One year of war in Sudan

On the 15^th of April 2023 a new war broke out in Sudan. Sudan’s largest paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), initiated attacks against their supposed allies in the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in nearly every major city across Sudan in what appeared to be some sort of an attempted coup. What started with clashes between former allies as part of a personal power struggle has turned into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. One year and thousands of deaths into the war there is no military end in sight, and the world’s traditional peacemaker countries are conspicuously absent in talks.

The leader of the RSF is a man named Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, usually known by his nickname “Hemedti”. He had been the second in command in Sudan’s transitional sovereignty council led by his friend and close ally Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. The relationship between these two men is central in Sudanese politics, and the breakdown in their relations is what caused one of the worst ongoing wars in the world.[1] There is no real ideological difference between the two, with both of them military men and both aspiring to rule Sudan alone.

Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (left) and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (right). Image from Anadolu.

Both Burhan and Hemedti started their career in service of the same dictator, Omar al-Bashir. By the time his reign ended in 2019 he had been in power of Sudan for 30 years. Key to his regime’s longevity was the fracturing of his security forces into multiple separate armed groups. Burhan was the leader of the army, while Hemedti was the leader of a major militia known as the Janjaweed, which would eventually be professionalized and turned into the modern RSF. The purpose of maintaining what was in practice multiple armies was allegedly to keep any one of them from gaining the strength to overthrow Bashir’s government.[2]

Sudanese protesters in Khartoum. Image from AP photographer Hussein Malla.

On the 11^th of April 2019 Bashir’s government was overthrown by a mass popular uprising with the help of the military. What followed was a period of military-civilian co-rule which was again ended when Burhan and Hemedti carried out a coup against the civilian parts of government in 2021. The resilience of Burhan and Hemedti’s alliance in power was already called into question before that coup, when central figures in the Sudanese army began openly considering integrating the RSF into the army, which would rob Hemedti of his main source of power.[3] From there relations between Hemedti and Burhan, and consequently relations between the army and the RSF, steadily declined until Hemedti started the civil war in April and made the rift official.

The war:

The RSF and SAF currently have control of around half of the populated regions in Sudan each, and most reports placed their strength at the beginning of the war at around 100 000 soldiers each. The RSF held the initiative for the first months,[4] but since the start of 2024 results have been more mixed, and the Sudanese army have started seeing more battlefield success.[5] The RSF, being a paramilitary force, is armed with lighter weapons and more mobile vehicles than the army, which relies on its armored vehicles and air force to win ground.[6] The war is not a stalemate yet, but neither side seems to have a decisive edge.

Map of territorial control in Sudan, with red being the Sudanese army and yellow being the RSF. Green groups are rebels and the light yellow is desert without meaningful armed force presence. Map by Thomas van Linge.

In the opening days of the war RSF troops attempted to seize control in most major cities of Sudan, with their most important efforts being in the capital city Khartoum. The RSF managed to capture a lot of important sites in Khartoum, but they were not able to gain complete control of the city. While the RSF still probably control most of the city, an SAF offensive in February broke through RSF lines outside of the city and reached Omdurman, the northwestern part of the Khartoum tri-city area. At the time of writing Khartoum is still heavily contested, with the battle having lasted over a year. The side that wins the battle of Khartoum will have control over what is Sudan’s largest city by far, with all the power and legitimacy that brings.

Black smoke covering Khartoum during the opening days of the war. Picture from The Atlantic

Sudan was already home to multiple armed rebel groups that opposed the Sudanese government prior to the beginning of the last war. The Sudanese regional civil wars in the Darfur and South Kordofan regions only ended in 2020 with the signing of the Juba agreement, with clauses that specify how the different armed groups should disarm or integrate into the armed forces.[7] By the time the war with the RSF started in 2023 the peace process was still ongoing, and the old rebel groups existed, though inactive.

Many of these groups have reentered the conflict as a kind of third side in the war. At the time of writing none of these rebel groups are close to either Burhan or Hemedti in strength, but as they keep focusing on tearing down each other that may change. It is currently unclear if any side of the war is hurt more by the rebels, but as more rebel groups take up their arms again that may also change.[8]

Foreign involvement:
The war in Sudan is not a proxy war in a traditional sense, as the world’s great powers are largely uninvolved in the conflict. The outside powers that are involved are a string of Arab states with opposing goals and an ambiguous Russia. Most states in the region officially claim to not be involved in the war or call for dialogue to end it, but outside investigations have shown that weapons do stream into Sudan from other countries and armed groups. Oddly, few of the investigations into the weapon supply of the different sides cover where the Sudanese Army’s weapons come from.

