What is the reality on the ground in Sudan?
On 15 April 2023, war broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces
(SAF) – led by the head of the Transitional Military Council, General
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan – and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – led by
Lieutenant General Mohamed ‘Hemedti’ Hamdan Dagalo. Since then, backed
by various governments from outside of Sudan, the two sides have fought a
terrible war of attrition in which civilians are the main victims. It
is impossible to say how many people have died, but clearly the death
toll is significant. One estimate
found that between April 2023 and June 2024 alone the number of
casualties was as high as 150,000, and several crimes against humanity
committed by both sides have already been documented by various human
rights organisations. At least 14.5 million Sudanese of the population
of 51 million have been displaced.
The people who live in the belt between El Fasher, North Darfur, and
Kadugli, South Kordofan, are struggling from acute hunger and famine. A
recent analysis
by the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification found that
around 21.2 million Sudanese – 45% of the population – face high levels
of acute food insecurity, with 375,000 people across the country facing
‘catastrophic’ levels of hunger (i.e., on the brink of starvation).
Since the war began, hundreds of thousands of internally displaced
people sought refuge in El Fasher, then held largely by the SAF. Roughly
260,000 civilians were still there in October 2025 when the RSF broke
the resistance, entered the city, and carried out a number of documented
massacres. Among those killed
were 460 patients and their companions at the Saudi Maternity Hospital.
The city’s fall has meant that the RSF is now largely in control of the
vast province of Darfur, while the SAF holds much of eastern Sudan –
including Port Sudan, the country’s access to the sea and international
trade – as well as the capital city of Khartoum.
There is no sign of de-escalation at present.
Why are the SAF and the RSF fighting?
No war of this scale has one simple cause. The political reason is
straightforward: this is a counter-revolution against the 2019 popular
uprising that succeeded in ousting President Omar al-Bashir, who
governed from 1993 and whose last years in power were marked by rising
inflation and social crisis.
The left and popular forces behind the 2019 uprising – which included
the Sudanese Communist Party, the National Consensus Forces, the
Sudanese Professional Association, the Sudan Revolutionary Front, the
Women of Sudanese Civic and Political Groups, and many local resistance
and neighbourhood committees – forced the military to agree to oversee
the transition to a civilian government. With the assistance of the
African Union, the Transitional Sovereignty Council was established,
composed of five military and six civilian members. Abdalla Hamdok was
appointed prime minister and judge Nemat Abdullah Khair chief justice,
with al-Burhan and Hemedti on the council as well. The military-civilian
government wrecked the economy further by floating the currency and
privatising the state, thereby making gold smuggling more lucrative and
strengthening the RSF (this government also signed the Abraham Accords,
which normalised relations with Israel). The policies of the
military-civilian government exacerbated the conditions toward the
showdown over power (control over the security state) and wealth
(control over the gold trade).
Despite their roles on the council, al-Burhan and Hemedti attempted
coups until succeeding in 2021. Having set aside the civilians, the two
military leaders went after each other. The SAF officers sought to
preserve their command over the state apparatus, which in 2019 absorbed
82% of the state’s budgetary
resources (as confirmed by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in 2020). They
also moved to retain control of its enterprises, running more than 200
companies through entities such as the SAF-controlled Defence Industries
System (estimated $2 billion in annual revenue) and capturing a significant share of Sudan’s formal economy across mining, telecommunications, and import-export commodity trade. The RSF – rooted in the Janja’wid
(devils on horseback) militia – tried to leverage the autonomous war
economy centralised around the Al Junaid Multi-Activities Corporation,
which controls major gold-producing areas in Darfur and about half a dozen mining sites, including Jebel Amer. Since 50–80% of Sudan’s overall gold production is smuggled
(as of 2022) – mainly to the UAE – rather than officially exported, and
since the RSF dominates production in western Sudan’s artisanal mining
zones (which account for 80–85% of total production), the RSF captures
huge sums from gold revenue every year (estimated at $860 million from Darfur mines alone in 2024).
Beneath these political and material contests lie ecological
pressures that compound the crisis. Part of the reason for the long
conflict in Darfur has been the desiccation of the Sahel. For decades,
erratic rainfall and heatwaves due to the climate catastrophe have
expanded the Sahara Desert southward, making water resources a cause of
conflict and sparking clashes between nomads and settled farmers. Half
of Sudan’s population now lives with acute food insecurity. The failure
to create an economic plan for a population wracked by rapid changes in
weather patterns – alongside the theft of resources by a small elite –
leaves Sudan vulnerable to long-term conflict. This is not just a war
between two strong personalities, but a struggle over the transformation
of resources and their plunder by outside powers. A ceasefire agreement
is once more on the table, but the likelihood that it will be accepted
or upheld is very low as long as resources remain the shining prize for
the various armed groups.
What are the possibilities of peace in Sudan?
A path toward peace in Sudan would require six elements:
- An immediate, monitored ceasefire that includes the creation of
humanitarian corridors for the transit of food and medicines. These
corridors would be under the leadership of the Resistance Committees,
which have the democratic credibility and networks to deliver aid
directly to those in need.
- An end to the war economy, specifically shutting down the gold and
weapons pipelines. This would include imposing strict sanctions on the
sale of weapons to and the purchase of gold from the UAE until it severs
all relations with the RSF. Export controls at Port Sudan must be
implemented as well.
- The safe return of political exiles and the start of a process to
rebuild political institutions under a civilian government elected or
supported by the popular forces – mainly the Resistance Committees. The
SAF must be stripped of its political power and economic assets and
subjugated to the government. The RSF must be disarmed and demobilised.
- The immediate reconstruction of Sudan’s higher judiciary to investigate and prosecute those responsible for atrocities.
- The immediate creation of a process of accountability that includes
the prosecution of warlords through a properly constituted court in
Sudan.
- The immediate reconstruction of Sudan’s planning commission and its
ministry of finance to shift surplus from export enclaves toward public
goods and social protections.
These six points elaborate upon the three pillars of the African Union and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development’s AU-IGAD Joint Roadmap for the Resolution of the Conflict in Sudan
(2023). The difficulty with this roadmap – as with similar proposals –
is that it is dependent on donors, including actors that are implicated
in the violence. For these six points to become a reality, outside
powers must be pressured to end their backing of the SAF and the RSF.
These include Egypt, the European Union, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia,
the UAE, and the United States. Neither this roadmap nor the Jeddah
channel – a Saudi-US mediation track launched in 2023 that focuses on
short truces and humanitarian access – includes Sudanese civilian
groups, least of all the Resistance Committees.
