Split decision: Why Sudan is on the brink of partition—again

Summary

• Sudan’s conflict is intensifying, fuelled by the entrenchment of distinct administrative zones and deepening divisions within warring parties, while the country’s social fabric continues to erode.
• External and domestic responses to the conflict have been ineffective, with various international and regional actors exacerbating the situation by facilitating the flow of weapons as they pursue their own strategic interests.
• The prospect of a divided country has gained acceptance with some local and regional actors as they seek a way out of conflict.
• The new Trump administration in Washington will revise America’s approach to Sudan, potentially incorporating it into a larger regional peace accord.
• In pursuit of a participatory civilian political outcome, the EU should be cautious of trade-offs privileging securitisation, as such short-term responses leave little room for civilian engagement.
• EU policymakers should seize the opportunity afforded by the anticipated American retreat from Sudan to undertake higher profile engagement in response to Sudan’s conflict, and to prevent fragmentation.

Fragmentation looming

Sudan’s 22-month-long war has shattered the country and shows little sign of abating. Many cities and towns, including the capital Khartoum, lie in ruins, with humanitarian and displacement emergencies outpacing both Gaza and Ukraine by several factors. The International Rescue Committee called Sudan “the biggest humanitarian crisis ever recorded,” with 30.4 million Sudanese in need of humanitarian assistance. More than 750,000 people are suffering from catastrophic food insecurity, while over 12 million Sudanese have fled their homes since the war began—including 3.5 million who are seeking refuge in neighbouring countries.

Pinpointing casualty numbers is difficult, but the former US special envoy for Sudan estimated 150,000 deaths in May 2024; most calculations suggest that the rate of civilian deaths has since increased. By any measure, the conflict has devastated populations, infrastructure, livelihoods and economies across large swathes of the country. The violence has so far hindered Sudanese peace-making efforts, while the complex interplay of local, national, regional and geopolitical actors and interests in the conflict, as well as Sudan’s long history of intractable wars, has dissuaded international actors from offering more meaningful responses to the conflict. A 2024 humanitarian appeal of $2.7bn remains only 56% funded. In February 2025, the UN launched a new $6bn appeal.

The conflict is poised to worsen. De-facto administrative divisions are becoming increasingly entrenched, the main warring parties are fracturing, Sudan’s social fabric is violently eroding, and the two main protagonists—the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the country’s army, the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF)—are acquiring and deploying ever more deadly weaponry. The territorial fragmentation of Sudan is now fully on the cards, as warring parties increasingly consider this a realistic means to end the war. However, this measure would only serve to reconfigure the conflict. The dire economic conditions facing the country as a result of the conflict deepen the risk of Sudan becoming a failed state and may create fertile ground for extremist recruitment among Sudan’s predominantly young population.

A splintering of the country would represent a destabilising ruction in a fragile region and create a new set of conflict dynamics in Sudan and beyond. As one of Sudan’s most respected thinkers warned, without concerted, innovative responses, “we will be descending very, very far, very, very quickly.”[1]

This policy brief seeks to untangle the key dynamics of Sudan’s deeply complex conflict—even as they continue to evolve on the battlefield and in the international arena. It urges external actors to refrain from the wholesale securitisation of the Sudan file while engaging more frankly to align more closely on a substantive, non-violent response. This is crucial at a moment when key belligerents and their external benefactors seem intent on seeking a military solution. It also recommends the continued support of emerging localised initiatives which are at the heart of the Sudanese response to the conflict. It warns that, without these steps, the country risks splintering apart as different groups conclude they can no longer coexist, while external actors seek shortcuts to conflict resolution.

With the coming shift in US policy under a second Donald Trump administration, EU policymakers should seize the opportunity for higher profile engagement to respond to Sudan’s conflict and to head off fragmentation of the country. To date, the US has occupied disproportionate diplomatic space on Sudan but has done little to cultivate the necessary coalition of bilateral and multilateral support or to develop a comprehensive strategy. The new administration in Washington is likely to turn towards the belligerents’ Arab benefactors for a solution to the fighting as part of a broader approach to stabilising the Middle East.[2] This may see the deprioritisation of a civilian-led post-conflict transition.

Solutions to this conflict must be historical in their scope. But this brief proposes a short- to medium-term strategy to limit fighting to enable humanitarian delivery and the return of the displaced; facilitate economic recovery; and provide space for rebuilding Sudan’s damaged social fabric. After this immediate response, the focus should shift to steadily reducing the role of the military in Sudan’s political and economic spheres while simultaneously boosting the role of civic actors in decision-making and governance in Sudan.

Any future sustainable transition must redefine power structures in Sudan. Achieving this long-term goal requires careful and lasting focus from those advocating for participatory and equitable governance. It also requires the acquiescence or disempowerment of spoilers inside and outside of Sudan. And it begins with a peace deal likely to represent a set of challenging compromises that will be difficult to swallow for the many Sudanese who fervently desire a more immediate participatory outcome.

The roots of conflict

Independence, inequality and state violence

Sudan’s current war is the culmination of an inequitable and violent post-colonial period, which was characterised by mainly military governments that employed exclusionary practices and policies based on race, religion and tribe. This approach fuelled a series of wars in its hinterlands. In 1956, the departing Anglo-Egyptian Condominium handed the country’s reins to an Arab-identifying minority from the Nile valley who sought to consolidate power by controlling the natural riches of the country’s eastern, southern and western regions. At the same time, they refused to devolve governance or revenues to these wealth-producing regions, generating poverty and resentment.

The military has been in power for all but a dozen of Sudan’s 69 post-independence years. This presence has entrenched the role of the military in power, economy and society in Sudan. Their willingness to deploy force to dissuade any demands for greater representation suggested to many of those marginalised in the peripheries that the only way to access power was to fight their way to the table. Groups from Sudan’s Nile valley centre have jousted among each other for control too, with 35 coup plots and attempts during the post-independence period, seven of which were successful.

