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Sudan - 4th Civil War - 2023

The terms “Arab” and “non-Arab” are slippery labels in many regions in Sudan. Both communities are Black and Muslim and have inter-married for centuries. The labels mostly denote communal ways of life. “Arabs” are traditionally pastoralists and camel herders, while “non-Arabs” are sedentary farmers.

The RSF said its forces had taken control of Khartoum airport, after witnesses reported seeing truckloads of fighters entering the airport compound, as well as the presidential palace -- where Burhan was officially based -- and other key sites. The army, however, said the airport and other bases remain under their "full control". It published a photograph of black smoke billowing from what it said was the RSF headquarters.

Created in 2013, the RSF emerged from the Janjaweed militia that then-president Omar al-Bashir unleashed against non-Arab ethnic minorities in the western Darfur region a decade earlier, drawing accusations of war crimes. Daglo had said the coup was a mistake that failed to bring about change and reinvigorated remnants of Bashir's regime ousted by the army in 2019 following mass protests. Burhan, a career soldier from northern Sudan who rose through the ranks under Bashir's three-decade rule, maintained the coup was necessary to bring more groups into the political process.

The chaos engulfing Sudan stems both from the personal enmity between the country’s two most powerful generals and a structural rivalry pitting the military against what had effectively become a second army. The two generals are former allies, having conspired only 18 months earlier to derail Sudan’s short-lived transition to democracy. Since fighting began, both men had dug in despite mounting diplomatic pressure, saying they would not negotiate a truce, engaging in verbal attacks and demanding the other's surrender. As the fighting escalated on 15 April 2023, Burhan ordered the RSF to be dissolved, branding it a “rebel” group. In turn, Hemedti called the army chief “a radical Islamist who was bombing civilians from the air”.

The bloodshed marked a deadly setback for Sudan, a resource-rich nation long blighted by kleptocratic rule. It comes just four years after a popular uprising helped depose long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir, inspiring hope in a country strategically located at the crossroads of Africa and the Arab world. While Sudan had a long history of military coups, the power struggle that had erupted into open warfare was a legacy of Bashir’s policy of divide and rule. In the last days of Bashir’s regime he allowed a very fragmented, factional security force to emerge, partly so that none of them were strong enough to overthrow him.

The chaotic scenes of fighting are unprecedented for Khartoum, with tanks, artillery and warplanes operating in densely populated areas of the capital. Fighting had also spread to the war-wrecked western Darfur region and areas of northern and eastern Sudan, near the borders with Egypt and Ethiopia – underscoring the RSF’s extensive reach.

Heavy fighting was still underway in Sudan on 17 April 2023, hours after an internationally brokered truce was supposed to have come into effect, as forces loyal to dueling generals battled for key locations in the capital and accused each other of violating the cease-fire. Residents said they still heard gunfire and explosions in different parts of the capital, Khartoum, particularly around the military’s headquarters and the Republican Palace. They said few people had ventured out, though there were crowds outside some bakeries. According to the latest UN numbers, at least 2,600 people had been injured so far, and the death toll had risen to 270. However, the actual number was likely much higher, as bomb blasts prevented the collection of the injured, who "litter the streets," according to news reports.

The range of the RSF forces was estimated between 70,000 and 150,000 fighters, whereas the regular army had between 110,000 to 120,000 active-duty personnel. the Sudanese army had access to a broader range of weapons. The army's regular war equipment was better, it had helicopters and tanks. the RSF forces "are better equipped for city wars, as they had fast pick-ups with mounted machine guns.

The lives of the 5 million residents of Khartoum had been upended. Most people are taking shelter inside their homes without electricity in unrelenting heat for days. The city was seeing the worst of the fight with constant air strikes, tanks patrolling the streets and gunfire in densely populated areas. However, violence had also spread to the country such as the western region of Darfur.

Heavy fighting in the capital Khartoum continued on 22 April 2023 after Sudan's army and a rival paramilitary group agreed on a three-day truce at the end of Ramadan. More than 400 people had been killed and thousands more injured since violence erupted a week earlier. With the fighting in Sudan entering its second week, the nation's military agreed to coordinate evacuation efforts for diplomats and citizens from the US, UK, China and France. In a statement, the military said the Saudi diplomatic mission had already been evacuated. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) said they were ready to "partially" open "all airports" in Sudan to evacuate foreign citizens. However, it was not possible to verify which airports they control. Army general Burhan claimed that "all airports were under army control," except for the Khartoum airport and the southwestern Nyala airport.

