Since war erupted in Sudan in April 2023, the operations of international tobacco companies—such as British American Tobacco (BAT) and Philip Morris International (PMI)—have been severely disrupted: legal supply chains collapsed, infrastructure faltered, and regulatory systems fell apart. Yet demand for cigarettes remained high, prompting these firms to seek alternative routes.
Conflict zones are a “fertile ground” for big corporations, which capitalize on the breakdown of health and legal systems to widen their reach, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report. Sudan, long marked by internal wars and unrest, proved especially attractive to global tobacco firms, particularly BAT, which tried to bypass regulations through the Pakistani government, says Waseem Janjua, an adviser at Pakistan’s Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI).
This investigation is part of a broader project on tobacco-industry activity in conflict areas, released for World No-Tobacco Day, on May 31. Daraj’s four reports focus on Gaza and Sudan, exposing how major firms exploit grave humanitarian conditions to profit at the expense of public health.
“Kiddie” Cigarettes in Sudan
The civil war that has raged since April 2023 has wrecked Sudan’s domestic production and reduced purchasing power, yet cigarette demand has persisted, even as prices have climbed, a chart shared by Janjua with Daraj shows. Global companies responded swiftly, relying on smuggling and on third countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh to reroute shipments.
At the same time BAT and Pakistan Tobacco Company (PTC) sought to exploit Pakistan’s ongoing economic crisis by brokering a US $20.5 million deal to manufacture ten-stick cigarette packs for export to Sudan. A lengthy approval process—followed by a temporary rejection—briefly allowed Pakistan’s tobacco-control community to block the deal, Janjua says, but the government later authorised it through the Ministry of Health.
The most striking example was BAT’s attempt to produce ten-stick packs, internationally dubbed “kiddie packs” because their low price makes them easily accessible to minors, in Pakistan for shipment to Sudan. Such packs are banned in countries including Ethiopia, several European states, Canada, Australia, and Singapore, all parties to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which urges measures to reduce youth tobacco use, among them prohibiting small packs that facilitate under-age smoking.
“These ten-stick packs are illegal in Pakistan because they target children directly,” Janjua told Daraj. “The law clearly bans their manufacture and domestic sale, yet firms try to exploit loopholes by exporting them.”
“What BAT in particular seeks is to push these products into war markets where effective oversight is non-existent. This is not mere commerce; it is the exploitation of Sudan’s chaos, treating African children as less worthy of protection than children in wealthy countries.”
Ultimately, the order was fulfilled via Bangladesh—also an FCTC signatory in South Asia.
Children at the Heart of the Crisis
The 2023 Sudan Tobacco Industry Interference Index notes that corporate tactics go beyond getting products onto shelves; they also aim to shape public policy through ministerial lobbying, legal loopholes, and obstruction of health bills intended to curb tobacco use.
“Tobacco companies only retreat when faced with real legal pressure or major media exposure,” Janjua says. “Absent that, they will continue treating our children as a field for experimentation and profit.” Small, cheap packs shipped to countries such as Sudan become “a gateway to early addiction,” he adds, because children can easily buy and try them, especially where no laws restrict sales or advertising to minors.
In practice, firms employ indirect marketing strategies that exploit wartime disorder: with schools closed, parental oversight weakened, and public awareness campaigns absent, children are more vulnerable to harmful behaviors and lack protection.
Double Standards in Conflict Zones
Big tobacco often proclaims its ethical commitment in Western markets. Some companies halted advertising in Ukraine during the war; others scaled back Russian operations fearing public backlash.
In Sudan, where scrutiny and media coverage are scant, the picture is starkly different: companies have redoubled efforts to secure market share. The Guardian‘s investigation reported that BAT had already expanded in South Sudan before the state’s 2011 independence, flooding the politically and economically fragile country with low-cost cigarettes.
The strategy is not unique to Sudan; it has surfaced repeatedly in Iraq, Syria, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where lax regulation allowed distribution through smuggling networks or lightly monitored local distributors.
According to The Reporter Ethiopia, Ethiopian health authorities recently warned of an influx of such small packs into Sudan, calling it a direct public-health threat, especially to youths.
The Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath has supported the work of Daraj on tobacco investigations but the gathering of the information, its interpretation and presentation are the responsibility of Daraj.