A 1989 coup against an elected government brought Omar al-Bashir and the Muslim Brotherhood to power. Over 30 years, the regime escalated a brutal civil war in the country’s south and extended fighting to the western province of Darfur, resulting in violence that led the International Criminal Court (ICC) to levy charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against the government and its allies. Al-Bashir also presided over the division of the country: South Sudan, which had fought its way to a 2005 peace deal, seceded from Sudan in a 2011 referendum, taking with it some 85% of the country’s oil wealth. Previously, this revenue had enabled al-Bashir’s Sudan to withstand international isolation for prosecution of its wars.

Fatefully, in an attempt to coup-proof his government and protect his grip on power, al-Bashir cultivated and in 2017 formalised the RSF, a Darfuri Arab fighting force implicated in the genocide of African communities in Darfur between 2003 and 2005. The development of this military counterweight to the country’s army set in motion the dynamics now playing out in the country’s devastating war, as both militaries vie for control of the country and its vital resources.

From revolution to war

In April 2019, after months of nationwide protests over skyrocketing prices, the SAF and RSF ousted 30-year autocrat al-Bashir. This led to the establishment of a hybrid civil-military transitional government intended to guide the country to national elections three-and-a-half years later. However, in October 2021, the SAF and RSF also overthrew this civilian-led government in a coup. In December 2022, the coup makers and a bloc of civilian political forces signed a framework agreement aimed at restoring the transition to democratic governance. The agreement mandated that the RSF be incorporated into the SAF as part of a larger process of security sector reform (SSR), but disputes over this process revealed fundamental conflicting interests between the SAF and the RSF. As powerful Sudanese and regional interest groups aligned behind each of the two militaries, fighting between the two broke out on April 15th 2023 with conflict spreading rapidly to encompass much of the country.

Now the RSF, a wealthy paramilitary group, is fighting the SAF, the country’s army. The SAF finds itself in an incongruous partnership with some of its former rebel adversaries from the country’s peripheries and other key elements of the divisive post-independence Sudanese state, including Islamist groups and the National Congress Party (NCP), which President al-Bashir led for 30 years before the 2018-2019 revolution. The head of the SAF, Abdelfatah al-Burhan, is also the chairman of the Transitional Sovereign Council (TSC), a de-facto government currently sitting in Port Sudan after being ejected from Khartoum in the first days of the conflict.

A year of RSF advances and SAF retreats after April 2023 resulted in the paramilitary force taking control of four out of Darfur’s five states, along with West Kordofan state and large sections of the states of Blue Nile, Gezira, North Kordofan, Sennar and White Nile. Since mid-2024, the SAF and its diverse set of allies have begun to steadily reclaim territory, taking large segments of the three cities comprising the capital—Bahri, Khartoum and Omdurman—as well as much of Blue Nile, Gezira and White Nile states to the southeast.

External and domestic efforts to respond to the conflict have borne little fruit. Bilateral stakeholders such as the EU, the UK and the US, and multilateral institutions such as the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the African Union (AU), the Arab League, and the United Nations (UN) have all failed to mobilise effectively to address the conflict. Sitting at the intersection of the African and Arab worlds, Sudan sees an almost unprecedent confluence of regional and international actors and dynamics: “Somalia on steroids”, as US special envoy, Tom Periello called the situation in mid-2024. The complexity of the context, as well as Sudan’s long history of intractable wars and the dearth of apparent solutions, has dissuaded international actors from engaging with greater diplomatic force.

Sudan’s conflict is being fought simultaneously at subnational, national, regional and geopolitical levels, where the dynamics of each level are closely intertwined. As parties actively pursue their interests and compete for influence in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea region, they stoke the war and hinder any meaningful peace-making response. According to governments, research organisations and journalists, external actors such as Chad, Egypt, Iran, Kenya, Libya, Russia, Somalia (via Puntland and Somaliland), Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have facilitated the flow of weaponry into Sudan as part of their respective—and often clashing—strategic goals in the country.[3] Various states have provided different levels of covert and overt support to the SAF and the RSF with the aim of achieving a military outcome that brings into power their preferred force, which would then act as executor for securing the business and strategic interests of these state benefactors in Sudan.

Regional and geopolitical aspects

At the nexus of Africa and the Middle East, and between the strategic Red Sea and a chaotic Sahel, Sudan has always been subject to strong regional and geopolitical currents. However, the popular revolution and subsequent ejection of al-Bashir’s 30-year government sparked a new wave of competition for control of the country’s rich natural resources and its unique strategic location. These competing state and non-state stakeholders are interested to varying degrees in: gaining access to Sudan’s vast agricultural capacity; obtaining control of the country’s gold reserves; securing ports on the Red Sea for logistics, trade and security reasons; securing the Sahel’s porous eastern perimeter; controlling Nile water flows; limiting conflict spillover across Sudan’s borders; preventing violent extremist groups from gaining a foothold in a failing state; limiting the influence of a working participatory civilian government; and denying or promoting the return of political Islam to power in Khartoum.

Arab states

Arabian Gulf states’ interest in Sudan and the Horn reflects increasing competition between Saudi Arabia and the UAE (and to a lesser extent, Qatar) as these countries work to diversify their economies away from heavy reliance on hydrocarbon production and to secure access to Sudan’s vast agricultural lands and livestock resources. This is particularly true of the UAE which has shown a propensity for adventurous and robust policies the region. Meanwhile, Sudan’s historical connections, long border, extensive trade and familial links with Egypt make it a key strategic concern for Cairo, which backs the SAF in the conflict. These connections are underpinned by the fact that most senior Sudanese army officers have studied in Egypt.

