Sudan, where AI amplifies ancient atrocities

Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on AI has been surprisingly popular. Even industry leaders have welcomed its warnings about AI’s threats to human dignity. But the last of the five chapters in Magnifica Humanitas has been largely ignored.  

Perhaps because its focus is the future of war – and who can bear to think about that?  

Leo reminds us of the stirring words of one of his predecessors, St Paul VI, to the UN General Assembly in 1965: “Never again war, never again war!” He lamented the bloody history of the 20th century, which had been “marked by conflicts of astonishing brutality”.  

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They continue to this day. And perhaps nowhere in the world are they more brutal than in Sudan.  

This month The Economist called it “one of the most dangerous places on earth”. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and 14 million displaced. The capital of Khartoum, once a bustling city of 5 or 6 million, an island of prosperous modernity in a struggling country, looks like Gaza after the Israeli bombardment.  

To outsiders, the war seems completely senseless. The SAF, Sudan’s regular army, which has a veneer of legitimacy, is fighting the RSF, a well-armed rebel militia. The region is awash with jihadists, but the two sides are fighting over power and wealth, not ideology.  

The horrors of this war have not changed since the sack of Troy: unimaginable violence, mass rape, genocide, starvation, recruiting child soldiers, displacement, and disease. Ancient atrocities have been amplified by AI. Above the besieged city of El Obeid, currently under SAF control, circle RSF drones which kill from the sky. RSF child soldiers make snuff films for TikTok with their mobile phones.  

Just as the pope writes in his encyclical, war in Sudan is becoming “a ‘way of life’ for entire generations of young people and children. Here, the objective is no longer a definitive victory, but the perpetuation of conflict as a source of power and income.” 

With its mineral and agricultural wealth and its strategic location on the Red Sea, Sudan could be one of the most prosperous countries in the region. Instead, it is in danger of becoming a bigger version of Somalia.  

This is, according to the World Health Organisation, the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. It exists at the other end of the galaxy from the “civilisation of love” that the pope wants us to create.  

What can we do about it?  

“No one is without responsibility,” writes Pope Leo. “We all have our own areas for action, and it is precisely there – and nowhere else – that we must choose whether to fuel the mentality of force (even if only through indifference, cynicism, lies or hatred), or to preserve the mindset of peace (with truth, moderation, closeness and care).”  

And he insists that: “The civilisation of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanisation.”  

He proposes five paths forward in Magnifica Humanitas: disarming our words, building peace through justice, adopting the perspective of victims, cultivating a healthy realism, and reviving dialogue and multilateralism. Read them. They are all challenging, but each of us must feel responsible to do his or her part, lest we succumb to the “globalisation of indifference” that Pope Francis warned about. 

According to The Economist, in the next few weeks there is a window of opportunity to cobble together a truce between the SAF and the RSF. At the very least, we can pray for that. 

“Let us never tire of praying for peace and of committing ourselves to achieving it in our relationships and in society,” says the pope. And what country needs prayer more than Sudan at the moment?