The Crisis in Sudan, Explained by an Expert

We’re also seeing a massive territorial shift in the areas that each belligerent controls. Whereas the Sudanese Armed Forces – which is also sort of cosplaying as the government – had been in control of most of the country at the outset of the war in April of last year, we saw in very quick succession the Rapid Support Forces take large parts of Khartoum, the capital and the capital state; four out of the five states of Darfur; the central Gezira state, which is the breadbasket of Sudan; Sennar state; and is encroaching on other states, such as the eastern states of Gedaref; the southern states of Kordofan – that’s North, South, and West Kordofan; and the southern Blue Nile region. We’re seeing in not a very long space of time the very vast expansion of RSF-controlled territory. 

Why?

One, the RSF is more battle hardened. They had been fighting campaigns in Libya, and Yemen, mostly on behalf of the Saudis and the Emiratis. They were the point at the end of Khartoum’s spear in Darfur for the past 20 years, and therefore have a good sense of how to claim that territory and were able to take it over very, very quickly. 

They also have better, more sophisticated weapons. Lots of the weapons we have seen coming in from either from the Russia’s Wagner Group – now Africa Corps – or the United Arab Emirates, as has been reported since last year, most recently in a United Nations Panel of Experts Group Report.

The RSF also has a stated political aim of trying to destroy the 1956 state – 1956 being the year Sudan got independence. The RSF sees Sudan very much molded by, and into, the image of the Sudanese Armed Forces, so they have this aim of dismantling that state and dismantling the Sudanese army while they do it.

The Sudanese army, conversely, has not had the battlefield readiness. It only has the weapons itself makes, or the purchases from the likes of Russia.  It has a very large defense industry, but that has been targeted by the RSF, so they have nowhere near as much weaponry coming in. They don’t have as many mobile troops that are well trained.

So are the Rapid Support Forces winning this war? 

Currently, they’re only able to make ground militarily. But they are losing the political battle. Every city they take, there is an uptick in violence. There is an uptick in atrocities, particularly in Darfur, that are very much are a continuation of the ethnic dynamics of the war in Darfur that started 20 years ago and was never really resolved. 

We see in other parts of the country, particularly in Gezira state, reports of violence against women [and] sexual assault. Everywhere they go, we see reports of looting, particularly in Khartoum, but also in other large towns. Because of that, they haven’t been able to garner the kind of political support from people in areas they’ve taken over to be able to consolidate. They’re very good at taking territory and not so good at governing it. 

I wanted to talk about Darfur, which already experienced a genocide in this century. Where do things stand now? 

Four out of the five states – West Darfur, South Darfur, East Darfur, and Central Darfur were taken over by the RSF in quick succession in October of last year. There’s only one remaining city in Darfur, which is the capital of North Darfur, el Fasher, which has not fallen to RSF hands. But it was very near to falling to the RSF in April of this year.

The SAF and the RSF had fought the campaign together against the armed groups of Darfur 20 years ago. This time, they are fighting each other with those very same armed groups in the middle, some of whom are choosing sides. The battle at the national level between SAF and the RSF is precipitating splits among armed groups locally. 

They also have an ethnic dimension, where different ethnic groups, depending on what their group interests are, would side with either the SAF or the RSF. The RSF has been at pains to try and effectively recruit support from different ethnic groups, particularly those who identify as Arab, and relatedly, are pastoralists groups. 

This is one reason why the RSF has had the edge over the SAF in Darfur. They’ve been recruiting from mostly Arab pastoralists groups, Militias that have joined [the RSF] are part of very mobile ethnic groups that exist across the Sahel. There have been credible reports, including by the United Nations, that the RSF is recruiting from as far away as Mauritania. 

Can you talk a little more about why these divisions exist?

The Juba Peace Agreement in 2020 set the scene for a lot of the violence that we are seeing in Darfur right now, particularly in West Darfur. In that 2020 agreement, the Sudanese government – which, at the time, was part military, part civilian transitional government – had effectively rewarded the African armed groups by giving them political positions and access to resources in what is known as a “payroll peace.” But the pastoralist Arab groups, having fought on the side of the government, were not rewarded as the rebellious armed groups were. This caused a lot of grievances within those Arab groups. 

And so, under the cover of the national war, Arab groups actively tried to settle scores in places like West Darfur against some of these non-Arab groups they felt had been rewarded in the Juba Peace Agreement of 2020. We saw the assassination of the West Darfur Governor Khamis Abakar in July 2023. We also saw genocidal attacks on the Masalit the group that [Abakar] belongs to, in the summer of 2023 and then later in the fall of 2023, also in West Darfur. Those ethnically linked atrocities or genocidal attacks are a feature of this war, very much a continuation of the kind of attacks we saw from 20 years ago, but expressly linked to the Juba Peace Agreement and the types of peacemaking that Sudan has had, which is much more based on rewarding rebellion, rewarding those taking up arms, rather than trying to figure out some of the core grievances and creating an equitable peace dividend.