It is a confusing set of relationships. Egypt and the UAE support different sides of the conflict in Sudan, but are both (along with Saudi Arabia) keen to limit any rise of political and militant Islam in the region. Ironically, by supporting the army, Cairo makes implicit common cause with a variety of armed and unarmed Islamist groups that are key allies to the SAF on the battlefield. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, while competing against one another regionally for influence in the Horn and Red Sea, share a common interest in containing Iran, and seeking a secure Sudan albeit through an ascendant military or military-backed government rather than a participatory civilian dispensation.[4] For Saudi Arabia, an Emirati base or port directly across the strait is considered untenable.

Despite reconciliation with the rest of the Gulf in 2021, Qatar likely maintains support for Islamist groups in Sudan and beyond, to the displeasure of the Saudis and Emiratis.[5] Doha is alleged to have provided quiet financial support to the SAF and the government in Port Sudan, as well as Darfuri armed groups fighting alongside the army.[6]

African states and the Horn

Meanwhile, African states adjacent to Sudan in the Horn and the Sahel are strongly subject to Emirati and Egyptian influence. Diplomats and analysts view Chad and Ethiopia, along with Kenya and Uganda, as having toed the Emirati line by being supportive of the RSF[7], while Eritrea is openly supportive of the SAF, providing training camps to its allies. Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli ostensibly backs the SAF, while the Libyan National Army (LNA) of field-marshal Khalifa Haftar in Benghazi has been a key supporter of the RSF through provision and facilitation of fuel and weaponry. In the Central African Republic, the government backs the SAF while rebels groups, including the Popular Front for the renaissance of Central Africa (FPRC), are aligned with the RSF. And in Chad, intra-Zaghawa divisions favouring either side have left President Mahamat Deby weakened and increasingly vulnerable. South Sudan has sought to be neutral in the conflict, aware that its economic health rests entirely on the ability to export oil through pipelines running to SAF-held Port Sudan that traverse territories controlled by the RSF.

All these states may become increasingly motivated to weigh into Sudan’s conflict either directly or indirectly, given the presence of domestic forces aligned with each side and rising influx of displaced Sudanese into their territories.

Iran

Iran, which was ejected from Sudan in the final years of President Bashir, when the government was forced to tilt towards Tehran’s rivals in the Gulf for financial reasons, is reasserting itself in Sudan by supplying armament to the SAF and its allies. In 2024, it opened an embassy in Port Sudan. For Tehran, Sudan is part of a broader strategy to maintain influence and reduce the dominance of Saudi Arabia and UAE in the region, which includes backing Houthi forces in Yemen. However, Iran has indicated that these plans will be under review given its recent ejection from Syria and Lebanon.

Turkey

Turkey, a haven for old guard NCP and Islamist figures in the wake of al-Bashir’s ousting, has quietly aligned with the SAF in the hope of facilitating the return to power of Islamist groups. This is despite allegations of Turkish weaponry being used by both sides of the conflict.[8]

Russia

For Russia, Sudan has been an invaluable source of capital through gold mining and is an integral component of Moscow’s attempts to cultivate a network of friendly regimes across the Sahel. Russia has also signed an agreement to develop a naval base or maritime logistics hub on the Red Sea. After equivocating before and during the early months of the war by supporting both armies (in part by leveraging ongoing relationships between the Africa Corps mercenary group and the RSF), Moscow has now cast its lot in with the SAF, which firmly controls access to Sudan’s coast.

US

The US has undertaken a set of tepid and unsuccessful initiatives, some in concert with Saudi Arabia and Switzerland, insisting on the exit of armed actors from government and the establishment of a transitional government leading to greater participation of civilians. The Joe Biden administration’s cautious disapproval of both sides culminated in January 2025—days before Trump took office—with the imposition of sanctions on the leaders of both armies and a genocide designation for the RSF. Senior policy figures in the Biden administration stymied more robust American engagement on Sudan, instead prioritising Washington’s relationships with the UAE in particular—the US believed it could not confront the UAE about its role in Sudan without jeopardising Emirati support on Gaza and Iran. The new administration in Washington is likely to revise the US approach to Sudan by potentially making it part of a larger regional peace accord.

While the US does not seek to establish a port on Sudan’s coast, the prospect of allowing a Chinese, Iranian or Russian foothold on the deeply strategic waterway is anathema to Washington and considered a strategic threat.

Europe

The EU—conscious of vast human rights violations, security in the Red Sea and Sahel, and the prospect of a surge in migration to Europe—has, like the US, continued to seek to return Sudan to a civilian transition. Also like the US, the EU is juggling similar, seemingly contradictory relationships with key trade and security partners in the Arab world.  Perhaps in recognition of these constraints, the EU has sought an inclusive, African Union-led peace process in Sudan rather than rolling out an EU-led process.

Emerging administrative zones and divisions

A confluence of factors is set to worsen Sudan’s war: the entrenchment of four distinct zones of administration; increasing divisions in the warring parties’ coalitions; and the erosion of the country’s social fabric. While some accounts of conflict fatigue are in evidence on both sides, public rhetoric and battlefield actions suggest both continue to pursue a military solution, even as they acknowledge privately that a clear victory is unlikely.[9] The idea of dividing the country has been increasingly countenanced by both Sudanese and international actors as a more realistic outcome and one that fighting parties may ultimately accept.

This shift in perspective was underscored by the RSF’s anticipated (but long-delayed) declaration of a parallel government. “Both sides win if the country is split,” suggested a senior Sudanese political analyst.[10] A senior RSF figure declared in November 2024 that the group had “no interest in dividing the country,” while earlier that year a senior SAF military intelligence figure expressed a willingness to consider such an idea. A senior figure within the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-North, led by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu (SPLM-North Al-Hilu) said he anticipated the country’s split.[11]

Proliferation of administrative authorities

At the time of writing, Sudan is administered by at least four recognisable administrative entities. First is the Port Sudan government, which claims overall sovereignty of Sudan but in practice currently controls only the country’s northern and eastern regions, along with several expanding enclaves of the capital. The SAF may soon regain full control of Khartoum.

