecture in favor of a sovereign national path shaped internally.

Sudan’s war is not an internal clash; it is a comprehensive project to re-engineer an entire nation through a constellation of states, militias, organizations, parties, individuals, activists, and media institutions.

Restoring Sudan begins with unmasking the proxy before confronting the principal actor—dismantling the function before dismantling the entity.

Nations are not built by proxies,
nor defended by militias,
nor governed by strings pulled from beyond their borders.

They are built by resilient states, unified armies, and aware citizens—citizens who recognize where danger comes from, who stands with the nation, and who stands with the sordid function.