Over the preceding two and a half years, occurrences in Sudan, a country ravaged by conflict, have been denoted by extreme fluctuations — encompassing not solely which faction in the dispute possesses the advantage, but additionally oscillating amid instances of hesitant optimism and unqualified hopelessness.
Could this potentially be the circumstance this week, wherein one of the most somber junctures of the war was accompanied by, at minimum, a modest stride toward concord?
The lowest point was attained in the prior week, subsequent to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — the paramilitary entity exercising authority across a significant portion of the western expanse of the nation — ultimately capturing the metropolis of El Fasher, the Sudanese army’s final enduring stronghold within the Darfur vicinity, subsequent to an 18-month encirclement intended to starve the city’s defiance. (The RSF is the successor to the notorious Janjaweed militias, who were accused of committing atrocities amid the Darfur genocide in the mid-2000s.)
Local and global authorities had been sounding the alarm since the preceding year about a probable carnage if El Fasher were to fall, and while particulars pertaining to the unfolding events within the city remain circumscribed, there exists justification to anticipate the direst outcomes, encompassing what seem to be accumulations of remains and spots of blood observable from outer space. Accounts from survivors, in conjunction with horrifying videos disseminated via the internet, bear witness to extensive homicides and collective sexual violations.
Arjan Hehenkamp, the Darfur crisis manager for the non-governmental organization International Rescue Committee, who was recently present in Tawila — the adjacent city to which denizens of El Fasher have escaped — conveyed to Vox this week that the most unsettling aspect he witnessed was the scarcity of the anticipated quantity of displaced persons they had encountered, notably the paucity of adult males.
“The reality that they are arriving in such limited numbers narrates a story in itself,” Hehenkamp stated. “It poses the inquiry: ‘Where is the remaining populace of El Fasher?'”
Additionally, in the course of this week, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the principal international arbiter on food shortage crises, declared the incidence of a famine within El Fasher, alongside Kadguli, a metropolis situated in Sudan’s central Kordofan province. This renders 2025 an uncommon year wherein the IPC has twice proclaimed a famine, having previously declared it for sections of Gaza in August.
Concurrently, there manifested a minute signal of political advancement on Thursday when the RSF articulated its consent to a proposition for a humanitarian truce originating from the US-led mediator cohort recognized as the Quad. The opposing entity in the discord, Sudan’s armed forces, has yet to formally acknowledge the proposition but has regarded it with skepticism. Numerous specialists harbor uncertainty regarding the RSF’s genuine intention to cease hostilities, and indeed, aerial assaults occurred on the nation’s army-regulated capital subsequent to the pronouncement.
Nevertheless, there subsist, at minimum, several encouraging indications that the war may be approaching a pivotal juncture.
An Abbreviated Recount of the Genesis
The conflict within Sudan has precipitated the demise of excess of 150,000 individuals and the displacement of upwards of 14 million, and it encompasses a bewildering array of armed factions, external sponsors, and underlying rationales. Nonetheless, presented herein is the simplified rendition.
The origins of the ongoing dispute trace back to 2019, a period when a protest initiative emerged against Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s protracted autocrat. Reacting to extensive turmoil, Bashir’s leading generals deposed and apprehended him. Initially, they avowed a transition toward civilian governance, yet instead, they seized control themselves. Two figures, the army’s Gens. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — the latter more widely recognized as “Hemedti,” the chief of the paramilitary RSF — consented to share authority, but they promptly encountered a disagreement.
In 2023, the animosity escalated into armed confrontation within the capital, Khartoum. The RSF initially appeared to maintain the advantage, capturing the majority of the capital and the encircling territory, but the army succeeded in reclaiming control of Khartoum earlier in the current year.
In recent months, the RSF has been able to reinforce its stances and solidify authority in Western Sudan, which includes Darfur, although it still initiates periodic deadly aerial assaults extensively into the eastern region. Both participants in the war have been incriminated of committing atrocities.
The army is commanded by Sudan’s internationally sanctioned government and is sustained by Egypt, Iran, and the bulk of the Arab world. The principal benefactor of the RSF, which is subject to an international arms prohibition, is the United Arab Emirates. The UAE refutes furnishing the RSF with pecuniary or military resources, but the association has been extensively documented, notably by a recent leaked UN report.