Next is the RSF’s patchwork of state-level civil administrations in most of Darfur, West Kordofan and, most provocatively, Khartoum. Additionally, significant enclaves in Central Darfur and South Kordofan are held by Abdel Wahid al Nour’s Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and Abdel Aziz al Hilu’s SPLM-North. With this de facto split in administrative authorities, many Sudanese fear the further breakup of their country, compounding the traumatic secession of South Sudan in 2011.

The move by the RSF and a set of supporting armed tribal and political groups to set up a government parallel to the Port Sudan government may hasten the country’s split. The RSF denies this is its intention, but says it wants to put pressure on the Port Sudan government to sue for peace and to “change the political formula.”[12] The move comes in response to the slowly increasing codification of the legitimacy of the SAF-led government in Port Sudan alongside the SAF’s push back into the capital. It also brought about the breakup, on February 10th 2025, of the Coordination Body of the Democratic and Civil Forces, or Taqaddum. This was the most well-known agglomeration of civilian actors, featuring major factions of some of Sudan’s most prominent political parties as well as civil society groups.[13]

In the event of a split, the primary concern will revolve around how much and which territory each side deems necessary for viability and legitimacy. The SAF is likely to seek control over heartland areas considered key to its imagined sovereignty, such as Khartoum, Gezira and White Nile. Meanwhile, the RSF is focused on consolidating its current dominance over Darfur by attempting to finally capture El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur.

A higher-level agreement between the RSF and the SAF could halt most fighting and curtail the deployment of the most destructive military hardware. However, the SAF has repeatedly rejected any dialogue with the RSF beyond total surrender; any such agreement is unlikely to stop much of the community-level conflict encouraged and instrumentalised by the warring parties. This has been exacerbated by weaknesses in command and control, primarily within the RSF. Senior RSF figures acknowledge these command-and-control challenges and that cessation of hostilities at the higher level could provoke conflict blowback from former allies within a diverse coalition. Many of these groups have diverging interests but have benefitted from RSF-provided weaponry to pursue long-standing local conflicts. This blowback could see even greater administrative fragmentation, particularly in areas of RSF control where command and the associated local administration has been franchised. In Blue Nile, for example, RSF commander Abu Shotal has already expressed a desire for greater autonomy to pursue his state-level interests.

International responses to fragmentation

Europe and the US have clearly expressed their opposition to any split of Sudan, while external allies of both armies will be monitoring the implications of any fragmentation.[14] Egypt is said to be processing a scenario in which SAF keeps control of Sudan’s north and east. From Cairo’s perspective, this would allow the creation of a buffer against the RSF and mean that their SAF allies could continue with their all-important control of Nile waters. The UAE, which (according to Western intelligence agencies and dozens of investigations) has supported the RSF throughout the conflict, may be less comfortable with this arrangement given the central role a prospective Sudanese port plays in its broader regional strategic goals.[15]

The danger for Sudan is that a presumptive split of the country becomes low-hanging fruit for those seeking an implementable response to a damaging and divisive conflict increasingly seen as intractable. Such dispositions may be strengthened by the long history of peace-making failures in the country. The secession of South Sudan did effectively end the second Sudanese civil war—even if the agreement was largely unimplemented, enabled the consolidation of power by old guard figures, and did little to address the underlying issues that continue to drive violence in both countries. African leaders wary of similar secessionist movements in their own states are likely to be the most motivated to reject such a step.

Fracturing of RSF and SAF coalitions

The fracturing of the alliances and coalitions comprising the conflict’s main belligerents, the RSF and the SAF, has real potential to broaden and complicate the conflict. Should the various factions within both forces turn away from the higher-order goal of defeating each other, they may start more overtly pursuing myriad more localised goals. Indeed, this fracturing has already begun. Both the SAF and RSF are surrounded by a litany of political, civic and military entities allied to them, each providing benefits and drawbacks, as well as sometimes divergent interests and demands.

Divisions within SAF’s coalition

The SAF and the TSC, of which SAF head Abdelfatah al-Burhan is chairman, have framed the conflict as a “war of dignity” against encroaching hordes from the peripheries. They seek to return Sudan to the same exclusionary control exerted by the Nile valley security, political and economic elites—the root cause of wars in the country’s post-independence period. Just as the RSF and its allies have been motivated by a desire to dismantle this old order, the SAF’s aspiration to restore it has created a shared purpose among its partners.

Supporters of the SAF and the Port Sudan government fear not only losing power but also retribution by those marginalised by decades of state violence. The potential for retribution has been evident in the way the RSF and its allies have systematically looted Bahri, Omdurman, Khartoum and other cities in the Nile valley, seemingly both out of pure criminal intent and to address historical imbalances. As one journalist remarked early in the conflict, “to the militia, war was a living, and Khartoum’s spoils a longed-for reward.” The RSF has also targeted key symbols of the post-independence state in Khartoum, such as the all-important library of land records and other centres of documentation that have served to codify post-independence state violence.

The SAF exists as part of an increasingly uneasy coalition that includes members of the former al-Bashir government and most of the security and intelligence services such as the General Intelligence Service (GIS) and Military Intelligence (MI). It also contains Islamist brigades and groups historically opposed to governments forces, such as the Joint Forces, a set of rebel groups brought into the government by the 2020 Juba Peace Agreement (JPA).

Islamist groups and the NCP have been crucial in securing the SAF with both funding and fighters for the war effort while also pressing the SAF to avoid any accommodation with the RSF. Its reliance on these entities has further narrowed the space for SAF to explore options for negotiated peace. However, Burhan, as TSC chairman and SAF head, carries perhaps a crucial commodity: some perception of legitimacy. This is a cache that Islamists and the NCP, both deeply discredited by the chaos and wars following Sudan’s independence, are unlikely to regain alone—either with the Sudanese population that ejected them from power in 2019 or with the international community.

