The Journal. - How ‘Conflict Gum’ Is Helping Fuel Sudan’s Civil War

Episode Date: June 18, 2024

Gum arabic is a widely used but little-known ingredient found in products like soda, gum, makeup and beer. But as WSJ’s Nicholas Bariyo and Alexandra Wexler report, the product has been used for a darker purpose: helping to fund the civil war in Sudan.Further Reading: -How Soda, Chocolate and Chewing Gum Are Funding War in Sudan  -What Is Happening in Sudan? The Fighting Explained  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gum arabic is an ingredient you've probably never heard of. But chances are, you've used products that contain it. I would venture to guess everyone has something in their house that has gum arabic in it. That's our colleague Alexandra Wexler. Whether it's red wine, beer, Coca-Cola, medications, it's often in pills as well as syrups that you might have for kids for cold and flu. I chewed some Mentos chewing gum just before we got on this call, and it has gum Arabic in it. Alexandra is based in Johannesburg, South Africa, and she covers commodities across the continent, from cocoa to coffee to cobalt. So what is Gum Arabic?

So Gum Arabic is a tree sap, a dried tree sap. It does things like hold together syrups so that ingredients don't kind of like sink to the bottom. It makes beer foamy. So it's really the perfect ingredient, I suppose, to add to all of these consumer goods because it doesn't taste like anything or smell like anything. Is gum Arabic something you write about a lot?

I'd never heard of gum Arabic before the war broke out, and I don't think I ever would have done a story about gum Arabic had it not been for this conflict. That conflict is the civil war in Sudan, a war that the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. has called the largest humanitarian crisis on the face of the planet. Sudan is now a war zone. These men just showed up. First, they killed my husband, then my children. The number of internally displaced people in Sudan has reached more than 10 million.

What began as a power struggle could become the world's largest hunger crisis. This latest conflict in Sudan erupted more than a year ago. And helping to fuel both sides of this war is gum arabic. You know, we've heard of blood diamonds or conflict diamonds, which are like diamonds that are mined in war zones and sold to finance military operations. Is gum arabic similar? Yeah, I mean, it essentially is doing that.

I suppose you could have, yeah, blood gum or conflict gum. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Tuesday, June 18th. Coming up on the show, the little-known commodity helping to finance a civil war. Attention all soccer fans. From Orlando to Los Angeles, take to the fields of the USA for your next vacation. Ready to kick off? Discover exciting games and events. Plus, find amazing hidden gems in cities full of adventures, delicious food, and diverse cultures. You'll love it so much you'll want to

extend your stay beyond the matches. Get the ball rolling on your soccer getaway. Head to visittheusa.com. About 80% of the world's gum Arabic comes from Sudan in Northeast Africa. It's one of the country's top exports, and now it's playing a major role in Sudan's civil war. To understand what's happening on the ground, I called up another colleague. So can you start by introducing yourself and tell us what you cover? Yes, I'm Nicholas Wario. I do cover East Africa and the Great Lakes region. Nicholas is based in Kampala, Uganda. For months, he's been reporting on the war in Sudan. When did this conflict start? What happened?

This started in April 2023. There had been tensions between the two branches of Sudan's military and it's basically two branches of the same army fighting each other. But one is the regional army, another one is the paramilitary force. They were once united, now they are sprinted. For decades, those two groups worked under the longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir. The Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, is the government's official military. The Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, is that paramilitary group.

In 2019, the two factions banded together in an uneasy alliance to overthrow al-Bashir. The next step was supposed to be a transition to a democratic civilian government. That never happened. Instead, last April, tensions between the two groups boiled over and a full-scale civil war broke out. What are they fighting over? It's a power struggle. They both want to control Sudan. The results have been devastating.

The country is on the brink of famine. More than 10 million Sudanese have been displaced, and by some estimates, as many as 150,000 people have been killed. And both sides in the conflict have been attacked, deliberately targeted with arson attacks, with artillery fire. There was one massacre in West Dafa last year in which around 1,500 people were killed in one day and it was so appalling. And in this case, mainly young boys and men were singled out for killings and women would be sexually assaulted. So it's really been so awful. It's especially devastating for this western region, which includes Darfur. In the early 2000s, hundreds of thousands of people there

were killed by another militia group, in a campaign that the U.S. government and others have called a genocide. Now, there are concerns that today's civil war is repeating history. So the conflict has raised fears of a genocide. This is something that echoes what happened 20 years ago when Arab militias deliberately targeted ethnic African tribes. The difference between now and then

is that then there were militias lightly armed. Now they're a very powerful military force with more powerful weapons, with more money, with more support, and sometimes outside support. So buildings have been bombed, trade routes are blocked, irrigation facilities have been destroyed, and 10 million people are out of their homes, with 18 million of them needing urgent food assistance. So it's total pandemonium and destruction. In the middle of this war zone is the gum Arabic industry.

