Sudan’s civil war was sparked by a fight between two ambitious generals who helped to oust former president Omar Al Bashir in 2019 after a popular uprising, but later fell out over one of the protesters’ demands: “one nation, one army”.
Now, well into its third year, the conflict has become about the unity of Africa's third-largest country and one of its most ethnically and religiously diverse, as well as the fate of the post-independence political and social order dominated by an elite from its northern region.
Thrown into the mix is whether Islamists loyal to Al Bashir should be allowed to return to the position of power and wealth they enjoyed during the dictator's 29 years in power.
Curiously, the two generals whose actions have brought death, hunger and destruction to the impoverished nation – army chief and de facto leader Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and commander of the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) Gen Mohamed Dagalo – were previously loosely allied.
In April 2019, the army and the RSF together removed Al Bashir from power amid a popular uprising against the dictator’s corrupt rule.
They again joined forces and staged a 2021 coup that toppled a civilian-led government, upending Sudan’s democratic transition and plunging the Afro-Arab nation of 50 million into political and economic crises.
Differences between the two men began to surface not long after, with Gen Al Burhan insisting that the RSF be assimilated into the armed forces during his deliberations with civilian politicians to put the democratic transition back on track.
Gen Dagalo has voiced support for the principle of one nation, one army, but never explicitly expressed support for integrating his heavily armed and experienced troops into the armed forces.
Moreover, the RSF leader began to publicly assert that the 2021 coup was a mistake and that the army was facilitating a political comeback of the Islamists loyal to Al Bashir's regime.
He also courted the pro-democracy groups that led the uprising against Al Bashir, as well as the millions who live in outlying regions hundreds of miles from Khartoum, in places such as Kordofan and Darfur, and who have long complained of discrimination.
Embracing a narrative of a new Sudan of equality and justice, Gen Dagalo sought to reinvent himself as a progressive figure not consumed by lust for power.
The simmering tensions between the two men soon boiled over. On April 15, 2023, soldiers and paramilitaries began fighting on the streets of Khartoum and a string of other cities across Sudan. They used tanks, rocket launchers, artillery and, on the army’s side, fighter jets, without heed to the lives of civilians caught in the crossfire.
Initially, the fighting played out in the wider context of internationally sponsored efforts to resolve the political crisis resulting from the 2021 coup.
On the eve of the war, a road map had been drawn up that provided for the military to get out of politics, the RSF to be integrated into the armed forces, and for a civilian prime minister to steer the country for two years until elections.
Thirty months later, Sudan is home to the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with some 30 million people – more than half the population – facing acute hunger and pockets of famine in the vast western and south-western regions. Fourteen million people have been displaced and tens of thousands have died.
Sudan now has two rival governments: one backed by the military that sits in Port Sudan on the Red Sea, and the other supported by the RSF and headquartered in Nyala, a city in Darfur.
The seats of the two governments reflect the war's front lines. The army controls the capital, the eastern region where Port Sudan is located, and the northern and central parts of the country. The RSF controls Darfur, as well as parts of Kordofan to the south-west.
There have been two turning points in the war this year, both with heavy significance. The first came when the military recaptured Khartoum in March, ending nearly two years of RSF rule there. The second came in late October, when the paramilitary seized the strategic city of El Fasher, the army's last foothold in Darfur.
The recapture of the capital helped to restore the military's reputation as an effective fighting force after its swift loss of the city in the opening days of the war. It also turned the tide of the war in favour of the army, but could not prevent the loss of El Fasher, which was already under RSF siege for a year when the army retook Khartoum.
The loss of El Fasher entrenched the de facto division of Sudan, giving the RSF full control of a resource-rich region that could serve as the foundation of an independent state. It also meant that the next major battlefield in Sudan would be to the south-west in Kordofan, where the RSF has powerful allies who have been fighting the central government for decades.
