Sudan, another of Kenya’s neighbors, is fractured by rebellions in its southern regions, South Kordofan and Blue Nile. To the northwest of Kenya is the increasingly internecine conflict in Darfur — Africa’s forgotten crisis. A decade after the fighting that some called a genocide, that conflict has entered a new chapter. Today, nomadic Arab tribes that once fought chiefly against black-skinned farmers have turned on one another. Last week in Nyala, Darfur’s largest city and one of the country’s commercial centers, Arab militias burned government offices. In armed clashes with government forces, dozens of people died, adding to a toll that will make this year the deadliest in Sudan’s recent history.

On-again, off-again fighting between Sudan and the world’s newest nation, South Sudan, has exacerbated the crisis. Oil production ceased in both countries for more than a year. That has meant that the government in Khartoum has lacked the financial wherewithal to buy off enemies and co-opt friends. In Darfur, warlords formerly allied with the regime — among them the infamous “Janjaweed” militias of an earlier era — have taken to raiding markets, shaking down merchants and preying on defenseless civilians. In essence, they are living off the land in the manner of barbarous knights of the darkest medieval times. Across much of the two Sudans, life for ordinary people has become a nightmare. It would not be unrealistic to see both countries disintegrate as fully functioning states within the next five years.

The picture across the broader Sahel is no less alarming. The French and U.N. missions have stabilized Mali, for now, but many diplomats agree it is only a matter of time before that conflict spreads elsewhere, with fiefdoms beyond government control sprouting up like poisonous mushrooms across an ever-widening geography of crisis. Libya is already a patchwork of warlordism — two countries, at best, with one armed camp entrenched in Benghazi and a “national” government in Tripoli that operates only at the license of its own armed groups.

We have only to look at Syria to see how quickly a strong centralized state can implode, like Lebanon before it. Whether or not President Bashar al-Assad remains in power, his country is no more. For years if not decades to come, the future is writ: rule by warlords, feuding with one another over the spoils of war and ideology, surviving by beggaring their increasingly impoverished and terrorized peoples.