The deafening drumbeat of war and civil strife reverberating around the world, from Haiti to Taiwan, drowns out smaller, but no less deadly, conflicts elsewhere such as in Sudan. Here, powers of ill repute such as Russia, Iran, and a few other unsavoury warmongers are stoking a struggle between two factions intend on looting whatever is left of the perennially troubled country - the third largest in Africa after Algeria and the grotesquely misnamed Democratic Republic of the Congo.