Even within the key groupings comprising the coalition around the SAF, deep divisions exist. The Sudanese Islamist Movement is fractured across at least three factions, while the two factions of the NCP have publicly traded barbs. Similarly, the armed groups comprising the Joint Forces—most prominently Minni Minnawi’s Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and Jibril Ibrahim’s Justice and Equality Movement (or JEM, an Islamist group)—come from several different Darfuri and southeastern tribes. These also experience disagreements over strategic focus and wartime business interests.

The army itself is rife with splits. Officer groups around Burhan carry established relationships from the pre-war era with various key stakeholder governments, including Egypt, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the US and beyond. These officers have leveraged access to these governments to secure diplomatic support and armaments, jockeying to position themselves with maximum proximity to Burhan in order to influence on SAF decision-making. Some of these disparate factions have attempted to take a stance against the war but found themselves marginalised from the upper echelons of the army in response.[16]

Should the coalition around the SAF fall apart, this would sever the army’s existing strands of command and control of Islamist, Joint Forces and mustanfareen (literally “the mobilised”, local self-defence groups often encouraged and armed by the SAF), leading to a proliferation of local conflicts and score-settling fought out with advanced military hardware.

RSF divisions

The RSF and its supporters claim that their goal is to uproot the 1956 state structure that has been responsible for the marginalisation and deaths of millions since the 1950s in conflicts pitting the centre against the peripheries. This desire ostensibly echoes the revolutionary calls on the street of late 2018 and early 2019, but the horrifically violent tactics employed by the paramilitary group have undermined an otherwise worthy message. More accurately, the RSF is a wealthy paramilitary-business entity with extensive business and financial interests in Sudan and the region.

A fracturing of the loose RSF coalition would create a proliferation of unmoored armed groups, newly equipped and empowered to pursue local-level goals, particularly in Darfur. Some of the tribes forming this coalition have received RSF weaponry to advance these local agendas—some sections of the Arab-identifying Misseriya, for example, have taken RSF weapons so they can permanently expand their grazing areas into long-contested lands. The dire economic conditions in Sudan will only incentivise these groups further as they compete for increasingly scarce resources.

Erosion of social fabric

The fighting between SAF and RSF has dominated international coverage of the Sudanese conflict, which highlights how both sides have destroyed communities, civilian infrastructure, cities and towns. However, subnational and community level conflict will—alongside the economic destruction of the state—present the most challenging obstacle to Sudan’s recovery. “Tribalism will be worse [in the future],” said the head of one Sudanese peacebuilding NGO. “People are pulling back into their ethnic and tribal identities”.[17] These community conflicts are primarily fought over access to land and resources, often along pre-existing lines of racial or tribal tension.

Historically, local and customary conflict prevention and conflict mitigation mechanisms have been integral to managing these tensions. But the spread of the conflict into regions previously unaffected by Sudan’s prior national and subnational wars, coupled with the cruelty and novelty of the violence, has created a sense of “shock and trauma”, according to NGO workers in Gezira state.[18] In many areas of eastern Sudan, communities find their conflict management mechanisms ill-prepared to handle the unprecedented levels of violence and division brought on by the war. This is in contrast to the more established prevention systems deployed in areas such as Darfur and Kordofan, which have been subject to decades of conflict.

The intense flow of weaponry onto the battlefield has presented many groups with an opportunity to settle scores or secure access to vital grazing, farming or mining land. With their own strategic aims in mind, the warring parties have readily encouraged these groups to do so, and have armed them accordingly. The RSF’s particular readiness to offer weaponry was key to attracting sections of the Arab-identifying Misseriya to its side. This shift is part of a broader phenomenon that saw fighters from the Popular Defence Forces (PDF)—previously aligned with Islamists and the NCP—flip to the RSF at the start of the war. Other groups like the Misseriya and Hamar tribes in Kordofan are themselves split in their loyalties between the RSF and SAF, often along generational lines.

Mustanfareen local defence groups are often mobilised and armed by the SAF. While mustanfareen appear to generally focus on defending their communities, there has been a rise in racist and Islamist ideological thought in recruitment propaganda. The “Strange Faces Law”, for example, empowers mustanfareen in the north, east and centre of the country to arrest people suspected of being from Darfur or Kordofan based on their facial features. Old identity issues are now being played out with mustanfareen “going around shooting people on communal or tribal basis… partly [as a result] of weapons and training,” said an experienced Sudanese peacebuilding professional.[19]

Joint Forces armed groups comprise a range of tribes which tend to have their own tribal strategic proclivities based on the group’s leadership. Darfuri African tribes, such as Fur and Zaghawa, remain deeply conscious of the mass attacks and atrocities against them and other African tribes such as Masalit in West Darfur by Arab-identifying groups armed and affiliated with the RSF. As a result, they are fighting hard against those Arab-identifying groups to protect civilian centres in North Darfur, such as the Zamzam IDP camp and the city of El Fasher.

Responses to the conflict

By any metric, international responses to halting Sudan’s conflict have been ineffectual and tepid, with efforts complicated by the litany of external actors actively stoking the conflict by backing one side or the other in the context of broader regional and geopolitical competition. These peace efforts have mostly focused on securing a cessation of hostilities as a priority, in order to create the space to enable the delivery of humanitarian assistance and to develop a more sustainable civilian political arrangement.

Sudanese initiatives

Sudanese attempts to stop the war have been equally ineffective. However, a glimmer of hope lies in the impact of civic actors, mutual aid groups and the general trend towards localised responses to the conflict. These actors include resistance committees, emergency response rooms, soup kitchens and other bodies providing basic services, food, transport out of conflict zones, medical and psychosocial support (including clinical and psychological responses to sexual- and gender-based violence), mediation of local peace agreements, and legal services. They are active in most of the country where formal governance, if it ever existed, has demonstrably receded.

