The seizure of the city of El Fashir in North Darfur by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has given us some horrific images. On 26–27 October 2025, after an 18-month siege, RSF forces overran the city that had been the last major stronghold of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in Darfur.
Sudanese medical and rights groups, including the Sudan Doctors Network, have accused the RSF of committing massacres, mass detentions, and attacks on hospitals.
Sudan’s transition to democracy began with extraordinary hope and ended in blood. In April 2019, a broad civilian uprising toppled Omar al-Bashir, whose 30-year dictatorship had left behind a legacy of repression, corruption, and civil war. The revolution’s slogan — “Freedom, peace, and justice” — became a unifying cry for a nation long divided by region, ethnicity, and class.
After Bashir’s ouster, a fragile power-sharing arrangement was formed between the military and the civilian coalition known as the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC). That arrangement, formalised in the 2019 Constitutional Declaration, promised a transitional government leading to elections. But beneath the surface, the military never ceded real power.
The two dominant armed entities — General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo’s (known as Hemedti) Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — both sought to control the state’s future, its gold wealth, and its foreign partnerships.
By late 2021, the transition had effectively collapsed. In October of that year, Burhan and Hemedti staged a coup, dissolving the civilian government and arresting Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. What followed was a return to military rule disguised as “stabilisation.”
Efforts to revive the transition faltered as mistrust between the SAF and RSF deepened, particularly over plans to integrate the RSF into the regular army. The disagreement was less about structure than supremacy: who would control Sudan’s economy, foreign policy, and post-Bashir order.
In April 2023, tensions exploded into open war in Khartoum, then spread rapidly to Darfur and other regions — derailing Sudan’s democratic dream and plunging millions back into the nightmare they had risked everything to escape.
The Darfur Genocide
The events unfolding in El Fashir evoke grim memories of the early 2000s, when Darfur became synonymous with ethnic cleansing and state-sponsored terror.
The RSF, born out of the infamous Janjaweed militias that orchestrated the first Darfur genocide, has reverted to its original logic of ethnic warfare. Reports from survivors describe house-to-house searches, the targeting of non-Arab communities such as the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa, and the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure.
Some of the verified images and videos emerging from El Fashir and other parts of Darfur in late 2025 are among the most disturbing to have surfaced since the start of Sudan’s civil war. Although access to the region is severely restricted, visual evidence has filtered out through humanitarian workers, local journalists, and satellite verification groups like Amnesty International’s Crisis Evidence Lab and BBC Verify.
The International Backers
Several foreign powers have played active roles in Sudan’s war, each pursuing distinct economic and strategic objectives.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been the most significant external supporter of the RSF. Its involvement is motivated by access to Sudan’s gold resources and a desire to expand its influence in the Horn of Africa. The RSF controls major gold mines in Darfur, and much of that gold is exported through the UAE into the international bullion market.
The Sudanese Armed Forces have received assistance from Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and Qatar — each maintaining their own stake in the conflict. Turkey and Qatar, for example, invested heavily in Sudan during the Bashir era, particularly in agriculture and port infrastructure, which they now hope to protect.
The war has extracted an enormous toll, with more than 150,000 killed and another 522,000 children dead due to malnutrition. It has also displaced 8.8 million people, while 3.5 million have been made refugees.
With both parties to the civil war having consolidated their hold in various regions across the country, the people have continued to suffer.
