After more than six months of war, Sudan has virtually split in two and has declined to the status of chronically torn countries, such as Somalia and Libya. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, has recorded the most victories and last week captured Nyala and laid siege to Al Fashar, both key cities in the western Darfur region.
The Sudanese army of General Abdel-Fattah Burhan only controls a small part of the capital Khartoum. The question is how long.
More and more militias are joining the battle, the battle scene is becoming more confusing and no longer consists of the two parties that started the war in April.
According to the UN, the conflict in Sudan has led to the fastest growing and now largest displacement crisis in the world. About one million people have fled to neighboring countries, and more than seven million people have been internally displaced, including 4.5 million since the fighting broke out.
International aid lags far behind needs and half a million Sudanese refugees live in poor conditions in Chad. “Sudan’s health care system is on the verge of collapse,” warned Ni’ma Saeed Abid, representative of the World Health Organization in Sudan, this week. Diseases such as cholera are given free rein.
As more armed groups join the fight, looting, rape and other violence are becoming more common than ever before in the conflict. “The state is absent and the situation is turning into chaos,” Mohammed Almoufty, a resident of Nyala, said by telephone. “Conflicts between population groups occur more often in Darfur and reconciliation usually follows through the mediation of traditional leaders, but now the warring parties of Hemedti and Burhan are inciting them.”
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Ethnic cleansing
In the town of Nyala, captured last week, hospitals have been destroyed and residential areas looted by the RSF and allied Arab militias. General Burhan’s government army has now been virtually driven out of Darfur by the RSF. Only in the regional capital Al Fashar is a barracks of government soldiers still standing.
Mercenaries from Chad, Libya and Niger head to Darfur to take part in ‘free shopping’. These Arab or Arabized fighters usually side with the RSF, with the main goal of plundering African peoples. Weapons for the RSF come from eastern Chad, where the United Arab Emirates has regularly delivered weaponry.
Due to the expansion of the number of fighting groups on its side, the RSF no longer has an efficient central command structure, and that partly explains why so many war crimes are taking place, such as the ethnic cleansing of the Masalit population around the city of Geneina by fighters of the RSF and affiliated Arab militias .
A similar fragmentation is taking place on the side of the government army. It controls the east and the port city of Port Sudan. New recruits are strengthening government forces, but many new soldiers are among the Muslim fundamentalists of ousted President Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and are generally despised in Sudan. This applies equally to the undisciplined RSF.
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The search for a political solution is becoming increasingly difficult because there are now so many political agendas at play and warlords on both sides are guided by the local balance of power, not by orders from commanders at the top.
Talks between military forces recently resumed in Jeddah with the aim of negotiating a ceasefire and a humanitarian aid corridor. In Addis Ababa, civilian groups met for the first time since the war broke out and decided in principle to set up a government-in-exile led by the former Abdalla Hamdok, the civilian prime minister who Burhan and Hemedti overthrew in 2021.