A Watershed Moment?
Subsequent to the fall of El Fasher, the war has undeniably entered a novel phase, but the characteristics of this phase remain significantly indeterminate.
El Fasher constituted the national army’s concluding major stronghold in Darfur, signifying that the RSF has now consolidated its dominion over a substantial fraction of western Sudan, as well as over pivotal supply conduits. Darfur’s significance for the RSF is twofold: political — it represents Hemedti’s native area and the group’s conventional foundation of support — and economic — it is the locale of numerous lucrative goldmines that supply the group with tangible currency.
Sudan is presently bifurcated effectively between east and west. The war may have transitioned into what is denoted as a “hurting stalemate,” wherein outright triumph remains unattainable for either participant, yet they persist in inflicting carnage nonetheless. Over the course of the summer, the RSF established a parallel administration in Darfur, potentially indicating a preference to solidify its jurisdiction over the territories it presently governs, as opposed to endeavoring to seize the entirety of the nation, notwithstanding their continued deployment of drones to assault the capital.
The international perspective is likewise evolving, encompassing the augmented engagement of the US. Asserting that US policy in Sudan has been efficacious in preceding years would be an overstatement, yet it at least functioned as an active participant in the region and possessed the capacity to exert influence. (In fact, President George W. Bush was so dedicated to matters involving Sudan and South Sudan that officials quipped that he could have served as the State Department desk officer for the region.) Sudan has gradually diminished in prominence on the US priorities list over approximately the past 15 years, and it garnered minimal consideration from the second Trump administration during its initial months. (It is likewise valid, generally, that the unfolding calamity in Darfur is presently receiving considerably less international attention.)
However, this dynamic may be undergoing alteration. Subsequent to publicizing a peace accord between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in late June, Trump’s Africa envoy Massad Boulos (who also happens to be Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law) articulated that Sudan constituted his forthcoming priority. This may represent an instance wherein the intimate connections — political and financial — between Boulos’s Trump in-laws and the affluent monarchies of the Persian Gulf may constitute an advantage. It is equitable to question why the administration has not leveraged some of this influence and sway sooner, particularly in relation to the UAE. Of significance, while the US, toward the conclusion of the Biden administration, imposed sanctions on a number of Emirati entities for their involvement in financing the group, this did not impede the billions of dollars transacted in defense and technology agreements between the two governments during Trump’s initial year.
In September, the diplomatic assembly known as the Quad — encompassing the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE — unveiled a collaborative proposition for a peace initiative. The joint accord itself was noteworthy: Egypt and the UAE are providing assistance to opposing factions in the conflict, and disputes among Arab powers have previously undermined diplomatic endeavors. The RSF was improbable to consent to the arrangement as long as it persisted in vying to seize El Fasher, but this dynamic appears to have transformed.
The UAE may likewise be initiating a reconsideration of its backing for a militia widely accused of perpetrating genocide. The massacre in El Fasher has focused international scrutiny on the UAE’s purported function in the war and the revenues it derives from the gold commerce that fuels the hostilities. In the prior week, a senior Emirati diplomat conveyed that his government had committed an error in endorsing the coup that seized power in 2019, a rare acknowledgment of miscalculations in its Sudan policy. In recent years, the UAE has sustained a proxy network of insurgent and secessionist factions throughout the Middle East and North Africa in an attempt to augment its regional influence, but in the instance of its engagement in Sudan, the detriment to its reputation may be commencing to outweigh the strategic gains.
None of these developments renders a resolution to the conflict in Sudan exceptionally probable, but the imposition of a standstill on the existing frontlines to facilitate the provision of critically needed humanitarian assistance into areas afflicted by conflict is, at the least, a possibility.
Sudan, in numerous respects, exemplifies a quintessential 21st-century war: a hybrid civil war/international conflict characterized partly by diminishing US influence and the expanding significance of “middle powers” such as the UAE, featuring the pervasive employment of foreign military contractors and drones, and a dissipation of international norms pertaining to the application of force and the safeguarding of civilians. Regrettably, notwithstanding a handful of recent justifications for optimism, it is likely emblematic of 21st-century wars, akin to Ukraine and Gaza, in yet another aspect: It is remarkably arduous to conclude.
Source: vox.com