The EU, the UK, the US and other donors have increased their support to these mutual aid groups; but much more assistance is required, given their central role in responding to the conflict. Crucially, these civic and mutual aid groups are building the robust basis for a new Sudan based on greater local engagement and participation in governance, a core demand of protestors in 2018 and 2019. However, such efforts cannot, in the longer term, replace the national role of a working Sudanese government.

The best known of Sudan’s civilian blocs, the now-defunct Taqaddum, saw its credibility suffer among both Sudanese citizens and international observers due to accusations of being insufficiently consultative with civil society, dominated by old guard political parties and having an overly close relationship to the RSF and the UAE. A senior Sudanese civic actor said of Taqaddum, a bloc led almost entirely by old, male-dominated political parties from the country’s centre: “The same way people are over having the Islamists in power is the same way people feel about the political parties being in power.” Many youth and civic actors consulted viewed Taqaddum as “a vehicle for bringing the old voices back, who had no ideas, were not representative, and don’t want to see youth ascend.”[20]

Taqaddum had offered an important forum for dialogue across Sudanese political and civil society groups. It wisely advocated for a parallel approach along three tracks: humanitarian and protection of civilians; ceasefire talks; and political dialogue. However, the bloc offered little in the way of concrete action, often speaking in generalities about the way forward for civilians and for Sudan.[21] Taqaddum split in January 2025 and then floundered the following month over the prospective setup of a new RSF-led government. According to a US official, the UAE and RSF had put significant pressure on Taqaddum to be part of this body.[22]

The EU, the UK and the US were initially enthusiastic about supporting Taqaddum but cooled their interest as perceptions of the group’s partialities and limitations took hold. The three have sought to boost civilians’ ability to build the necessary strength and credibility to play a role in halting the fighting and shaping a transitional phase. The UK has sought to “build multiple inclusive civilian platforms”, according to one official, moving away from previous support solely to Taqaddum as a “single civilian platform.”[23] By the same token, “civilians will always remain number one,” said a European official in late 2024.[24]

International efforts

International initiatives to address Sudan’s conflict have seemingly become paralysed by the sheer breadth and complexity of Sudanese and international interests at play. Efforts in Jeddah (brokered by Saudi Arabia and the US in May 2023), Manama (brokered by Arab intelligence services in January 2024), and Geneva (by Switzerland and the US in August 2024) have largely excluded civilian actors despite their stated intent to deliver a civilian governing outcome. A series of forums for civilian actors took place in Cairo, though outcomes remain unclear. The EU and other Western donors are also supporting at least three lower-level initiatives convened by NGOs. These initiatives were successful in convening Sudanese groups otherwise reluctant to sit together, but they remain stalled without a functioning higher-order process into which they might feed.

Diplomats and analysts have despaired at the inability of African multilateral organisations, such as the AU, or the East African Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), to establish a working platform or process to address the conflict. Arab League silence over Sudan has been particularly striking given the role of Arab states in the conflict. The UN has yet to find its feet in its response to the war: Ramtane Lamamra, the secretary-general’s personal envoy, has hesitated to base himself in the region, limiting his access to key stakeholders. In addition, the UN Security Council remains captive to a Russian veto on more robust action in Sudan, while the US is immobilised by charges from China and Russia of hypocrisy over the war in Gaza.

International actors’ hesitancy on taking more substantive diplomatic action is rooted in a history of exhausting, unimplemented, accommodation-based peace agreements on Sudan over the last 20 years. These failures have left Western states which consistently sought a participatory democratic outcome in Sudan wondering if the country is simply destined to stumble from one conflict to the next. Amid the current peacebuilding context, Sudanese and international diplomats, academics and analysts have bemoaned the continued domination of political space by the “same old faces”. Existing Sudanese political parties and power structures, as well as international actors who could do more to promote non-traditional voices, such as women and youth, have often sidelined fresh faces. Instead, they tend to favour recognisable figures, despite few showing any real impetus to empower the next generation.

The prevailing concern is that, with external actors increasingly viewing the conflict as intractable—reflected in the emerging use of the phrase “forever war” in the international lexicon on Sudan—and with regional security challenges proliferating as a result of its chaos, Arab and European governments, as well as the US government, may become increasingly inclined to seek stability through an accommodation-based agreement. This could mean military actors ending the war in exchange for cooperation on key files such as the Red Sea, regional security, violent extremism, Nile waters and food security. Such trade-offs privileging securitisation over participation are a well-worn, short-term response delivering little if any space for civilians to participate in forging conflict responses or a new transition.

Nonetheless, given Sudan’s decades of mostly uninterrupted conflict and the absence of a clear path to peace, these approaches may appear to be reasonable policy choices to some stakeholders.

US considerations and constraints

Western governments’ policies towards Sudan persistently clash with their own broader geopolitical interests, which regularly relegates the Sudan file to an afterthought. For the US, maintaining relations with the UAE in light of cooperation on Gaza and Iran has taken priority over holding the UAE accountable for—according to the UN panel of experts, US intelligence officials and US lawmakers—facilitating weaponry and other support to the RSF.[25] Senior-level decisions have undercut the efforts of successive US special envoys, demoting Sudan within Washington’s broader policy priorities—even as the scale and impact of the conflict has required action at the highest levels of international diplomatic action.[26]

Going forward, it is likely that the Washington platforms for addressing Sudan’s conflict will undergo significant changes. Conversations with policy figures in Washington suggest the possibility of a second generation of the 2020 Abraham Accords, ostensibly a regional grand bargain that saw a rapprochement between Israel and the Arab world, including Sudan. In contrast with four years ago, there are growing concerns that Arab state populations may not be as comfortable with their governments renewing an agreement with Israel following Israel’s violence against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Additionally, and as is often the case, the interests of Sudan’s population will likely once again be subsumed by larger regional policy considerations.