A US-brokered ceasefire agreement between Sudan's warring generals failed to stem ten days of heavy fighting, including air strikes and artillery barrages. Hundreds of people perished, many of them civilians, and some neighbourhoods of greater Khartoum now lie in ruins. All the while, foreign governments had been scrambling to get their nationals out via road convoys, aircraft and ships.

A three-day ceasefire was agreed 27 April 2023 after mediation led by the United States, Saudi Arabia, the African Union and the United Nations aimed at securing a more lasting truce. The two sides agreed to extend a ceasefire for 72 hours, but sounds of gunshots and shelling continued to be heard in the capital Khartoum and elsewhere. Intermittent clashes were continuing despite the extended truce. Despite the renewed truce, warplanes on bombing raids drew heavy anti-aircraft fire over Khartoum as fierce fighting between Sudan's army and paramilitaries entered a third week.

The fighting parties nominated representatives for talks which could either be hosted by Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, or Juba in South Sudan, the United Nations special representative in the country told the Reuters news agency. Volker Perthes suggested that both the Sudanese military and the RSF paramilitary group seemed more open to negotiations now. He questioned nevertheless whether they could "actually sit together." No timeline had been decided for the talks. "They both think they will win, but they are both sort of more open to negotiations, the word 'negotiations' or 'talks' was not there in their discourse in the first week or so," he said, adding that both parties "accepted that this war cannot continue."

General Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Daglo, commander of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) stressed that his forces are now in complete control of the capital Khartoum’s three main districts: Khartoum, Khartoum Bahri and Omdurman. In an interview 02 May 2023 to Asharq Al-Awsat, he added that the RSF was working closely with the citizens to find solutions to water and electricity problems and shortages in over services.

A weeklong cease-fire agreed to by both factions in the Sudanese conflict was supposed to be in effect from 04 May until May 11. However, chances that it would hold had been considered slim. The cease-fire in Sudan that was supposed to come into force was immediately broken, with airstrikes and heavy shelling reported near the presidential palace in the capital Khartoum in the morning. Artillery fire was also heard in the neighboring town of Omdurman, according to eyewitness reports.

Clashes between Sudanese troops and the Rapid Support Forces militia continued in Khartoum during the "ceasefire". Battles were reported near the presidential palace and international airport. Sudanese civilians sheltering from the violence are dealing with power outages and struggling to get basic necessities. A ship carrying people from 13 countries had arrived in Saudi Arabia, and the United States evacuated all embassy staffers and their families by helicopter from Khartoum. Two Japan Self-Defense Force transport planes left nearby Djibouti. They were expected to carry Japanese nationals out of Sudan. About 60 Japanese were currently in the countr. They were expected to travel from Khartoum to another location by land for the planned airlift. Germany said it had evacuated 311 people. France says it had transported 388 people to Djibouti, including two Japanese. One evacuation route was through the city of Port Sudan, about 700 kilometers northeast of the capital. The city had an airport.

About 700 UN, international NGOs and embassy staff and their dependents reached Port Sudan by road. Dozens of UN internationally recruited and international NGO staff already been evacuated from El Geneina and Zalingei to Chad while other operations are ongoing or planned. A small number of internationally recruited personnel, including the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Volker Perthes, would remain in Sudan and would continue to work towards a resolution to the current crisis and returning to the UN-mandated tasks.

The UN Human Rights Office said 15 August 2023 its figures — which are highly likely an undercount — indicate that more than 4,000 people had so far been killed in the fighting, including 28 humanitarian and health workers and 435 children. In October 2023, the UN said up to 9,000 people had been killed and more than 5.6 million others had been forced to flee their homes in the past six months due to the violence.

Four months into Sudan's conflict, the situation had rapidly deteriorated with widespread displacement and the looming threat of famine, humanitarian organizations warned, urging immediate global action. Since the eruption of conflict in Sudan on April 15, the country had been witnessing a severe humanitarian crisis. UN warnings of arbitrary killings and rampant sexual abuse show the critical situation in the country. UN agencies and NGOs said in a joint statement that the situation in Sudan "is spiraling out of control."

