Sudan Civil War — Strategic Assessment

Bottom Line Up Front

• Assessment (High confidence): The Sudanese civil war has entered its fourth year as a structurally bifurcated conflict. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) hold the riverine center and the eastern Red Sea littoral, including the recovered capital Khartoum and the wartime seat at Port Sudan. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) consolidate the west, having captured the last SAF-held urban node in Darfur — al-Fashir — in late October 2025. The territorial map now resembles a de facto partition along the White Nile axis, with Kordofan as the contested seam.

• Fact (High confidence): The fall of al-Fashir produced documented mass atrocities. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights recorded approximately 6,000 killings in the three days following RSF entry on 26 October 2025, with the actual toll assessed as significantly higher. Targeting profiles (non-Arab Zaghawa) match the Darfur ethnic-cleansing pattern of 2003–2005 and meet the threshold of war crimes per OHCHR.
• Assessment (Medium confidence): Foreign sponsorship has hardened into a stable two-bloc proxy architecture. The UAE underwrites the RSF via Chadian and Libyan land corridors and gold-for-arms financing. The SAF bloc has expanded to three active supply vectors: Egypt (air corridor), Iran (Mohajer-6 UAVs, decisive in the 2025 Wad Madani and Khartoum recaptures alongside Russian Su-24 platforms), and now Turkey/Baykar (Bayraktar Akinci UCAVs delivered via the Egyptian corridor, ~USD 120 million — Medium confidence per Militarnyi and Defence Security Asia), with the Russian Federation and Eritrea remaining bloc sponsors. The proxy structure has now produced its first diplomatic rupture: Sudan recalled its ambassador from Ethiopia in May 2026 over accusations of RSF drone-launch facilitation.
• Gap (Unverified): The status of the Russia–Sudan Port Sudan naval-base agreement remains opaque. Khartoum publicly froze the dossier in December 2025 under Saudi pressure but has not formally withdrawn the 25-year offer; whether suspension is tactical or strategic is unresolved.

Strategic Background

The war that began on 15 April 2023 was not a coup attempt. It was the kinetic resolution of a power-sharing contradiction baked into the 2019 transitional architecture: two armed institutions — the SAF under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the RSF under Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemedti”) — each commanding sovereign-grade force, sovereign-grade revenue (RSF via Darfuri gold, SAF via state industry), and sovereign-grade foreign patronage. The Framework Agreement’s security-sector reform clause — RSF integration into SAF on a fixed timeline — was the proximate trigger. The structural cause is older: the Bashir regime’s deliberate construction of the Rapid Support Forces as a counterweight to the regular military, drawing on the Janjaweed Arab-tribal militia base that conducted the 2003 Darfur campaign.

Three structural features distinguish this war from prior Sudanese conflicts:

1. Symmetry of force. Unlike the SPLA/north–south war or the Darfur insurgency, neither belligerent is a guerrilla. Both field mechanized formations, drones, and air or air-defense assets.
2. Urban center of gravity. The decisive battles — Khartoum, Wad Madani, al-Fashir, El Obeid — are siege operations in dense civilian terrain, producing humanitarian outcomes structurally identical to Mariupol or Aleppo.
3. Embedded ethnic dimension. RSF order-of-battle in Darfur incorporates Arab tribal militias under flag-of-convenience command. The targeting of Zaghawa, Fur, and Masalit civilians is not collateral; it is operational.

Timeline (Selected)

Date	Event	Confidence
15 Apr 2023	War begins: SAF–RSF fighting erupts in Khartoum	Fact, High
2024	RSF advances across Darfur, Gezira, and Kordofan	Fact, High
Q1 2025	SAF recaptures Wad Madani and advances toward Khartoum	Fact, High
Mar 2025	SAF retakes Khartoum	Fact, High
26 Oct 2025	RSF captures al-Fashir — last SAF urban node in Darfur; ~6,000 killed in 3 days per OHCHR	Fact, High
11 Jan 2026	PM Kamil Idris announces government return to Khartoum	Fact, High
Feb 2026	OHCHR finds RSF violations in al-Fashir amount to war crimes	Fact, High
~Apr 2026	RSF senior commanders defect to SAF (Maj. Gen. al-Nour Ahmed Adam; Ali Rizq-Allah) — ACLED	Fact, High
15 Apr 2026	Berlin Conference: Germany/AU/EU/France/UK/USA convene Third International Sudan Conference; produce “Berlin Principles for Sudan”; USD 1B+ pledged	Fact, High (UK Gov primary source)
4–6 May 2026	RSF launches coordinated drone campaign on Port Sudan: 3 waves, 11+ suicide drones; UNHAS suspends flights for 3 days	Fact, High
5 May 2026	Sudan accuses UAE and Ethiopia of drone facilitation; recalls ambassador from Ethiopia	Fact, High
15 May 2026	WFP/FAO/UNICEF: 19.5 million at IPC Phase 3+; 135,000 at Phase 5 Catastrophic; 825,000 children at risk of SAM in 2026	Fact, High

