Nearly two decades after ethnic violence sparked a genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, last month the United States determined that a new genocide is occurring in the war-torn country. The United States found that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – led by Mohammad Hamdan Daglo, known as Hemedti – have “systematically murdered men and boys . . . on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence.”
The RSF’s roots stem from the previous conflict in Darfur, and its current war against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) may well turn on which side can control the region, including the key city of Al-Fashir. The city is strategically important and represents the crux of the country’s larger conflict, with ambitions of local actors in Darfur and national interests of the warring sides intertwined. Hence victory by either side would largely determine the outcome of the war in the region and Sudan more broadly.
The Spread of Conflict Beyond Khartoum
When war erupted between the SAF and the RSF in April 2023, many in the country thought or hoped that the violence would remain contained to Sudan’s capital and traditional powerhouse, Khartoum. Those hopes, however, quickly ended with a devastating war engulfing the entire nation – Sudanese are experiencing the worst famine in the nation’s recent history, over 30 million people require humanitarian assistance, and tens of thousands have been killed.
While post-independence Sudan has witnessed several civil wars and military coups, the country’s newest war represents a shift of paradigm in terms of nature, magnitude, and the actors involved. First, it unusually broke out in Khartoum, which had largely remained impregnable from military attacks apart from the incursion by the former rebel group the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) in May 2008. Second, the fighting broke out from within the government security forces with the RSF seeking to dismantle the same security sector and political establishment that brought it to existence.
Third, this conflict is connected to Darfur where the RSF was crafted by the former regime as a counterinsurgency tool to quell the rebellion that broke out in 2003.
Alliance of Convenience: The Impact of Darfur’s Unfinished War
Being ravaged by two decades of bloodshed and insecurity, the Darfur factor in the ongoing war is hugely significant. The region is witnessing a blend of tumultuous dynamics linked to the past legacy of violence and the current conflict. Due to Darfur’s unique status as historically conflict-hit region, partly fueled by local imbalances such as land control and power dynamics, the motives of its actors who are engaged in the ongoing fighting may surpass the primary aim of power control in Khartoum as envisaged by the main conflict parties (SAF and RSF) who instigated the war in the first place.
At the onset of the war, the former Darfur rebels (Sudan Liberation Movement, led by the Governor of Darfur, Minni Minawi, and the Sudan Revolutionary Front, which included the Justice and Equality Movement) who joined the Transitional Government of former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok – following a peace deal in 2020, felt little sympathy with either party to the conflict. Hence, they took a neutral stance. Above all, both the SAF and RSF were their erstwhile foes who fought them bitterly for almost two decades in Darfur and beyond. Through the mobilization of the notorious Janjaweed militia fighters, which later morphed into the RSF, the regime of former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir applied a scorched earth policy depopulating large portion of lands traditionally owned by indigenous groups who were displaced into internally displaced persons (IDP) and refugee camps. For instance, according to United Nations reports, in 2007 al-Bashir’s government supported efforts by thousands of nomadic settlers from Sudan’s neighboring countries to occupy empty lands belonging to indigenous groups.
Over a decade ago, I investigated with others the impact of illegal settlements and land occupation on communities which the al-Bashir’s regime perceived as disloyal or harboring insurgents. The long policy of empowering certain ethnic groups from which the bulk of RSF fighters originate made it inherently impossible for the displaced persons to safely return to their original lands. The new owners, who reportedly came from countries such as Niger and Chad were allegedly awarded Sudanese citizenship and given the opportunity to legally register the lands they had acquired through government approval in certain areas. A sizable number of these settlers took custody of fertile agricultural lands in places such as Wadi Salih province in Central Darfur and Wadi Azoum in West Darfur. This trend has intensified over the years with more aggressive State intervention to sabotage land ownership rights in line with the RSF’s rise to power as a key State actor.
