Dozens of battered trucks laden with gold-bearing ore snake their way across the desert in northeastern Sudan and dump their loads at a compound on the outskirts of the town of Atbara.
The tons of ore, extracted by small-scale miners in River Nile state, are then moved into a processing plant using diggers and conveyor belts. Only a handful of insiders are privy to how much gold the tightly guarded operation produces, who it is sold to…