Across Sudan, farmers harvest the sap and traders transport it by road until it makes its way to the ports. Nicholas spoke to one gum trader who hauls the sacks of amber sap to marketplaces in his truck. His name is Mohamed Jabber. So Mohamed Jabber is one of the Sudanese traders and who specializes in gum Arabic,

he drives his truck deep into the villages, pay farmers, collect this gum Arabic, load it on trucks and drive it to the main market. Mohamed has to brave a 50-mile journey through central Sudan. He drives through a region mostly controlled by the RSF, the paramilitary soldiers on one side of the civil war. journey through central Sudan. He drives through a region mostly controlled by the RSF, the paramilitary soldiers on one side of the civil war. In order to ensure safe passage, Mohammed is forced to hire RSF soldiers to protect his convoy. If he doesn't pay up,

he risks losing his cargo and his truck. He's also charged at checkpoints along the way. He has to navigate out of checkpoints. He has to pay a lot. He has to pay a numbed escort. He has to pay taxes on these checkpoints. But at the same time, this is his livelihood. He has to keep going. At the main market where he sells the gum, Mohamed also has to pay taxes to the government's forces, the SAF,

meaning that by the time the journey is over, both factions of the civil war will have collected hefty fees. On this journey, how much does Mohamed wind up paying? So it depends on every checkpoint. He estimates that he has to pay between 300, sometimes it can And that's a lot of money for Mohamed. Yes, it's really a lot. And this money that people like Mohamed are paying, how are the two sides spending it? So this is the money that facilitates these fighters to buy supplies. This is from fuel to ammunition to weapons and other supplies. They need to keep fighting this war.

But even though Gum Arabic is financing a bloody civil war, it's so essential to so many goods. And that's posing a problem for many companies that use it in their products. So it's risky, but very profitable to keep in this trade because the world is hungry for gum Arabic. That's after the break. With Uber Reserve, good things come to those who plan ahead. Family vacay? Reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights.

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In her reporting, Alexandra found some information from the gum Arabic processors, which are basically a middle step between the farmers and the products on the shelves. So according to the processors, a lot of companies haven't changed really anything. They're paying more for the gum. They understand that there's a civil war, but they haven't asked about the impact of the war on gum and whether gum is being used to fund the war. So they're either uninterested or, you know, kind of willfully ignorant, I suppose. And they're just continuing on. There are some companies that halted operations in Sudan. Others are concerned that the supply chain is opaque. They don't know where the gum's coming from and if anyone's making payments to get it through to the port and out of the country or to neighboring countries.

And so they've decided that they will not operate in Sudan for the time being, but that's definitely a minority. And so simply put, what is the dilemma that these companies are facing? So these companies are basically facing a dilemma that says either you stop sourcing gum from Sudan, in which case you are not funding either side of the war, but farmers that grow the gum are not making any income and are suffering even more than they already are in the midst of the war, but farmers that grow the gum are not making any income and are suffering even

more than they already are in the midst of the civil war. Or you keep purchasing the gum and are likely financing one side or the other. And the farmer is making money, but is suffering still because of this ongoing civil war. It's not a great choice, it sounds like. No, it's very difficult. Companies that do choose to stop importing gum from Sudan are sometimes taking a huge hit. That's what happened with Foga Gum, a processor based in the Netherlands.

Their whole business model is based on sort of like fair trade sustainability. So because they couldn't say definitively that this was not harming anyone or anything along the supply chain, that they would rather just not be involved for the time being. And how has that affected their business? I think it's basically non-existent at the moment. Wow. Because so much of the world's gum Arabic comes from Sudan, it's hard to source it from elsewhere. So Chad, Niger, Mali all also produce gum Arabic. A few

other countries in Africa do as well, produce small quantities. And so there has definitely been an increase in interest in looking at new origins. One of the processors that I spoke to said that it's a little bit problematic, though, just switching to another origin because these countries are rather undeveloped and their processing facilities are often rather rudimentary and that the quality just was not up to snuff. Nestle, which adds gum Arabic to chocolates and gummy candies, said that according to its suppliers, the small quantities it uses come primarily from Chad, Niger, and Mali. Nestle wouldn't say whether or not they sourced from Sudan.

So I think a lot of companies are quite understandably concerned about saying that they do in fact purchase gum from Sudan while this war is ongoing. The civil war has caused gum prices to increase by about two-thirds to $5,000 a metric ton. In part, because there are fewer farmers around to tap the trees. A lot of the young men who were farming the gum arabic have left to join either side in the war and fight. And another problem is that the ones that remain are often afraid to go out into the fields to tap the gum arabic

for fear of running into fighters, I suppose, from either side, being harassed, killed, kidnapped. So a lot of the gum Arabic is just sitting, going untapped in the fields. Despite the bloodshed and the rising costs, it's unlikely that companies will stop sourcing gum from Sudan. The ingredient is just too ubiquitous. There's little the U.S. government seems willing to do. It has sanctioned individuals in the Sudanese conflict,

but the Treasury Department, which is in charge of economic sanctions, has declined to comment on Gum Arabic's role in funding this war. For now, farmers and also traders in Sudan are caught in the middle, trying to survive the civil war and keep their livelihoods going. And Nicholas and Alexandra don't see an easy end in sight.

The best case scenario is, I think, to bring these two factions on a negotiating table, and maybe if there is a larger and a more serious involvement of Western government, especially the US and European powers, there's potential that the conflict can actually subside and everyone starts to rebuild their lives. How likely is that to happen? With the other competing interests, you have this conflict in Gaza, there is Ukraine. So there is a belief that attention is actually focused elsewhere. It's being crowded out by the other crises. So what are the solutions? What are the options here?

I think the best option is to end the war. That kind of solves the problem from all ends, but easier said than done. It's pretty incredible to think that this one ingredient that nobody thinks about, but that we encounter every single day, comes from a country that a lot of people out in the West don't spend a lot of time thinking about either. Yeah, absolutely. So I would think most Americans think of the war in Sudan as being very far away from them and not impacting them hugely. But here is a way, a totally interesting and unusual way in which your everyday life is touched by an agricultural product that's exported from this country. And it's in things that you use every day, from makeup to drinks, chewing gum, if you eat a piece of chocolate.

So I think it's touching the lives of Tuesday, June 18th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Thanks for listening. We're off tomorrow for Juneteenth, but we'll be back with a new episode on Thursday. See you then.