The driving factors of the current fighting in Darfur, including the fierce battles over control of the region’s historical capital city of Al-Fashir, are largely catalyzed by the old abominations of the Darfur conflict. Land ownership and local power structures and power balance are at the core of this. In a recent development, the RSF announced the establishment of a “new emirate” in Central Darfur State which is a settlement for a nomadic clan named Awlad Baraka wa-Mubarak who reportedly crossed the border into Sudan from the Central African Republic (CAR). Darfur’s largest ethnic group, the Fur, from which the name of the region is derived, condemned in a statement what it called “a blatant attempt to bring about demographic changes aimed at empowering foreign groups at the expense of the indigenous population.” The areas of the newly declared ‘’emirate’’ – including Wadi Saleh, Qarsila, Arawala, Bundisi, Deleij, and Mukjar – were mentioned as locations of ethnic attacks in the International Criminal Court’s indictment in the ongoing trial of former Janjaweed commander Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb.
When RSF forces overran government military bases and took control of four main cities in Darfur by October 2023, former Darfur rebels viewed the developments with outrage and distrust of the RSF’s ultimate goals. In their view, absolute control of power by the RSF in Sudan would not only entrench the disastrous policies of the old al-Bashir regime in Darfur, but further dictate new realities that could irreversibly seal the region’s fate. The distrust grew further with the rapid circulation of the narratives of the war, including reports that the RSF is seeking to control and rule Darfur as a separate entity, especially if it fails to control the rest of the country. The presumptions also include the creation of two de facto states in Sudan, one in the east and one in the west of the country, somehow akin to the status quo in neighboring Libya. Since 2014, Libya has been split in two opposing governments, one is located in Tripoli in the west of the country backed by the U.N. (the Government of National Unity), and a rival authority in Tobruk in the east, known as the House of Representatives.
Driven by these fears and own ambitions, in November 2023, the former rebel groups of the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement abandoned their neutrality and declared active involvementin military operations in alliance with the SAF against the RSF. It is worth noting that these two rebel groups and other factions who signed the Juba Peace Agreement (JPA) in October 2020 had already set up a joint military unit called the Joint Darfur Forces (JDF) to protect civilians following a surge of militia attacks against IDPs across the region. The JDF kept Al-Fashir as their headquarters, creating a buffer zone between the warring sides (SAF and RSF) in the initial phase of the conflict. Their primary was confined to protecting civilians, securing humanitarian aid convoys and maintaining law and order in the city which hosts over two million IDPs, including those who from elsewhere across the region.
Fighting to Control Al-Fashir
Al-Fashir is strategically important in many aspects. First, it was the historical capital of the Sultanate of Darfur in the eighteenth century, serving as an economic hub through caravan routes linking Darfur to Libya, the River Nile, Egypt, Chad, and the wider Sahel region. Second, the city is contiguous with seven Sudanese states, with road travel to four of them, including the capital, Khartoum. Since the beginning of the Darfur conflict in 2003, the city has become the center for international relief efforts and subsequently hosted the headquarters of the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), the largest peacekeeping operation of its kind.
The tipping point that sparked the fighting between the RSF and the JDF came in April 2024, when the former took control of the strategic town of Mellit, northeast of Al-Fashir, which links North Darfur to Libya. Through this move, the RSF effectively cut off the vital supply line between Al-Fashir and Libya through Mellit that the JDF relied on to secure essential needs such as fuel and food items. In the subsequent days, the RSF intensified military operations, attacking and destroying a cluster of villages around Al-Fashir. By the following month of May, the RSF deployed more troops and laid siege around the city, which has since killed more than 700 civilians and injured more than 1,100 others, according to the United Nations.
As of February, 2025, nine months since the start of the battle for Al-Fashir, neither side has been able to neutralize the other. The RSF appears determined to capture the city at any cost despite the heavy losses it continues to suffer among its ranks, including its top commanders such as Ali Yagoub and Abdulrahman Garin Shatta, who were respectively killed during battles in Al-Fashir in June and September 2024. Despite its losses, the RSF will likely continue to apply a two-pronged approach in its quest to concur Al-Fashir. First, by continuing intense shelling from afar with mortars, drones, and heavy weaponry to overwhelm the defending fighters and crush their resistance. Second, launching sporadic and unprovoked attacks on remote towns and villages belonging to its opponents’ communities in North Darfur to stretch the JDF’s capacity in defending Al-Fashir.
