Sudan

Media reports say US withholds army chief’s visa to pressure him into accepting a 90-day truce in Sudan’s civil war.

Sudanese activists and journalists have criticised the United States over reports that Washington has withheld a visa from army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan before the United Nations General Assembly in an apparent bid to pressure him into accepting a ceasefire proposal.

Activists took to social media on Wednesday to slam the reported move as “political pressure”, arguing that access to the UN should not be used to influence Khartoum’s position on Sudan’s three-year civil war.

Neither the Sudanese government nor the US Department of State has commented on the reports.

General al-Burhan, whose army has been fighting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since April 2023, was scheduled to address the General Assembly on Thursday in New York. The army chief has spoken at the assembly twice since the war began.

The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and caused the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.

The Reuters news agency, citing Sudanese sources, reported on Tuesday that the US was withholding al-Burhan’s visa and had made its issuance contingent on him agreeing to a 90-day ceasefire proposed by Massad Boulos, US senior adviser for Arab and African affairs.

The AFP news agency, quoting two diplomatic sources, also reported that Washington refused to issue the visa. One source called the move a “clear violation of the UN’s agreement with the US” while another said the visa had been “conditioned” on al-Burhan accepting the three-month truce.

‘Political pressure’

Sudan’s UN ambassador, Al-Harith Idriss Al-Harith, wrote to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to request the UN’s “immediate intervention” with US authorities, according to Reuters.

Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for Guterres, said the UN chief was “deeply concerned” that the visa had reportedly not been issued. He told the AFP that the UN Secretariat has urged the US, as host country, to ensure visas were issued in accordance with its obligations under the UN Headquarters Agreement and in time for al-Burhan to participate in the General Assembly.

Sudanese activist Mamoun al-Sheikh denounced the US move in a post on Facebook, saying: “Even if the visa is withheld, it will not silence Sudan’s voice.”

Another activist, Sayed Al-Mazaj, described linking the visa to a proposed 90-day ceasefire as “a tool for political pressure”. And in a video posted on X, Sudanese journalist Diaa Al-Din Bilal said barring al-Burhan from New York would not force him to accept the US position and could instead boost his popularity and rally support around him.

Another X user, @Atifazhri, also denounced the US move, noting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes in Gaza, had been granted a visa.

“The issue is double standards – when visas become instruments of political coercion against a sovereign state while far more serious cases are treated differently. International law and justice cannot be applied selectively,” the user wrote.

US questions al-Burhan’s legitimacy

The State Department issued a statement on Tuesday that did not directly address al-Burhan’s visa but called into question his legitimacy. Its spokesman Tommy Pigott said neither the Sudanese army nor the RSF “nor their respective leaders, represent legitimate, constitutional governance for Sudan”.

He added the US would “seek to raise the cost of continued conflict on all belligerents”.

Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs hit back on Wednesday, calling on the US to engage positively with the country’s government. Any peace initiative, it said, must “be grounded in respect for Sudan’s sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity, and legitimate national institutions”.

“It must also address the root causes of the war’s continuation — foremost among them, negative foreign interference,” the ministry added.

Al-Burhan has been Sudan’s de facto leader since 2019 although the African Union and Western powers withdrew recognition after a 2021 coup that he led with Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF’s leader, against the civilian leadership.

He has rejected externally imposed ceasefires, arguing that earlier pauses in the fighting benefitted the paramilitary group.

The US has also refused visas to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and some members of Iran’s delegation to the UN.

Sudan’s collective memory has long carried stories of famine-induced tragedies. Now, as war pushes the country deeper into a catastrophic food crisis, historians and humanitarian activists fear that some of those horrors are being repeated.

The ongoing war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which erupted in April 2023, has plunged the country into one of its worst modern food crises, with conditions deteriorating sharply since 2024.

Sudan has endured severe famines before, often triggered or made worse by drought and other environmental shocks. However, the current hunger crisis, which has triggered famines in Sudan in 2024 and 2025, has been brought on by a man-made factor: war.

Past starvation

One of the earliest recorded major food crises in what is now Sudan occurred in 1684, during the Funj Sultanate. The crisis, which lasted several years, brought severe grain shortages across central Sudan. Historical accounts describe people driven to desperation, and in some cases forced to eat dog meat. The hunger triggered mass displacement, as well as a deadly smallpox outbreak.

Similar climate-driven crises were recorded in 1750 and again between 1835 and 1838 during a period of Ottoman-Egyptian rule, exacerbated by severe drought and low water levels in the River Nile.

The famine most deeply embedded in Sudanese popular memory occurred between 1888 and 1889, during the rule of Khalifa Abdullahi al-Taashi.

Drought, locust infestations and conflict combined to cause widespread hunger and death. Some historical estimates put the death toll at more than one million people, although precise figures from the period are difficult to establish. The crisis was reported to have been so severe that some families shut themselves inside their homes to die rather than going out to beg for food.

