After nearly two years of fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Sudan is staring down the possibility of being divided by a de facto partition that roughly splits Darfur from the rest of the country.
The RSF is entrenched in the western region, which is nearly the size of France, even as the army advances across other parts of the country, leading to a divide that could become more established.
Analysts said that if that happens, not only could the country be marred by more localised conflicts, it could also see a further collapse of the state.
“A split would be the beginning of the end for Sudan,” said Kholood Khair, the founder of Confluence Advisory, a think tank focused on Sudan’s political affairs.
Considering the devastation Sudan has already experienced, it is difficult to imagine things getting worse.
Since fighting erupted in April 2023 between the army and the RSF over control of the country, tens of thousands of people have been killed, millions have been displaced and millions more face starvation.
However, Khair told Al Jazeera that if the partition becomes more entrenched and fighting dies down, it could fracture and divide the loose coalitions built around the army and RSF, making a lasting peace deal more difficult to reach.
“The country would disintegrate immediately, and there would be less of an opportunity to put humpty dumpty back together again,” she said.
Dividing line
The Sudanese army recently achieved a significant victory by regaining in control of Wad Madani, Sudan’s second largest city.
Wad Madani had been under RSF control for a year, during which RSF forces committed severe human rights abuses, according to local monitors.
There have since been credible reports of the army executing people based on perceived affiliation with the RSF, a claim the army has denied but which it has previously been accused of.
The RSF’s failure to hold onto Wad Madani has partly been blamed on its inability to enlist loyal recruits outside Darfur.
The region is a traditional stronghold of the RSF. The paramilitary force was formed out of tribal “Janjaweed” militias, which became a notorious state-backed group that was used as a counterrebel force during the War in Darfur, a 17-year conflict that officially ended in 2020.
Outside Darfur, support for the RSF is limited. Analysts suggested the RSF could soon lose control of the capital, Khartoum, in the coming weeks, which could force it to retreat and focus on its attempt to capture el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur.
The city has been under RSF siege for months, and hundreds of people have been killed, according to the United Nations.
Since the RSF already holds eastern, western, central and southern Darfur, taking the northern capital would bring the entire region under its control.
This would be no small victory as Darfur, a resource-rich region, strategically shares borders with Chad, South Sudan and Libya.
“This looks like the scenario which [the army and RSF] would be happy with because it allows both to have a military victory and the other scenarios do not,” Khair said.
Abandoning Darfur?
The war in Sudan has attracted foreign countries, enabling the army and RSF to sustain their war effort and control large swaths of the country.
A year ago, the army was on the verge of collapse after losing Gezira state to the RSF, prompting calls for army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan to step down.
The stunning defeat pushed Iran, Turkiye and Egypt to step up support to rescue the army, Khair said.
“People who support the army say it is a different animal than it was last year,” she told Al Jazeera. “They have fancier weapons, and they are doing a lot better in terms of logistics, and they are getting a lot of help from Egypt and the Turks. … The army is a much different entity than it was last year.”
Khair said Egypt has long insisted that Gezira and Khartoum come back under the army’s control to bolster its legitimacy as the indisputable sovereign authority.
Cairo, she added, would like the army to recapture all of Sudan but may accept a scenario in which the RSF is pushed back into Darfur.
“Perhaps Egypt will be able to live with a split,” Khair said.
The Sudanese army is likely to find it difficult to take Darfur if the RSF does entrench itself further, said Hamid Khalafallah, a Sudan policy analyst.
He said that if the RSF does manage to control all of Darfur, they would likely be able to hold onto the region indefinitely.
“It will take a lot for the army to defeat the RSF in Darfur, and it doesn’t seem like the army is even interested [in retaking the region],” Khalafallah told Al Jazeera.
But that would mean abandoning local groups such as the Sudan Liberation Movement, headed by Minni Arko Minnawi (SLM-MM), and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which announced its support for the army against the RSF in November 2023.
Both groups are composed mainly of non-Arab Zaghawa fighters. “Non-Arabs” in Sudan’s peripheries mainly refer to sedentary farmers while “Arabs” are considered to be pastoralists and nomads.
Both are Black and Muslim and have intermarried for centuries. During the Darfur war, the SLA-MM and JEM rebelled against the central government to protest the economic and political marginalisation of their region.
Over the past two decades, both groups have signed a number of peace agreements in the hope of accessing state resources and accumulating some power in the country.
Those same incentives pushed the groups to back the army in the current war, analysts told Al Jazeera.
They added that the army could abandon these armed movements and their allies in exchange for capturing Khartoum.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean the end of anti-RSF resistance in Darfur or rule out the SLA-MM and JEM striking deals with the RSF.
“Even if the RSF regroups and focuses on taking el-Fasher, it doesn’t mean it will have an easy win, even if the [army] abandons Darfur,” Anette Hoffman, an expert on Sudan for the Clingendael Institute, an independent Dutch think tank, told Al Jazeera, explaining that the armed movements in el-Fasher are capable fighters who could still put up a stiff defence.
Total state collapse
Suliman Baldo, the founder of the think tank Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker, said the RSF and army both outsource fighting to allied groups.
The nature of these forces could lead to fierce infighting within the army and RSF if they consolidate control over their strongholds.
Infighting between the Salamat and Beni Halba, two Arab tribes fighting in support of the RSF in South and Central Darfur, already occurred last year, leading to mass displacement and scores of casualties.
The two sides clashed as they competed for loot, according to local news reports.
Separately, the army and its allied movements have recruited civilians into auxiliary militias, and Baldo believes these groups will eventually grow stronger and then pressure the army to acquire more power and wealth, similar to the Arab tribal militias that eventually became the RSF.
“Each [of the army’s militias] will demand to share wealth and power in any post-conflict situation,” Baldo warned. “The army thinks it can manipulate these groups, but they are creating chaos.”