A battle for equity

While the revolution of 2018 and 2019 represented a collective outcry by Sudanese citizens exhausted by the effects of marginalisation, economic mismanagement and war, President al-Bashir was ultimately removed in a palace coup by the RSF and the SAF, which hoped to preserve their privileged role in the state by sacrificing the ICC-indicted president. However, the removal of al-Bashir has not sufficiently laundered the image of the NCP, the Islamists or the RSF—particularly given the way those entities continue to openly monopolise power and marginalise civilians. They were backed by autocratic Arab powers fresh from putting down the 2010 to 2012 “Arab Spring” uprisings, which remained mistrustful of democratic governance in the region.

The 2021 coup ousting the civilian-led transitional government then intensified civilians’ justified historical mistrust of armed actors, the NCP and the Islamists. Realising that the cosmetic removal of al-Bashir did not bring about the change desired by the population and its Western backers, civilians dug their heels in: “The last bullet they had in their munitions was war to make people forget their aspirations and their quest for democracy,” said one senior Sudanese academic in October 2024.[27] Now, in order to secure their own place in a post-conflict Sudan, many Sudanese find themselves polarised in their quest for basic human security and are obliged to rally behind military leaders who are disinterested in their demands for freedom, peace and justice.

Additionally, there remains a troubling absence of a strategy among civilian groups, such as Taqaddum and the Democratic Bloc (a pro-Port Sudan bloc of political and civic groups), to build the sort of multi-ethnic, multi-religious society demanded by the revolution, which has provided the only credible and recognisable set of popular Sudanese demands. While the SPLM-North of Abdel Aziz al-Hilu has articulated such a vision for several decades, it has to date chosen to remain largely on the sidelines of debates about ending the conflict and Sudan’s future. Abdel Wahid al Nour (leader of a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement) and others have mooted the idea of a national dialogue; but reasonable mistrust and lack of coordination between key parties has left few political actors willing to engage in discussions that do not ensure their role in a future Sudan from the outset.[28]

The 2021 coup against the transitional government made clear to many Sudanese that the deep state would be unlikely to relinquish its hold on power—it had little incentive to do so—and that the threat of violence might be required to deliver systemic, structural change to remove the NCP and Islamists. The SPLM/A’s similar attempts over the span of almost three bloody decades had ended in an unimplemented peace deal and the calamitous split of the state.

The RSF, formalised within the state security apparatus by the 2017 Rapid Support Forces Act, could have simply joined the existing predatory state system, much as the signatories to the JPA did in 2020. However, powerful old-guard figures found this anathema for financial, tribal and racial identity reasons. They could not countenance having the RSF so close to the seat of power, and, from that perch, comprising a fundamental threat to the existing centre-based order.

Sudanese supporting the RSF view this decision as a matter of ridding the country of a violent and exclusionary system that has driven state violence against vast swathes of the country’s marginalised population in the peripheries since independence. Many of these supporters claim that their struggle is more against the Islamists than the SAF, which they view as a co-opted institution beholden to Islamist groups from Sudan as well as Iran and Turkey. Even before the war, as the RSF was coming to prominence—raised and nurtured by al-Bashir and the security forces—Sudanese came to see it as a counterweight to the country’s post-independence predatory state.

Perhaps the most profound and impactful element of this conflict was the arrival of terror, violence and destruction in the previously insulated and wealthy centre, reflecting the oppression visited for decades upon the country’s peripheries. “If the war didn’t arrive in Khartoum, no actual change would happen,” claimed one senior RSF official.[29] The leader of a Sudanese NGO—herself from the Nile valley and having lost family and property due to the fighting—suggested in utilitarian terms that the war was a great equaliser for a previously unequal and imbalanced country. She touts “the positive side of war” and the potential of a blank slate on which to rebuild the country on a more equitable base.[30]

Currently, there are no guarantees over an improved outcome because of the continued dominance of the very parties responsible for perpetuating state violence. The countless deaths, injuries and wholesale destruction of much of the country appears far too high a price to pay for a tenuous chance to remake the country on a more equitable base. Ultimately, longer-term assessments will rely heavily on how much longer the war persists and whether it can indeed be a tragic catalyst for a newly cohesive and equitable Sudan.

Recommendations

As the war rumbles violently into its third year, fragmentation of social fabric is entrenching, armed and unarmed actors are breaking apart and de facto administrative divisions are likely to solidify, portending the prospective breakup of Sudan. The following recommendations seek to offer options for European policymakers to arrest this slide.

Diplomatic

• Sudan’s war is being fought simultaneously at local, national, regional and geopolitical levels. Any sustainable response to the conflict requires simultaneous, vertically coordinated work at all four levels and horizontal cooperation across what have to date been largely disjointed peace efforts. To facilitate this, envoys and key diplomats for Sudan and the Horn should form a working group convened by the UN secretary-general’s personal envoy for Sudan or by the AU high-level panel led by Mohammed Ibn Chambas.
• Key conflict actors inside and outside the country, who have the power to impact the trajectory and intensity of the conflict, have consistently insisted that they seek a peaceful, civilian outcome in Sudan. They have also made repeated commitments to achieve this. An appointed monitoring group should publicly oversee adherence to these commitments, providing regular reports to Sudanese and international stakeholders alike. Such a monitoring group could report twice monthly to the aforementioned working group.
• Islamists and the NCP remain powerful actors and potential spoilers in Sudan, showing limited interest in participatory governance. But they are diverse in their perspectives, interests and scope for accommodation. Efforts should be made to identify and seek dialogue with key liberal Islamist figures and groups, as well as factions of the NCP amenable to a regionally led peace process, and a new and inclusive transition. Similarly, engagement with key RSF figures should be developed as part of an attempt to locate voices against the war on both sides of the conflict.