How did the other loyalties break out? I thought some groups were neutral, before deciding to side with the SAF. 

These groups were not neutral. What they were was up for grabs. Both the RSF and SAF felt that they could incentivize those groups to join their side. 

What happened in March, I believe, of this year, was that some of these groups – particularly the Sudan Liberation Army/SLA under Mini Minawi, who became this nominal governor of Darfur during the transitional period as a reward for signing the Juba Peace Agreement – declared that they were not neutral – i.e. no longer up for grabs. [Minawi] declared that he was going to join the Sudanese Armed Forces. 

The RSF started to recognize that some key armed groups in and around el Fasher were siding with the SAF, so before that coalition got too strong, they were going to try and take el Fasher. After the October RSF takeover of four Darfur states, people from Central, South, and East Darfur went to el Fasher. El Fasher became something of a sanctuary city. We saw the swelling of the population from 1.2 to 1.5 million to now 2.5 million, or just under 2.5 million. That’s why the propensity for mass atrocities in el Fasher was going to be higher than any of the other states we’d seen in Darfur. 

And in el Fasher you have the Sixth Division of the Sudanese Armed Forces stationed there, you, of course, have the RSF and allied militias. You have the Juba Peace Agreement signatory groups, and then you have the non-signatory group in [a different faction of the] Sudan Liberation Army led by Abdul Wahid. You have four different coalitions. This is why the fighting in el Fasher was going to be of a much higher magnitude, much more intense than in other places. 

Beyond the fighting that is more about territory, there was the other type of violence, atrocity violence that really was going to be, I think, quite acute. That’s what we were all afraid of. That you would see the fighting between different troops, but also the reprisal attacks from pastoralist groups towards the African groups that they feel they have an ax to grind with. 

Where do things stand now?

In March, the RSF, was getting a lot of international pressure to stand down in el Fasher, which they did. But Mini Minawi, who is the nominal Governor of Darfur, had, by that point, very much sided with SAF.  We were told that the Sudanese Armed Forces asked him to instigate a fight in north Darfur to draw the RSF into battle. 

The logic for the SAF was that, even though they’re massively outgunned in Darfur, they wanted to keep the RSF occupied in el Fasher so they could try and retake the central state of Gezira, which was lost to them in December. 

That failed massively because the RSF works almost like a franchise. They have the sort of Darfur franchise, and they have the central Sudan franchise, led by different commanders. The RSF was able to keep Gezira state, while at the same time, the RSF was able to repel the SAF and its allied forces in el Fasher. 

For so many of us in the civil society-activist space, we saw how quickly the RSF was likely to take over el Fasher. The SAF were not able to get access to fuel, food, or arms. They were only able to resupply through the air, which is insufficient because it can be intercepted.

Historically, the Sudanese Armed Forces is not an army that does protection of civilians. But they were the only sort of vanguard against the RSF encroachment of el Fasher, and therefore, the beginnings of atrocities.

And the RSF was very much on the ascendancy in el Fasher. It had gotten together enough recruits, enough weaponry, enough fuel supply to be able to besiege el Fasher and effectively degrade the capability of the SAF.  It was really only a matter of time before the RSF took over in el Fasher. 

Because of that, there was pressure on the international community, particularly the United States, the United Kingdom – which is the penholder on Sudan in the United Nations – to put pressure not just on the RSF, but also on the United Arab Emirates, which backs the RSF, to get the RSF to stand down. 

Those phone calls were made, frankly speaking, to the RSF commanders at the strategic level, at the senior leadership level, but also on the ground, as well as phone calls to Abu Dhabi and elsewhere, to get the RSF to stand down. So, right now in el Fasher, you have this sort of detente, if you will, a freezing of the conflict, and the RSF have not moved forward. 

But what the SAF was afraid of is coming true. Because the fighting in el Fasher has largely frozen, the RSF had been able to redeploy some of their troops more centrally. They have now taken Sennar state, and positioned themselves to be able to make inroads elsewhere. And we know from the outset of the war in April, that the RSF’s objective is to reach Port Sudan.

Which is the headquarters of SAF, right?

It wasn’t at the time. It only became the base of the SAF when Burhan and his deputy left Khartoum in September and set up shop there. 

The Port Sudan is the objective because the RSF want to reach the coast. They know they cannot just play a role in Sudan unless they also have control over one of its most strategic sites, which is the Red Sea. This allows it to influence what goes on in the Red Sea Basin, both militarily and commercially. It allows it to reward some of its supporters, including the United Arab Emirates, with a base or a port on the Red Sea, and allows it to play politics at the geostrategic level.