However, it is important to note that the SAF has escalated offensives across Khartoum in the first week of February, making some “huge gains” in recapturing key RSF-held positions. The SAF stepped up further attacks against the RSF in Darfur’s neighboring state of North Kordofan. On Feb. 2, Sudan’s top military leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan visited the strategic city of Um-Ruwaba in North Kordofan twice in 24 hours after it fell under SAF’s control on Jan. 30. The city connects central Sudan via the White Nile to North Kordofan State and areas further west, including Darfur. These military developments might strengthen the SAF’s position to deploy extra manpower and equipment to support its troops in Al-Fashir. Meanwhile, after losing control of Al-Gerzira State in central Sudan, key areas in Khartoum and Kordofan States, RSF fighters, including war-wounded soldiers retreated to Darfur. This is a further showcase of the significance of the Al-Fashir in becoming the potential final battleground in Sudan’s war.
As stated above, the JDF, supported by SAF, is equally unlikely to relinquish the battle with ease. They retain decent manpower and the equipment they need to confront the RSF, including mounted machine guns, light weapons, heavy artillery, armored vehicles, army carriers, all of which is supported by air cover. Press reports from international media have proclaimed the “imminent fall of Al-Fashir,” (for example here and here), but unless some deal for a truce is secured the battle for Al-Fashir is likely to stretch on.
Civilians Caught in the Conflict
As the battle for Al-Fashir continues, civilians in the city and surrounding IDP camps such as Zamzam and Abu Shouk face an array of threats, including death and severe physical harm, starvation, and displacement. Through November and December 2024, the RSF escalated attacks on Zamzam camp, forcing aid workers to flee for their lives. The RSF claims its attacks are justified because of presence of enemy combatants inside the camp, but the JDF and IDP residents deny the claim. On Dec. 23, 2024, the humanitarian aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported that the camp was subjected to repeated shelling by the RSF, saying that its medical staff treated over 40 injured persons, including children as young as 4 years old suffering severe trauma. “Not only have people been starving, but they are also now being bombarded and forced to flee again,” Michel-Olivier Lacharité, the philanthropic aid body’s Head of Emergency Operations said. There is growing concern that the RSF’s potential capture of Al-Fashir could accompany a mass exodus of residents and reprisal attacks against residents of non-Arab origin in the city and beyond.
RSF fighters have already demonstrated a disastrous lack of discipline vis-à-vis civilian protection or commitment to rules of engagement. SAF troops have also been accused of committing serious violations against civilians, including indiscriminate airstrikes and firing heavy weapons in densely populated areas. SAF affiliated fighters have also been accused of committing ethnic cleansing during the recapture of Wad Madani, the capital of Al-Gezira state on Jan. 12. The U.N. said that it documented 21 killings based on ethnic profiling of the victims in two attacks on civilians living in Kanabi, which are historically segregated encampments in Al-Gezira. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, said on Jan. 17 the attacks were motivated by ethnic hatred, adding that the number of civilians killed during the violence “are very likely higher.” The U.N. also accused both the SAF and the RSF of obstructing humanitarian aid delivery to civilians and using starvation tactics against 25 million civilians in the country.
The unfolding humanitarian disaster in Zamzam demonstrates this grim reality. Media reports on Feb. 8 indicated that the RSF carried out attacks in the vicinity of Zamzam, killing three people and detained dozens of IDPs from the camp accusing them of supplying fuel and food items to the SAF and the JDF inside Al-Fashir. Meanwhile, MSF said in a statement on Feb. 2 that its field hospital in Zamzam treated 21 wounded persons, half of them children.