The RSF receives its weapons through smuggling routes in Chad, Libya, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan.[9] In the early war the RSF’s main supporter was the Libyan national army in east Libya, led by field marshal Khalifa Haftar.[10] Their relationship dates back to at least the Libyan civil war, as the RSF in 2019 provided Haftar with troops who fought in his failed offensive on Tripoli.[11] The main provider of advanced weaponry to the RSF is likely the United Arab Emirates, according to a UN report.[12]

Wagner troops with Sudanese military forces in 2019. Wagner sources claim that the group have not been present in the country since. Image from telegram via BBC.

Russia was working with Burhan’s government to establish a Russian naval base in Port Sudan, which would give the Russian navy easy access to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.[13] Despite the port deal giving Russia obvious incentives to want a stable and united Sudan, the Wagner group has been supplying the RSF with weapons, continuing their long-standing partnership.[14] The Russian government appears to back Burhan, but with Wagner support for his main enemy that may be hard to believe.[15] In a rather absurd turn of events, Ukrainian special forces have allegedly appeared in Sudan to attack Wagner units.[16]

Burhan and the Sudanese Army do not have international backers that seem as committed as the supporters of the RSF are. There was early speculation that Egypt might fully intervene in the war on the side of the SAF, as the Egyptian and Sudanese militaries are traditional allies.[17] While Burhan is a close ally of Egyptian president el-Sisi, so are Haftar and the United Arab Emirates. Despite these dilemmas, a full Egyptian intervention on the side of Burhan might be one of the only ways to bring a military end to the conflict without lasting years.

Humanitarian crisis:

A year of fighting has made Sudan the center of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The fighting alone makes it one of the world’s deadliest current wars, with UN reports in January estimating over 13 000 dead.[18] The consequences of the war have been far reaching for the ordinary civilian population of Sudan, with fighting causing a breakdown in supply lines for food and medicine.

A batch of food aid in North Darfur. Image from the WFP

Sudan was already a country receiving food aid, and the war has pushed the crisis into the extreme. More than a third of Sudan’s population of nearly fifty million faces acute hunger.[19] The scale of the hunger in Sudan is such that the UN’s World Food Program struggles to gather the funds for relief efforts. Even in places where international aid groups are active the support is not enough to save everyone, with children in particular suffering deaths from hunger and related illness at alarming rates.[20]

Sudan has a young population, with about half its people below the age of 18. Wars always affect children the worst, and with Sudan’s many children the results are disastrous. The hunger crisis disproportionately harms children, but even for those who survive their future is in peril. A whole 90% of Sudan’s schools are closed, forcing 19 million children out of the education system.[21] The generals who gamble with the future of Sudan know to use the children for their own gain, with Hemedti’s RSF having been proven to have used child soldiers on multiple occasions.[22]

The crisis has forced millions of Sudanese people out of their homes, with most of them now being internally displaced in camps around Sudan. Almost seven million people are internally displaced, and almost two million are refugees in surrounding countries, making almost one in five Sudanese people forcibly displaced.[23] The surrounding countries that some have been forced to flee to also include some of the world’s poorest states. Chad, which has taken in half a million refugees, is now Africa’s largest host of refugees per capita and in need of help itself.[24]

Before and after of a refugee camp's destruction in El Geneina, the RSF occupied capital of West Darfur. Pleiades Neo satelite image.

The tragedies in Sudan are not limited to inevitable costs of war. Both Hemedti and Burhan’s armies actively commit war crimes and crimes against humanity on a large scale. Civilians in Sudan are subjected to killings and rapes, both near the frontlines and in RSF occupied areas.[25] The UN estimate of the death count is most likely too low, as credible reports are made in areas controlled by the RSF of massacres killing thousands, maybe tens of thousands.[26] As both sides in the war are led by criminals they’re both interested in keeping the free press silent, which in turn makes Sudan something of an informational black hole.[27] When the war is over information access will hopefully be easier, but as of now no one knows the full scale of the atrocities in Sudan.

The peace process is slow, but both sides in the war have shown at least some willingness to cooperate on reaching an end to the conflict. Indeed, during the first 100 days of the conflict there were five ceasefires.[28] They were also all violated. Both sides in the conflict consistently reject talks organized by foreign actors they see as supporting the other side, which stalls the peace process.[29] The new year did not bring much hope, as both Hemedti and Burhan avoided planned meetings to discuss the peace process.[30] Apart from abortive efforts to organize a ceasefire around Ramadan, the peace process as a whole appears to have frozen entirely, and they may remain frozen until something changes militarily.[31] While it’s hard to see a clear and likely end to the war now, that will change. For the sake of the people of Sudan, that end should come as soon as possible.