Theater Analysis

Khartoum and the central riverine corridor (SAF-controlled). SAF retook Khartoum in March 2025 and Wad Madani (Gezira State) in early 2025, restoring control over the Blue Nile–White Nile confluence and the agricultural heartland. Prime Minister Kamil Idris announced government return to Khartoum on 11 January 2026. Reconstruction is nominal; basic services remain degraded. The corridor is operationally consolidated but logistically dependent on the Port Sudan–Khartoum axis, which RSF deep-strike drones have repeatedly contested.

Darfur (RSF-controlled). With al-Fashir’s fall on 26 October 2025, all five Darfur regional capitals are under RSF control. Consolidation is complete at the urban level; rural insurgency by remnants of the Joint Forces (Darfuri armed movements aligned with SAF) continues but is non-decisive. Famine has been formally confirmed by the IPC across Darfur.

Kordofan (contested — operational seam). Fighting in early 2026 has shifted decisively to the Kordofan region. El Obeid (North Kordofan) is under RSF siege as of Q1 2026, with international observers warning of a repeat of the al-Fashir pattern. Kordofan controls the road network linking Darfur to the Khartoum corridor and the rail line to Port Sudan; whichever side stabilizes Kordofan dictates the operational geometry of any 2026–2027 offensive.

Sennar–Blue Nile (contested). Fighting persists in Sennar State along the Ethiopian border. Lower priority for both belligerents but strategically relevant given Eritrean basing and possible Ethiopian spillover.

Eastern Red Sea littoral (SAF-controlled). Port Sudan functions as the SAF wartime capital and primary logistics gateway. Iranian, Russian, and Egyptian materiel flows through Port Sudan; this is also the dossier on which the Russian naval-base proposal turns.

Proxy Dimension

The conflict’s external architecture is now sufficiently stable to model as a two-bloc system. This is the empirical core of the Hybrid Warfare and Proxy Warfare reading.

RSF bloc (UAE-led).

• UAE: Principal arms sponsor. Arms transit Chad (Amdjarass airfield) and eastern Libya (Haftar-aligned facilities). Chinese-origin weaponry — including GB-50A guided bombs and Wing Loong–class UAVs — has been documented in RSF inventory, in violation of the UN arms embargo on Darfur. RSF foreign-currency revenue is dominated by gold exports to UAE refineries.
• Libyan eastern faction (Haftar/LNA): Logistical conduit; not a combat sponsor.
• Wagner/Wagner Group residuum: Pre-2023 Wagner gold-mining infrastructure in Darfur (Meroe Gold) initially favored RSF financial flows. Post-Prigozhin, the Africa Corps reorientation has shifted Russian state sponsorship toward SAF, but Wagner-era commercial linkages to RSF gold persist as a parallel channel.

SAF bloc (Egypt-Iran-Turkey-Russia).

• Egypt: Strategic depth provider. Air corridor for materiel; pilot training; intelligence sharing. Cairo’s red line is RSF dominance over the Blue Nile (water-security implication for the Aswan-Nile system).
• Iran: Decisive UAV supplier. Mohajer-6 deliveries in 2024–2025 closed the SAF’s drone gap and were materially significant in the Wad Madani and Khartoum recaptures. Iran’s interest is Red Sea access opposite Saudi Arabia; the Houthi–Sudan corridor analogy is increasingly explicit.
• Turkey/Baykar: Delivered approximately USD 120 million in Bayraktar Akinci UCAVs to SAF via the Egyptian corridor. The Akinci is now SAF’s primary contested-airspace platform. In May 2026, an SAF Akinci intercepted and destroyed an RSF-operated Akinci in what multiple defense outlets describe as the first documented drone-versus-drone aerial kill in the conflict. Turkey’s entry marks a qualitative jump for SAF’s aerial capabilities, adding an independent UCAV supply line alongside the Iranian Mohajer-6 channel. Confidence: Medium (Militarnyi and Defence Security Asia; no official confirmation from Ankara or Cairo).
• Russian Federation: Air platforms (Su-24), training, and the Port Sudan naval-base dossier — formally frozen December 2025, status unresolved 2026. Moscow’s interest is dual-use: Red Sea logistics and continued access to Sudanese gold.
• Eritrea: Border security cooperation; training of allied militias; staging in eastern Sudan.

Third-party actors under pressure.

