The Sudanese Armed Forces looked almost unstoppable in March after retaking Khartoum from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), ending nearly two years of the paramilitary group's control of the sprawling capital.
The victory came after another significant battlefield success in late 2024, when the military drove the RSF out of the agriculturally rich Al Jazira region, south of the capital.
Many observers anticipated that the army's next move would be to march west to Darfur, where at the time the RSF held sway over the vast region, except for the city of El Fasher.
Instead, army-allied militias advanced on Darfur from neighbouring Kordofan but were repelled by the RSF and sustained heavy losses. The army later suffered battlefield losses in Darfur and Kordofan that have, in many ways, altered the course of the war, which has raged since April 2023.
The changes in Sudan's front lines in 2025 were, in most cases, accompanied by harrowing violence against civilians, with accusations levelled at the army and the RSF.
These changes have also failed to alleviate the widespread hunger and lack of medical care gripping the country.
The capture of El Fasher by the RSF in late October is a case in point of how life for civilians invariably takes a turn for the worse when one of the warring sides is defeated and leaves. International aid staff who visited the city this week for the first time reported it was largely deserted, with a few people sheltering in buildings or under plastic sheets, said Denise Brown, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Sudan.
"The town was not teeming with people. There were very few people that [they] were able to see," she said, contradicting claims by the RSF that life in the town has returned to normal.
Khartoum has also struggled. The capital has not found relief from its suffering since the army retook it. Two of the three cities that make up the capital's greater area – Khartoum and Bahri – are almost completely deserted.
The third city, Omdurman, experiences daily power cuts of up to eight hours. Health care is virtually non-existent, food prices are exorbitant and residents complain of harassment at army and security checkpoints.
The continued suffering of civilians across Sudan's cities, towns and villages has fuelled resentment towards both the army and the RSF. It also sustains the widespread perception of army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and RSF commander Gen Mohamed Dagalo as two men seeking power with little regard for the human and material cost.
"It's like a nightmare that has become part of our lives. You wake up to noises you had never heard before and look up at the sky to see clouds of colours you had never seen before," said pharmacist Asmaa Al Zobeir, who fled Khartoum with her family to Atbara, in north-eastern Sudan.
"You would go out on the street and you'll see what the war has done to us, a young man screaming as he carries the dead body of his father," she said. "You go to visit an old friend only to find out she has died. So many things happened that are etched on my mind forever. People hoped at the start of the war that it would end one day soon. But that day never comes."
Neither side publicises its casualty figures and no reliable estimates are available for civilian casualties. But the consensus among UN and local monitoring groups is that tens of thousands have died since the war broke out.
The conflict has also created the world's worst humanitarian and displacement crises, with about 25 million Sudanese – half the population – affected by hunger and at least 12 million forced to flee their homes to escape the violence.
Kawthar Ibrahim, a widowed high school teacher with two children, fled Khartoum to Al Jazira region, only to be displaced once more when the RSF seized the area. The family fled to Kassala, farther south.
"The year 2025 is not any different from 2023, when the war broke out," she said. "We are still suffering. We are displaced, living away from our homes. We have no work and our kids have been out of school for three years.
"It's like we live under one militia and then when they are pushed out, we get another militia in their place. I have no faith in either side in this war. They never did anything for us. On the contrary, they contributed to our displacement, they looted and destroyed us, and next year will not be any different."
The army and its allies – mostly members of militias or security operatives loyal to the regime of former dictator Omar Al Bashir – have been accused of summary executions and arbitrary detentions in areas they retook from the RSF in Al Jazira and Khartoum. Those killed were mostly suspected of collaborating with the RSF or hailing from western Sudan, home of the vast majority of the paramilitary group's fighters.
The army has also been accused of using chemical weapons against the RSF in parts of the capital in March, as well as indiscriminate shelling of RSF positions in residential areas, causing the deaths of hundreds of civilians.
When the RSF captured El Fasher after an 18-month siege, its fighters were accused of killing hundreds of civilians, leading to international condemnation and renewed calls for a truce.
The RSF has also been accused of ethnically motivated killings in the Darfur city of Geneina in 2023. Thousands are believed to have been killed and tens of thousands forced to flee across the border to Chad.
"The year 2025 will be remembered as the year of war, famine and epidemics," said Sudanese political activist Montaser Abdullah. "Those who bear arms must make peace ... this is an endless war that will have no victor. Ending the war, peace-building and accountability are the essential demands of a majority of the Sudanese."
The capture of El Fasher put the RSF in control of a region roughly the size of France, raising the prospect of the break-up of the country, 14 years after the nation's oil-rich south seceded.
The RSF has established its own government in the Darfur city of Nyala, while a military-backed government sits in Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
The fighting has now shifted to neighbouring Kordofan, where the RSF seized the city of Babanousa from the army in November. The paramilitary group is now focusing on the cities of Al Obeid and Dilling, while its rebel allies besiege the army-held city of Kadugli.
But Gen Al Burhan seems to be unperturbed by the army's losses and remains adamant that there can be no peace until the RSF is defeated or leaves the territory it has seized.
The RSF unilaterally declared a ceasefire in November, after the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE called for a three-month humanitarian truce in September. Despite this, the paramilitary has continued military operations against the army.
Al Shafie Ahmed reported from Kampala, Uganda.