Programmatic

• Discussions with Sudanese citizens inside and outside of Sudan reveal that 21 months of horrific violence and hunger have understandably scrambled the calculations and priorities of the population in sometimes unexpected ways. In order to build international and Sudanese-led responses to the conflict that correspond to the diverse desires of Sudanese society, public polling with rigorous methodological standards should be undertaken and widely publicised across Sudanese media, social media and other avenues on a monthly basis. To date, key actors—from the RSF to Egypt, from local leaders to the UN—have made self-serving proclamations about how the Sudanese want to end the conflict and how they want to live going forward. It is time to gather this important data more soundly and systematically for use as a “north star” in future initiatives for peace and governance.
• A senior UN figure with extensive Sudan field experience recently said: “There are “more opportunities for local level ceasefires than we think”.[31] Supporting grassroots conflict prevention and conflict management initiatives is the most effective current opportunity to ease community-level conflict, protect civilians and rebuild fragile social fabric within and between communities. These initiatives are already working well without external support, but could be broadened further. Any attempt to scale up these initiatives must be undertaken with sensitivity. In appropriate areas, local administrations—ideally from tribal groups on both sides of the conflict—should find common cause to approach area commanders from the SAF and the RSF to establish ceasefires based on “local commander agreements”.
• EU donors should prioritise systematic support to civic actors to enhance their impact and credibility as short- to medium-term administrators of services in their areas. Working governance at the local level is likely to compel armed actors to take note and possibly to follow civic actors’ lead in working to build constituents through service delivery. The initiative requires simultaneously robust diplomatic, physical and legal protection for these civic actors, given the history of arrest and persecution by intelligence services on both sides of the conflict. More broadly, this approach demands an improvement in coordination of intended impacts and goals between the diplomatic and programming leads on Sudan.

Strategic

• The failures and ongoing constraints of bilateral and multilateral peace-making in Sudan should prompt the application of a new and demonstrably effective approach to subnational peace and governance. The localisation of aid and peace-making has already borne fruit in incredibly harsh conditions; Sudanese and international efforts should prioritise this to address the conflict and help Sudan recover. While the AU has often touted subsidiarity to gain control over key files on the continent, it may be time for the application of a doctrine of “hyper-subsidiarity”—taking this devolution of responsibility for peace to a localised extreme. Donors should stand behind these initiatives, not least as a means of reducing waste and improving accountability over traditional costly and inflexible UN peace programming mechanisms.
• The most prominent civilian groups (the now-defunct Taqaddum and the Democratic Bloc) have, out of perceived necessity, aligned with neither side of the conflict. There is a pressing need for spaces and platforms (or incubators) inside and outside Sudan where civilian groups that do not support the two military actors can develop viable social, political and economic responses to the conflict and visions for Sudan, as well as strategies and approaches to communications and public outreach.
• Although Washington and beyond are anticipating further securitisation of the Sudan file, it remains key that they avoid its over-securitisation. Viewing Sudan as a counter-terrorism and regional security file in the same vein as the states of the Sahel would be to the detriment of thoughtful, longer-term programming supporting the resiliency and rebuilding of social fabric. While some securitisation of the file is required given the very real threats posed by Sudan’s conflict context, relevant agencies should be mandated to coordinate closely with diplomatic and programmatic engagement. Responsibility for maintaining this balance lies with senior policymakers.
• Multilaterals and stakeholder governments should take the time to develop and then enunciate clearly what a new transitional arc looks like in Sudan. With strategic considerations in mind, key details should be provided while leaving others flexible. Both sides of the conflict have privately asked for such clarity. Most of all, such a concept should provide a path for conflict actors to exit the conflict, and with attention to modalities for processes like reconstruction and recovery, and security sector reform/governance.

About the author

Jonas Horner is a visiting fellow of the Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

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[1] Author conversation with Sudanese political analyst (December 4th 2024).

[2] Author conversations with US officials and analysts (January and February 2025).

[3] Author conversations with Western and African diplomats (2023, 2024, 2025).

[4] Author interviews with Western and African diplomats (2021, 2023, 2024, 2025); author interviews with Gulf political analysts (2024).

[5] Author interviews with Western diplomats (2023, 2024).

[6] Author interview with confidential source (20th December 2023).

[7] Author interviews with analysts and African and Western diplomats (2023 and 2024).

[8] Battlefield testimony from RSF and SAF officers (2024 and 2025).

[9] Author conversations with RSF and SAF officials (2024 and 2025).

[10] Author interview with senior Sudanese political analyst (December 4th 2024).

[11] Author interviews with RSF official (November 2024); SAF military intelligence official (February 2024); SPLM-N official (August 2024).

[12] Author interview with RSF senior official (November 29th 2024).

[13] Author interview with Sudanese political figure (November 30th 2024).

[14] Author conversations with European and US officials (November 2024).

[15] Author interviews with Western officials and investigative organisations (2023, 2024, 2025).

[16] Author interview with RSF official (November 21st 2024).

[17] Author interview with senior civil society actor (November 15th 2024).

[18] Author interview with civil society group (November 4th 2024).

[19] Author interview with senior civil society actor (November 15th 2024).

[20] Author interview with head of Sudanese NGO (November 15th 2024).

[21] Final Statement of Taqaddum Leadership Body Meeting (December 3rd to 6th, 2024)

[22] Author interview with US official (December 5th 2024).

[23] Author interview with UK official (November 28th 2024).

[24] Author interview with European official (late 2024).

[25] Author interviews, US government officials (2023, 2024).

[26] Author interview with US government official, Washington (March 7th 2024).

[27] Author interview with Sudanese academic (October 8th 2024).

[28] Author interview with European diplomat, (November 26th 2024).

[29] Author interview with RSF official (November 21st 2024).

[30] Author interview with civil society leader (November 15th 2024).

[31] Author interview with UN official (November 15th 2024).