The U.N. has called on warring sides to halt attacks on civilians and ensure their protection. While these pronouncements are needed to remind the parties to the conflict of their responsibilities to observe civilian protection and the laws of armed conflict, they fell short of making any concrete steps or punitive measures towards holding the violators to account. The perpetrators and enablers of indiscriminate attacks against civilians should be vigorously pursued including the through the ongoing efforts of the International Criminal Court. International efforts should be doubled with a firm pressure on the parties to the conflict and their respective regional backers to promptly desist from attacks on civilians.
Wider Repercussions
While it is early to draw any conclusions about the outcome of the battle for Al-Fashir, its significance in the broader context of the war cannot be underestimated. It could have far-reaching reverberations especially if RSF fighters manage to storm the city. A decisive result may not only determine the fate of Darfur, but likely that of the entire country. At the domestic level, the fall of Al-Fashir to the RSF could severely cripple the SAF’s capacity to protect strategic cities and potentially win the war. SAF’s fragilities were exposed when RSF fighters swept through some key cities starting from Khartoum, Nyala in Darfur, Wad Medani and Sinja, the capital of Sennar state in central Sudan. Though the SAF did regain some territories, including the recapture of Sinja and Wad Madani respectively in November 2024 and January, as well as areas in Khartoum, the RSF could still launch surprise offensives to seize new ground.
If such a takeover occurs, Al-Fashir would be the springboard from which the RSF could expand its territorial control with ease toward the eastern fronts, including the potential of capturing the key strategic city of Al-Ubayyind in Sudan’s central west to protect the back of its forces in Khartoum. The RSF could also free up thousands of fighters and battle equipment to strengthen its military operations in other fronts beyond Darfur. If the RSF succeeds in attaining such a breakthrough, it might well become the de facto and sole ruler of a region of the approximate size of mainland Spain with thousand miles of open borders with CAR, Chad, Libya and South Sudan.
The fall of Al-Fashir to the RSF could throw Darfur into further turmoil, including the possibility of becoming a haven for transnational militant and/or terrorist groups from the Sahel region who could further destabilize fragile States such the coup-prone Chad, Libya, Mali, CAR, and Niger. For instance, Libya’s government in the East is believed to be on good terms with the RSF, permitting the group to transit fighters and weapons across the desert into Sudan. The SAF and the JDF have deployed forces in key areas along the border with Libya and engaged in occasional clashes with the RSF to cut off their supply lines from Libya. The country will remain among the options the RSF could still rely on in the foreseeable future for reinforcements and shelter. It is worth noting that the former Darfur rebels who now form the backbone of the JDF had previously operated in East Libya where they collaborated with the forces of the Libyan military strongman Khalifa Haftar before returning back to Darfur with better equipment and resources. The impact of the Sudan’s war will remain one of the destabilizing factors that could further derail Libya’s long quest for reform and democracy. Libya after the fall of former dictator Muammar Gaddafi became fertile ground for militants from the Sahel region, including Sudan, to acquire weapons and engage in arms sales, drug trafficking, and human trafficking.
Among Sudan’s neighboring countries, Chad to the west is the country with the most influence and direct links with the unfolding crisis in Sudan. The vastly uncontrolled and open borders between the two countries enabled the RSF to leverage its control of the rest of Darfur to secure supplies and fighters from Chad. Over the course of the current conflict, disillusioned youth from Arab ethnic groups from Chad as well as Niger saw an opportunity to fight in Sudan in support of their kin. Chadian rebels also started operating inside Sudan, fighting alongside the warring sides since the early days of the conflict. In August 2024, a prominent Chadian rebel commander who fought for the RSF was reportedly killed during clashes in Al-Fashir. Chadian individuals sympathetic with the JDF through tribal links have also fought in Al-Fashir against the RSF. In December 2024, the JDF announced that it had foiled an attempt to smuggle sophisticated weapons and drones into Al-Fashir coming from Chad. The JDF claimed that it conducted a military operation targeting RSF supply lines on the border with Chad and Libya. It said it captured three large drones capable of carrying air-to-surface missiles, in addition to six drones of smaller sizes. Chad has been heavily implicated in siding with the RSF including reports by the U.N. that Chad received dozens of cargo planes carrying suspected shipments of weapons from the United Arab Emirates that are being used to fuel the war in Sudan.