• Ethiopia (involuntary/contested): Sudan’s government accused Addis Ababa of hosting RSF drone-launch sites responsible for attacks on SAF infrastructure since March 2026. Sudan recalled its ambassador from Ethiopia on 5 May 2026. Ethiopia denied the allegations and counter-accused Sudan of funding TPLF-linked groups. No mediation framework has been established. Confidence: High (Al Jazeera and Critical Threats/AEI). This introduces a bilateral Sudan–Ethiopia crisis dimension not previously present in the conflict’s external geometry.

Saudi Arabia: Not aligned with either belligerent in 2026. Riyadh’s posture has shifted to active mediation, including pressure on Abu Dhabi to scale back RSF support. Jeddah remains the principal venue for negotiated tracks.

United States: OFAC sanctions in 2025 designated both SAF and RSF principals, signaling an analytic finding of dual culpability rather than a tilt. Active US diplomatic role is constrained.

The proxy structure is now self-reinforcing: each external sponsor’s investment generates audience costs that disincentivize defection, and the two blocs’ interests do not converge on a settlement either belligerent would accept. This is the core obstacle to a 2026 ceasefire.

Humanitarian Architecture

Scale. Approximately 14 million displaced (UN OCHA, April 2026): 9.6 million internally displaced, 4.4 million as refugees in Chad, Egypt, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic. As of the WFP/FAO/UNICEF joint assessment of 15 May 2026 — updating earlier OCHA estimates — 19.5 million people face acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3+). Approximately 135,000 people are at IPC Phase 5 (Catastrophic) across 14 hotspots in Darfur, South Darfur, and South Kordofan, and 825,000 children under 5 are expected to suffer severe acute malnutrition in 2026. Famine confirmed in Darfur and Kordofan by IPC.

Casualty signature. Per OHCHR, armed drones caused more than 80 percent of all civilian deaths in Sudan during January–April 2026 — at least 880 killed (statement by UN human rights chief Volker Türk), concentrated in Darfur and Kordofan. This is an inversion of the typical civil-war casualty profile and reflects the saturation of UAVs across both belligerents’ force packages.

Port Sudan vulnerability. In May 2026, RSF launched its first coordinated drone campaign against Port Sudan itself (4–6 May 2026) — three waves totaling at least eleven suicide drones targeting Osman Digna Air Base, commercial warehouses, and civilian facilities. All UNHAS humanitarian flights were suspended for three days. The UNHAS suspension demonstrated the vulnerability of the SAF’s logistics hub to RSF long-range strike, even without permanent infrastructure destruction. Port Sudan’s status as an inviolable SAF rear-area can no longer be assumed. [Source: Al Jazeera and UN News / UNHAS statement, High confidence]

Funding gap. OCHA’s 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan targets 20 million beneficiaries against a USD 2.95 billion requirement. Funding sits at approximately 20 percent (per April 2026 OCHA) — among the worst funded major humanitarian appeals globally; Berlin Conference pledges of over USD 1 billion announced 15 April 2026 may improve this figure. This is a forcing function: humanitarian collapse is now baked into the system absent an order-of-magnitude funding shift, which is not under serious discussion.

Chokepoints.

• Port Sudan → interior corridors (SAF-controlled, contested by drone strike).
• Adre crossing (Chad → Darfur), the principal humanitarian corridor for RSF-held territory; access tempo controlled by both Chadian authorities and RSF transit fees.
• Renk corridor (South Sudan border), critical for refugee outflow but politically fragile.

Escalation Scenarios

Scenario A — Frozen partition (estimated probability 40–45%). Neither belligerent achieves decisive territorial change in 2026. The de facto White Nile partition hardens. Kordofan becomes a permanent contact zone analogous to the Donbas pre-2022. Foreign sponsorship continues; humanitarian baseline degrades. Indicators: continued RSF inability to break out east of Kordofan; SAF inability to project into Darfur; Saudi-led mediation maintains tempo without producing settlement. The Port Sudan drone campaign (4–6 May 2026) and Sudan’s diplomatic rupture with Ethiopia introduce structural destabilizers not present at initial assessment. The Turkish/Baykar entry into the SAF supply chain partially compensates, but the RSF’s demonstrated ability to project deep-strike capacity to Port Sudan degrades the frozen-partition stability assumed in this scenario.

Scenario B — RSF Kordofan breakthrough (estimated probability 25%). RSF takes El Obeid following the al-Fashir model, reopens the road to Khartoum’s western approaches, and forces SAF onto the strategic defensive in the central corridor. UAE materiel surge would be the leading indicator. Outcome: not a war-winning move (Port Sudan remains out of reach), but a re-leveling of the negotiating geometry.