In October 2023, the RSF captured several army garrisons across the sprawling western region of Darfur, just as the US-backed mediation talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, were about to resume after a lengthy hiatus. Jonas Horner, an independent expert on Sudan, told Al Jazeera the RSF’s expansion as it takes more states to the north and east is not sustainable. He noted that the paramilitary has recruited heavily from its tribal base in Darfur in exchange for allowing the fighters to loot cities they capture. But the pillaging of homes, hospitals, United Nations warehouses and markets has led to popular resentment and hatred of the group, he said. “[The RSF’s] atrocities and their hardcore cruelty … is probably their single biggest obstacle and makes the prospect of them governing the country fa r more difficult,” Horner said. “I think so many Sudanese … are never going to be comfortable with the RSF governing them,” he added.

Ethnic tensions are soaring across northern and eastern Sudan. On December 16, the army withdrew from Sudan’s second-largest city, Wad Madani after the RSF captured it. As a final act, the military executed dozens of civilians who belonged to “Arab” and “non-Arab” tribes from Darfur, according to a video shared by pro-army accounts that Al Jazeera verified.

The army is fuelling ethnic divisions to drive recruitment, giving the RSF a pretext to retaliate along ethnic lines as it has done in Darfur. Videos surfacing across social media showed RSF fighters detaining and killing unarmed men in Gezira state, which they captured entirely after seizing Wad Madani, its capital, last month. Many of the victims were reportedly accused of cooperating with the army.

Who is a civilian and who is a combatant is going to become blurry. And involving civilians as combatants … will help the discourse of the RSF when they claim that they don’t attack civilians but fighters.

Jehanne Henry, a human rights expert on Sudan and a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute, said the army is doing itself a disservice by targeting people based on ethnicity. “Military intelligence could be driving people to look for other allies – if not RSF, then maybe groups that get along with RSF – which is very dangerous politically speaking for the Sudanese armed forces,” Henry said. “The army has just committed one blunder after another.”

In December 2023, the RSF captured Gezira state – a breadbasket for Sudan – giving the group the clear upper hand against the army. But rather than leverage military success in negotiations to end the conflict, Hemedti appears to have ambitions to rule all of Sudan, according to analysts, Sudanese journalists and diplomats. “Hemedti desperately needs people to feel that the RSF is a governing force. I think this is why Hemedti went to meet heads of state,” said Kholood Khair, a Sudan expert and founding director of the think tank Confluence Advisory.

Despite committing a myriad of human rights abuses, the RSF is trying to bring law and order to regions under its control. The paramilitary has created a department called Civil and Political Management, whose paid employees are responsible for repairing basic services like hospitals, electricity grids and water stations in South Darfur’s capital, Nyala. There is relative safety right now in Nyala. All the RSF fighters that were looting Nyala left. They all went to Gezira state. The RSF has also established a local police force in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, most of which it controls. Police forces have also been instructed to maintain order throughout Darfur.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) was working on the establishment of a ‘federal police force’ in the country’. The force is supposed to start operating in Khartoum soon. In RSF-controlled West, Central, South, and East Darfur, hundreds of police officers have returned to their job. In November, hundreds of Sudanese police officers returned to carry out their work in West, Central, South, and East Darfur, which are controlled by the RSF. Sudan’s police chief had instructed all police forces in RSF- occupied states to move to states under control of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and join police offices there.

Many activists and analysts mocked the group’s ostensible attempt to combat criminality and blame the RSF for most of the theft, violence and lawlessness in the country. “This is a farce,” tweeted Lauren Blanchard, an expert on Sudan and a specialist in African affairs at the Congressional Research Service. “Will the RSF’s police force arrest RSF forces for the killing, looting, property destruction, occupation of houses, sexual violence, and other crimes in which they have been implicated in Khartoum and other areas?”

While almost nobody in northern and eastern Sudan will accept living under Hemedti, European countries will cooperate with the RSF if it captures the entire country, according to one Western diplomat who spoke to Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity. He said that in the interest of stemming migration from Africa to Europe, the European Union is already signing partnerships with strongman leaders such as Tunisian President Kais Said and an eastern Libyan militia connected to renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar. The EU also previously worked with the RSF on migration as part of the Khartoum Process, a 2014 migration pact between the EU and countries in the Horn of Africa to combat the trafficking and smuggling of people.

The RSF are in control of most of Darfur, several areas in Kordofan, and a large part of Khartoum state. The eastern, northern, and central parts of the country are in control of the army.