Chad is also the largest host of Sudanese refugees from Darfur, with a total of 580,000 from the previous cycles of violence since 2003, as well as additional persons displaced in the current war. Chad’s alleged support to the RSF stirred the wrath of the Sudanese military-dominated government, which officially filed a complaint to the African Union regarding Chadian involvement in Sudan’s war. On Jan. 3, a Sudanese minister called on the country’s military and political leaders to respond to the “brutal aggression” by Chad. While the SAF is too occupied and haggard to implement such threats, the future outlook of the two countries bilateral relations remains bleak with the possibility of cross border attacks and proxy wars. Rouge terrorist groups such as Boko Haram, which operates in Chad, could benefit from the lawlessness and flow of cheap arms into Chad from Darfur to increase their activities. On Nov. 10, 2024, the group carried out a lethal attack on a Chadian army post killing 15 servicemen and wounding dozens.
CAR is another fragile State that is affected by the spillover of fighting in Sudan. Sudan’s war began to spill into CAR as the SAF and RSF both reportedly conducted operations in border areas. Reports by U.N. experts noted that while the SAF launched air raids on suspected RSF positions along the border with Darfur, the paramilitary group has recruited fighters from rebel groups in CAR. The RSF reportedly used its bases in the town of Am-Dafok on the Sudanese side as a key hub for supplies and recruitment of new fighters. In the early phases of the conflict, the Russian mercenary group Wagner reportedly collaborated with the RSF through CAR supplying missiles to the paramilitary group to support its fight against the SAF, raising fears of further instability in both countries. CAR, which also shares borderland with South Sudan, hosted thousands of Sudanese refugees, notably in the Vakaga region. The U.N.’s Panel of Experts on the CAR warned in June 2024 that “the spillover effect of the conflict in the Sudan has significantly affected the situation” in CAR. This is represented by security threats to the country’s stability and humanitarian operations.
Looking Ahead
To avoid further destruction, human suffering, and the spread of anarchy in Sudan and beyond, the current stagnation around Al-Fashir and other hot fronts needs to be addressed through a peaceful resolution of the conflict, including addressing the historical root causes of wars in Sudan. This should ideally start with a viable ceasefire as the first step towards ending the violence. The meeting between Sudanese army chief al-Burhan and the Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Burhanettin Duran on Jan. 5 in Port Sudan – which followed an offer by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to mediate between the Sudanese government and the UAE to resolve tension between the two sides – could give a much-needed push to revive the suspended peace talks. Erdogan, who held a telephone conversation with al-Burhan on Dec. 13, 2024, spoke of his commitment to establishing peace and stability in Sudan. Turkey maintained multi-million investment projects in Sudan during al-Bashir’s time in power and kept close ties with al-Burhan, inviting him for an official visit to Ankara where he met Erdogan in April 2021. Following the outbreak of the war, Sudan’s army leader kept his family in Turkey and paid a personal visit in May 2024 to attend the funeral of his son, who died in a motorcycle accident.
The new Trump administration should support Turkey’s initiative. U.S. President Donald Trump should leverage his previous success in Sudan, when he initiated an intricate diplomatic engagement with Sudan that eventually culminated in the removal of the country from the U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST) during his first term in December 2020. In addition to Turkey, Trump could work with other influential regional countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as through the United States’ direct contact with the Sudanese government in Port Sudan to create the conditions for a humanitarian truce towards ending the war. These measures should include reviving some of the key aspects contained in the U.S.-Saudi Arabia sponsored Jeddah Agreement signed by the conflict parties in May 2023.