Scenario C — External shock forcing settlement (estimated probability 25%). Two pathways: (i) UAE strategic recalculation under combined US-Saudi pressure, withdrawing or visibly throttling RSF support; (ii) a Red Sea maritime incident — Houthi-linked or otherwise — that escalates great-power attention to Red Sea Maritime Security and triggers a UNSC-mandated framework. Either pathway requires a non-Sudanese trigger; the belligerents themselves are not converging on settlement. The Sudan–Ethiopia dispute over RSF drone facilitation constitutes a nascent sub-crisis that could either accelerate regional multilateral pressure (path to C) or open a second operational front against SAF’s eastern flank (path to B), depending on whether Ethiopian government complicity is confirmed.

A clean SAF military victory is excluded from the 2026 horizon. SAF lacks the offensive mass to retake Darfur; RSF lacks the urban-warfare capability to take Port Sudan.

Strategic Implications

1. Red Sea security architecture is reconfiguring. The combination of the Houthi campaign, Iran’s UAV transfer to SAF, the Russian naval-base dossier, and the China-brokered Saudi-Iran rapprochement places the Red Sea at the center of a new multi-actor competition. Sudan is no longer peripheral to that geometry; it is one of its hinges.

2. The UAE faces a strategic-cost inflection. Continued RSF sponsorship is becoming legible internationally — UN Panel of Experts findings, US Congressional pressure, and Saudi diplomatic moves all increase the audience-cost gradient. Abu Dhabi’s calculation is whether the gold-and-influence return on RSF investment continues to exceed the reputational and strategic cost.

3. The Darfur genocide question is now formally on the table. OHCHR’s February 2026 finding of war crimes in al-Fashir, combined with the ethnic targeting pattern, places the conflict at the threshold of a formal genocide determination. A determination would have legal-instrument consequences (Genocide Convention obligations) that few sponsoring states want to confront.

4. Sudan is a stress test for the post-Western humanitarian order. A roughly 20 percent funding rate on the world’s largest displacement crisis is not a budget anomaly. It signals that the donor coalition that financed humanitarian response in the post-Cold War period is no longer assembling for sub-Saharan crises that lack a great-power security pull. Future African crises should be modeled against this baseline.

5. The proxy architecture is exportable. The two-bloc, external-supply, no-settlement-equilibrium structure visible in Sudan tracks closely with Libya 2014–2020 and parts of Yemen. The model — competing external sponsors stabilizing a partitioned territorial stalemate — is becoming the modal outcome in the Sahel and Horn region.

Sources

• UN OHCHR, “Sudan: RSF violations in capture of El Fasher amount to war crimes,” February 2026.
• UN OCHA, “Sudan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2026,” April 2026.
• UN News, “World failing Sudan as war enters a fourth year,” April 2026.
• Al Jazeera, “Thousands reportedly held by paramilitary RSF in Sudan’s el-Fasher,” 27 April 2026.
• Council on Foreign Relations, “The Specter of Genocide Returns to Darfur,” 2026.
• Council on Foreign Relations, Global Conflict Tracker — Sudan, 2026.
• Security Council Report, “Sudan, February 2026 Monthly Forecast.”
• Atlantic Council MENASource, “Sudan is caught in a web of external interference,” 2025–2026.
• The Africa Report, “Sudan/Russia: Will port-for-weapons deal bring an end to the civil war?,” 2025.
• Sudan Tribune, “Burhan tells Saudi Arabia Russian naval base plans are frozen,” December 2025.
• Amnesty International, “Three years on, Sudan’s warring parties intensify war against civilians,” April 2026.
• Health Policy Watch, “Sudan’s Catastrophic Civil War Enters Fourth Year,” 2026.
• Stimson Center, “Sudan: How One of the Most Severe Humanitarian Crises Became Marginalized,” 2026.
• Lowy Institute, “The spillover from Sudan,” 2025–2026.
• UK Government / FCO, “Third International Sudan Conference 2026: Berlin Principles for Sudan,” 15 April 2026 [primary].
• UN News / OHCHR, “Armed drones leading cause of civilian death in Sudan war: UN rights chief,” May 2026 [primary].
• WFP/FAO/UNICEF, “Risk of Famine persists as nearly 19.5 million people face acute food insecurity in Sudan,” 15 May 2026 [primary].
• Al Jazeera, “Sudan accuses Ethiopia, UAE of being behind recent drone attacks,” 5 May 2026 [primary].
• ACLED, “How is RSF infighting reshaping the war in Sudan?” 2026 [primary].
• Militarnyi, “Sudanese Army Shot Down Bayraktar Akinci,” May 2026 [primary on defense beat].
• ReliefWeb / UNHAS, Port Sudan suspension statement, May 2026 [primary].
• Africa Defense Forum, “Suffering Continues as Sudan War Enters Fourth Year,” May 2026 [primary on Africa beat].
• Vault source: Sudan Civil War.