Based on your description of what went down in Darfur, international leverage, if applied, sounds like it works. The U.S. is now reviving mediation talks, which, at least according to reports, the RSF says it will attend, but the SAF will not. What’s going on there?

The SAF has been the holdout on all talks previously, including previous talks in Jeddah. In some ways, the talks in Geneva are the extension of the Jeddah talks. But they’re trying a new venue and new setup with an expanded group, including the African Union, including the Intergovernmental Authority on Development [IGAD, a regional bloc], including the United Arab Emirates, including Egypt. The Jeddah talks were purely the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. 

But the format seems to remain pretty much the same. No great deal of leverage is being put on either side.  The big difference about Geneva is that [U.S. Secretary of State] Antony Blinken has said that he would preside over these talks. Since the start of the fighting last April, he had never had that level of engagement. The White House is completely checked out on Sudan. But even at the State Department, the issue never really went further than Molly Phee, who’s the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.

But now, with the Biden administration potentially reaching its last leg, there has been more juice, if you will, put into the machine. Both Blinken and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador at the U.N., are likely to attend the Geneva talks. 

The U.S. is signaling an increased level of importance, and therefore, the SAF and the RSF should feel more compelled to come. But those are inducements, not leverage. We’re still not seeing leverage being put on the table – i.e., if you do not make sufficient commitments to a peaceful settlement, we will impose coordinated sanctions, we will make strides to protect civilians. Whatever it looks like, disincentives for keeping the war going – we have not seen those.

So the Sudanese Armed Forces can find it very easy to say, “actually, we don’t want to come.” The difference between SAF and the RSF is that for the SAF, its constituency is domestic. It’s quite the opposite for the RSF. They want to be seen internationally as a legitimate force in Sudan, one that could potentially form the next government or at least partially decide on who’s going to be in the next government to try and mold the future of Sudan. So the RSF will agree to every internationally led mediation process put forward.

What’s the SAF’s domestic narrative?

The SAF have built this domestic public narrative of the RSF as rebels, as marauders, as those who do not want the interest of Sudan. To make that stick – and in the face of the RSF saying yes to every peace agreement – what they have to do is to effectively use this narrative of dignity and say that if we go and sit in the same room as the RSF, we’re effectively equating them to us, as the Sudanese Armed Forces, a proper institution, not just this band of rebels. 

Of course, a lot of people see that they’re both belligerents. Until very recently, they were engaged in putting down protests together. But what the Sudanese Armed Forces banks on is being able to mobilize a lot of people who have had their friends and family killed through RSF actions, that have had their homes and assets looted by the RSF, that have had the ethnic dimension – people from the center of Sudan who would see the RSF as these marauders from the West. 

The SAF is hoping that by comparing themselves to the RSF – who have been objectively a lot worse in their atrocities – will make the Sudanese people believe that negotiations are not the way to go. That the only way to go is a full military victory. But the difficulty for SAF is that they haven’t shown they have the capability for full military victory. 

I’ve tried to figure out, you know, what exactly does the SAF want to achieve considering it cannot win a military victory as things currently stand? I think part of it is steeped in Sudanese masculinity, which is that – and we see this everywhere, but certainly in Sudan – it’s not the losing of the territory that is necessarily the biggest failure. The failure would be the compromise the SAF would make at the mediation table, which would then reify the military failure. 

So the SAF is strategically waiting for the RSF to disintegrate. They believe that the RSF cannot continue as it is because they have seen when the RSF takes territory and has to then set up some kind of governance structures within those areas, whether it’s a police force in South Darfur, or a sort of civilian administration in Gezira, that all crumbles very quickly. They’re hoping that the RSF will be plagued with infighting and that it will internally implode. Then they will just be able to come in and reap the rewards.

That’s a very high stakes gamble, because, in the meantime, the Sudanese Armed Forces themselves could fracture. They could also lose so much territory that it no longer becomes impactful whether there is a disintegration on the RSF side or not. 

That is the scenario that I fear. If we get to a stage where the SAF is dilly-dallying on this prospect of a mediated settlement, the RSF continues to take more and more territory, the SAF continues to push this sort of racist political narrative, what we get is a country that cannot be consolidated because it’s run by these RSF franchises and a public that has been whipped up against them so much, that you’re going to get the civil war that we have been dreading.

Sudan is not yet at a civil war?

Right now, I wouldn’t classify what’s going on in Sudan as a civil war, because there’s not as much of engagement of ordinary people. It’s a war on civilians. It’s a counter-revolutionary war. 

But soon, it may get to a phase where it’s an all-out civil war: neighbor against neighbor, community against community. Where the SAF is degraded and the RSF is fragmented and instead of trying to bring just two groups to the mediation table, you have to contend with 15 different factions, some of whom may lean towards a more of a jihadi bent, some who may lean towards more a more genocidal ethnic bent. That makes a situation far more difficult to resolve in the long- and medium-term. In the immediate term, it makes life a lot worse for people in Sudan.

