The minimum you must know

The Republic of the Sudan is one of the geographically largest coastal countries in Africa located on the northeastern corner of the continent between Egypt and Ethiopia. It's across the Red Sea form Saudi Arabia. Sudan is one of the poorest countries per capita in the world. It gained independence from combined British-Egyptian forces in 1956 to become an Islamist state, that also had a large Christian population in the south, until they subsequently separated to become South Sudan.

According to Sweden at 79th U.N. session, close to ten million people have been displaced from the Sudanese civil war. This hasn't been covered very much by NATO news organizations. Consequently, little is understood about the devastation in Europe and the United States. But Sudan receives more humanitarian from Sweden than anywhere else.

The country is in a neighborhood known for conflict. It's a one day boat ride from Israel and a one day boat ride to Yemen and Djibouti, where there have been decades of tumult and attempted foreign interventions, in an effort to control an important trading route from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean, which supplies oil and other commodities to Europe. Sudan has also had internal civil conflicts, such as in Darfur, that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, including many recently. The coup in 2019 did not end an ongoing conflict between Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Islamist countries are usually very peaceful because Islam literally means "peace" and "surrender." Muslims are loath to have to defend themselves. And Sudan signed an Abraham Accord peace agreement with Israel. Sudan also enjoys external peace. So it's very surprising that there would be any conflicts there at all. But there were well intentioned billboards in the region that may have accidentally patterned incitement. And there are reportedly a stunning number of displaced people. Perhaps inciting billboards were the reason why.