The secret ingredient tying your candy, makeup and medicines to Sudan’s war

OBEID, Sudan — His illicit journey begins in the blood-soaked orchards of Central Sudan, then heads to ports in Africa, then on to the United States and Europe.

When it gets into everything from M&Ms to medications to makeup, few consumers or businesses realize they’re contributing to the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

Gum arabic, a resin derived from the acacia tree, is as ubiquitous as it is unassuming and remains virtually unknown despite being a vital ingredient in hundreds of products. Its importance as a thickener and stabilizer for which there is no real substitute should make it a boon for Sudan, which was once responsible for 80% of the world’s supply.

Instead, gum arabic, like much of the country’s vast wealth, now provides both the cause and the sources of the astonishingly destructive civil war.

This war, now in its fourth year and showing little sign of abating, has killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced nearly 14 million and left almost 20 million facing acute hunger. He also embraced economics, so that many of Sudan’s wealth contributes to financing the warfighters while most Sudanese remain impoverished.

The chewing gum trade, which will earn Sudan $183 million in 2022 and support around 5 million people, provides an instructive example, economic experts say:

The conflict began in April 2023, pitting the Sudanese army against its former ally the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, a paramilitary group. With the front lines mostly deadlocked, the country is essentially divided in two, with the government responsible for the capital Khartoum and the east of Sudan, while the RSF dominates the west.

The flashpoint between the two sides is the central Sudanese region of Kordofan, which forms the heart of the “gum arabic belt”, a lush strip of acacia trees stretching across the country.

Since last year, when the RSF overran parts of Darfur and Kordofan, the militia has seized the chewing gum trade, integrated it into its own smuggling empire, and further starved the government’s coffers.

The impact of this can be seen in Obeid’s central market. It was once home to the world’s largest gum arabic exchange. Trucks swinging beneath piles of amber-colored globules would make the twice-daily trek from Al-Nahud, a town 120 miles west of Obeid and the agricultural center of Hashab, the most valuable variety of gum arabic.

“We’re lucky if we can carry a donkey cart’s load now; that’s six bags, so barely half a tonne,” said Adam Ahmad, a 47-year-old farmer from a village near Al-Nahud who regularly delivers seven tonnes to the market.

He said everything changed when RSF captured Al-Nahud last May. Forming a rival government based in Darfur, the militias have banned all agricultural shipments to government-controlled areas such as Obeid and seized control of supply routes. He also imposed heavy taxes on trucks carrying gum arabic; these taxes sometimes reached over $2,000.

Leaning on a burlap bag filled with gum Arabic, Ahmed pointed to a map on a journalist’s phone to show the circuitous route he took to get here.

He said it took more than a week; most took more than a week to evade RSF patrols, who could accuse him of pro-government loyalties, take his cargo and kill him, or demand exorbitant fees, take the cargo when he could not pay, and then beat or kill him.

Harvesting is not easy either. Previously, Ahmed could touch four orchards at a time, making cuts in acacia trees that leaked sap that hardened into tubers of Hashab gum after a few weeks. He would now risk at most one or two orchards, as he feared harassment from the RSF.

Sacks of gum arabic are stacked in Obeid, a major center of the gum industry in Sudan, which once supplied 80% of the world’s gum arabic supply.

Nearby, a group of men sat cross-legged on the ground in a circle, shielding their eyes from stray flakes as one of them pounded pieces of a large clump of gum. When a piece fell near them, they would work it with their hands, break it into individual globules and throw them into a growing pile.

Ahmad Mastour, a chewing gum merchant at Afritec, a Sudanese chewing gum processing company, cast a discerning eye over the pile.

“What you see here in this market is not even 10% of what we could find before,” he said. He said Afritec processes thousands of tonnes of chewing gum but the last two years have been difficult.

RSF militia looted the company’s warehouses in Al-Nahud, taking 3,000 tons of chewing gum along with trucks, tractors and even generators. Other manufacturers in Al-Nahud were not spared from this situation; It is estimated that more than $125 million worth of chewing gum was taken.

The UN Panel of Experts said in a 2025 report that the looting was sanctioned by RSF commanders as compensation to fighters.

“This year we had to stop production completely. This is a huge amount of damage, a disaster for me and the parent company,” Mastour said.

Other Sudanese goods, especially gold, became part of both sides’ war machines; Gold mining increased during the conflict as prices rose worldwide. (The trade is so profitable that gum collectors complain that they cannot find enough workers to work in the acacia gardens, because young people can make more money by mining gold.)

Observers estimate that the RSF and its government generate approximately $1 billion to $2 billion annually from the sale of various goods, making RSF-held territories arguably the largest non-state economy in the world. These revenues – along with the loot – are used to pay fighters’ salaries and equip the RSF with an arsenal of cheaply produced, high-tech drones.

A man examines a sack of gum arabic in Obeid. Gum arabic is made from the sap of acacia trees obtained from living trees and allowed to harden into amber-colored globules.

Like gold, RSF also smuggles gum arabic through the border points it controls to neighboring countries such as Libya, Chad, Central African Republic and South Sudan. Once there, it is mixed with local chewing gum to circumvent the sourcing policies of international chewing gum processing companies, which aim to prevent the import of chewing gum from conflict-ridden areas.

Parts of Sudan are under a United Nations arms embargo. A UN report published earlier this year said RSF action in Darfur, particularly in El Fasher, where its militia is thought to have massacred 70,000 people, bore “marks of genocide”. The government is also accused of war crimes, including indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas.

To combat smuggling, industry leaders such as French firms Nexira and Alland & Robert say they only buy gum arabic approved by the Sudanese government in Port Sudan.

But traders say they also buy Sudanese gum from neighboring countries that masquerade it as local.

“These countries were not exporting a lot of chewing gum before the war, especially Hashab. But in the last two years we have seen large amounts of exports from them,” said Mahmoud Abdul-Raouf, general manager of Gezira Group, a chewing gum processing company based in Port Sudan.

Traders and farmers interviewed in Obeid said much of the stolen gum was taken to Chad, sold at affordable prices and then re-exported through ports such as Douala in Cameroon.

“If a ton of gum arabic is $5,000, they’ll sell it for $2,000 in Chad. They don’t care about that because they stole it; it’s all profit for them,” Mastour said.

Women sift through a pile of gum arabic in Obeid. Rapid Support Forces, which fought the Sudanese army for control of the country, now control many regions where weapons are produced.

Since the war, government customs figures from Chad and France show that Chad has overtaken Sudan as a supplier of gum arabic to the US and has almost doubled its exports to France; this increase is often attributed to looting from Sudan rather than an increase in productivity.

Observers say foreign sponsors of the war in Sudan are also in on the game. Saudi Arabia, which supports the government, and the United Arab Emirates, RSF’s biggest supporter, have become re-export hubs for chewing gum, turning it into goods exported to Asia and Europe. (The UAE denies supporting RSF, but its influence is well documented.)

Prices of gum arabic and other agricultural products have skyrocketed as the wars in Darfur and Kordofan disrupted agriculture. But less and less of this windfall is reaching the millions of Sudanese it once fed.

“Everyone here, from the smallest farmer to the largest merchant, is affected by the war,” Mastour said.

“And there’s no sign of this ending anytime soon.”