Gen Dagalo and the RSF
Gen Dagalo, a former militia leader who comes from Darfur, has strong links to several regional powerhouses. He has recently stepped up his self-promotion as an advocate of democratic rule while casting his rivals in the military as a power-hungry bunch clinging to power and influenced by Islamists.
He has portrayed the fight against the army as an endeavour to place Sudan on the path to democratic rule, and accused Gen Al Burhan of being a “radical Islamist”. The RSF, he told the West, was fighting terrorists.
But his bid to reinvent himself as pro-democratic has been met with scepticism. Most Sudanese see him and Gen Al Burhan as enemies of the people who are bent on restoring dictatorship.
His reputation suffered greatly when the UN and rights groups accused the RSF of killing hundreds of civilians in Darfur in the days that followed the fall of El Fasher. The accusations forced him to go on the defensive, announcing that the abuses would be investigated and the culprits brought to justice.
A member of Darfur's cattle-herding Arab Rizeigat tribe, Gen Dagalo made his name as a leader of the Janjaweed militia that fought on the government’s side in Darfur’s civil war in the 2000s.
Al Bashir legalised the militia and gave it its present name in 2013. In 2017, the Sudanese Parliament passed a law making it part of the armed forces, albeit with a large degree of autonomy.
In the face of protests in 2018 and 2019 against his rule, Al Bashir ordered the RSF to go to Khartoum to protect his regime. Gen Dagalo arrived in the capital with his men but, sensing that the regime was likely to collapse, decided not to take part in suppressing the uprising, leaving that task to security forces.
He hoped his decision would win him the support of the protesters and the pro-democracy movement at large. But that act of political opportunism did not stop protesters from continuing to demand civilian rule and that the RSF be part of a single national army.
Their position was soon validated. In June 2019, two months after Al Bashir was deposed, RSF members were widely suspected of leading the violent break-up of a sit-in protest outside the armed forces headquarters, killing at least 100 and committing well-documented sexual assaults on protesters.
Who is Gen Al Burhan?
A career soldier from northern Sudan who rose through the ranks under Al Bashir, Gen Al Burhan was born in 1960 in a village north of Khartoum. He remained relatively obscure for most of his career.
He commanded Sudan’s ground forces before Al Bashir appointed him inspector general of the army in February 2019, two months before the military removed the former dictator from power.
In 2015, he co-ordinated the deployment of Sudanese troops in Yemen as part of a Saudi-led coalition against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. There, he worked closely with the RSF, inadvertently boosting his and his future enemy’s regional profile.
His first stint as chairman of the ruling Sovereign Council began in August 2019, when the transitional military-civilian administration that he later toppled took office. It was at that point that he began to swap his military fatigues for business suits and took on the role of the nation's de facto leader.
What next?
Gen Al Burhan is the latest in a long line of army officers who have seized or attempted to seize power in Sudan since independence in 1956.
He is widely believed to have personal political ambitions in a country that generally distrusts military generals. There has also been intense speculation about his links to militants loyal to Al Bashir, whom he enlisted in the fight against the RSF. The Islamists are also widely accused of seeking to prolong the civil war long enough for them to prepare to take back power.
Gen Al Burhan's professed commitment to democratic rule became questionable after the 2021 coup. He has steadfastly rejected mediation bids by foreign powers, including the United States and Saudi Arabia, insisting that there will be no talks with the RSF unless it surrenders or is vanquished.
Massad Boulos, US President Donald Trump's adviser on Arab and African affairs, said on Monday that the RSF and the army have agreed in principle to a three-month, humanitarian ceasefire proposed by the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
On Tuesday, the defence minister of the army-backed government, Gen Hassan Kabroun, said efforts by the US government to end the war in Sudan were welcome and appreciated, but that recruitment of men for the fight against the RSF would nevertheless continue.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday that Washington was “actively engaged” in seeking a peace deal alongside Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The US wants “to see this conflict come to a peaceful end, just as we have with so many others”, she said. “But the reality is it's a very complicated situation on the ground right now.”