What is the status of the pro-democracy movement in Sudan – including the resistance committees and other civil society groups that helped usher in the revolution? 

When the war started, the resistance committees started to create these emergency response rooms, which were all about trying to get people safe passages out of the places – remember, this started in very densely populated Khartoum. From there, they went on to provide communal kitchens, which are keeping people fed today because the agricultural food system has completely broken down and to the international humanitarian response have been massively diminished.

And remember, this is a counter-revolutionary war. They’re being targeted by both sides. So they haven’t been able, for example, to hold protests. They’re mostly documenting. They’re the ones who give us reliable numbers around who was killed and when, and who the perpetrators are, what kind of attacks. They have been much more reliable than any remaining state authorities who are siding with the Sudanese Armed Forces, or any of the new bureaucratic structures that the RSF has put up in places that it has taken over. 

But they have been massively targeted. We’re hearing about disappearances and killings. Every day, we’re also seeing doctors and journalists targeted. Journalists, for obvious reasons, because they also document. But also, because just before the war, doctors and the journalists had elections in their unions. They have very strong unions. These unions have been integral not just to the revolution of 2018-2019, but to the previous two revolutions Sudan has had in 1964 and 1985. 

As far as the belligerents are concerned, they have to degrade the structured groups, such as the doctors, such as the resistance committees, such as the journalists, to effectively ensure no one is keeping a watchful eye, no one is recording the numbers of dead, no one is reporting on the atrocities either side might commit.

What do you see as the key to preventing the worst-case scenario: an all-out war?

A mediated settlement is the way that every single war in Sudan has been settled. And so, a mediated settlement is likely how this will end. 

History also tells us this war could last 20 years. The question is, if we’re already seeing this level of state collapse, this level of hunger crises, and this level of absolute destruction and degradation, then what will Sudan look like in 20 years time? Especially if you get a complete fragmentation on both sides, and a proliferation of different armed groups, as well as this more civil-war element of neighbor turning against neighbor and increases in genocidal-type attacks. That would be the worst-case scenario. Which looks like the most likely one given where things stand. 

So there has to be a resolution to this conflict now. That resolution requires a secession of hostilities agreement and then a peace deal. 

We’re very far away from that because of two things. One, as I said earlier, no leverage has been put on the table. Two, all of these mediations are trying to do different things and not working together. The U.N. just held talks in Geneva in July, when the Americans are holding talks in Geneva in August. We know the Emiratis and the Saudis are increasingly using the war in Sudan to try and eke out their influence in opposition to each other, that competition between them is very fierce. 

The United States needs to get these countries together, almost all of whom are allies, and try to collectively bring about an end to this war in a way that suits the people of Sudan more than it does Emirati interests or whatever. We need leadership from the international community. We need cohesion to make a mediated settlement happen quickly, and well, and in a way that it does not reproduce some of the ills of previous peacemaking, which is all about, incentivizing the belligerents and giving them a slice of the pie, rather than dealing with actual core grievances, which led us to the source of the war. If we have another agreement that is much more about this kind of “payroll peace,” then what we’ll end up with is just a pause to the fighting and then a restart of the war at some point down the line. 

But even if there’s a ceasefire, the protection needs that we have in Sudan at the moment – issues facing women and girls; non-Arab groups in Darfur, just helpless and vulnerable civilians in other parts of the country – those protection gaps will remain. What we want – and this is something that civil society has been pushing for some time – is to say that the United Nations, African Union, two big, bilateral entities here on Sudan, need to put together a protection of civilians force. We saw with the creation of UNAMID, a joint African Union-UN force in the Darfur to protect civilians. We need something of that type now. [UNAMID started in 2007; its mandate was completed in 2020.]

Is there anything that gives you some hope about Sudan’s future?

The hope is exactly in the emergency response rooms. These volunteers are giving up their time and risking life and limb on a daily basis to try and weave together the political and social fabric of Sudan that has been ripped apart by this war. That is a very difficult thing to do when they themselves are targeted. When they themselves have to search for funding, they have to search for food to keep these food kitchens going, they have to search for the mental bandwidth to be able to continue to do this work under very difficult times and under great duress. 

The diaspora has also put in a lot of money into these groups to try and keep them moving. There is this social cohesion that we’ve been lacking for so long in Sudan. There has never been an opportunity seized by any governing entity, whether it’s a military autocratic regime, or a democratically elected regime – of which there have been very few and only for short periods of time. But none have ever really created and instilled a national identity that could be inclusive, that could try to get at the root causes of so many of these wars and rebellions. There is a chance to do that now.