Sudan experienced more periods of food shortages during the 20th century. Droughts and poor harvests during the colonial period of the first half of the century forced the authorities at times to import grain from abroad.

Then, in 1984, during the rule of President Jaafar Nimeiri, a devastating drought hit western Sudan, including Darfur and Kordofan, where there were widespread crop and livestock losses, displacing hundreds of thousands of people from rural areas to the capital, Khartoum.

Man-made catastrophe

Unlike many of those historical crises, the current famine is distinctly man-made.

War has disrupted agricultural production and trade, forced farmers to leave their land, and made it difficult to move food and humanitarian aid across the country.

Abdullah al-Tijani, a social historian and humanitarian activist, noted the unprecedented scale of the current disaster.

“Most previous famines were often confined to specific regions, as happened in 1984, or areas in southern Sudan before its secession in [2011], while the capital and major cities continued to have the necessities of life and services,” al-Tijani told Al Jazeera.

This time, he said, hunger and the collapse of basic services have spread across the entire country.

“A comprehensive food crisis has struck the heart of major urban and agricultural centres in the states of Khartoum, Gezira, Sennar, Darfur, and Kordofan, causing millions of citizens to be displaced inside and outside the country,” al-Tijani added.

He pointed to what he described as the “systematic destruction of infrastructure, disruption of large agricultural projects, and targeting of markets, bakeries, and crops, along with disrupting the banking system and communication networks, which isolated entire regions”.

Al-Tijani also cited the “restrictions on humanitarian access and delays in granting transit permits for relief workers”. He accused the warring parties of using control over food supplies as a tool of war, while warning that international funding has fallen short of the size of the crisis.

Lost agricultural potential

The scale of the crisis is stark because of Sudan’s agricultural potential. The country has immense resources, including roughly 200 million acres (81 million hectares) of arable land, abundant water from the Nile, and extensive livestock resources, but Sudan’s potential as a global breadbasket remains unfulfilled.

Mohammed Abdul Rahman, an economic researcher, explained that the current food security crisis reflects a clear development gap, and a longstanding weakness in Sudan’s agricultural sector compounded by war.

“Wars and armed conflicts are among the most influential factors on food production,” Abdul Rahman said, “along with the displacement of farmers from their lands, the absence of political stability and agricultural policies, weak funding and government guarantees, and reliance on traditional farming methods.”

A gold mine collapse in northern Sudan has killed at least 10 people and injured 21, according to survivors, bringing renewed attention to the dangers facing workers in one of the country’s most important and least regulated industries.

The collapse took place on Sunday at the Awny mining area near Sudan’s border with Egypt. Miners told the AFP news agency they had recovered 10 bodies and pulled 21 injured workers from the site, while the search continued for people believed to be trapped beneath the rubble. It is unclear how many people are trapped in the collapsed mine.

The disaster comes just days after another deadly accident at a gold mine in West Kordofan State. A collapse at the al-Zaraa mine near en-Nahud, a town in central Sudan, left at least 82 people dead.

Sudan is one of Africa’s top gold producers, recording 70 tonnes of production last year, according to the Sudanese government.

Since fighting broke out in April 2023 between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), businesses have been devastated, agriculture has been disrupted, millions of people have been displaced, and Sudan’s formal economy has weakened. In that environment, gold has remained one of the country’s most valuable sources of income.

In July 2025, it was reported by local agencies that Sudan’s gold production rose sharply despite the ongoing conflict, reaching 64 tonnes in 2024, 53 percent higher than the 41.8 tonnes recorded in 2022, and generating $1.57bn in legal export revenues.

However, the gold trade has also become a point of international scrutiny. Most of the gold exports end up in the UAE. In March 2025, Sudan went to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing the UAE of supporting and funding the RSF using gold. The UAE has denied accusations that it supplies weapons to the RSF.

Sudan’s gold deposits are spread across the country, with the majority in the northeast. Port Sudan, the country’s main port, is home to most of the deposits and has been largely controlled by the Sudanese Army since the war began. However, areas controlled by the RSF are also populated by gold deposits.

At the moment, “much of Sudan’s gold is taken out of the country through smuggling or illicit networks instead of passing through government channels that could directly contribute to public revenue,” said Joseph Tucker, senior analyst on the Horn of Africa at the International Crisis Group.

But amid that diplomatic battle and the accusations surrounding gold, the mining deaths in northern Sudan have also raised larger questions over how the country manages the sector, analysts say.

“This disaster is yet another example of the deadly hazards facing those working in Sudan’s gold mines,” Tucker told Al Jazeera. “Most of these (gold mines) are informal, artisanal mines in remote areas that are unregulated and lack modern mining technology, adequate infrastructure, and specialised safety equipment.”

This year, Sudanese Prime Minister Kamil Idris met with the minister of minerals and spoke on the policies for regulating traditional mining and the management and control of various mineral markets. According to French-based Sudanese media, Sudanese authorities called for swift action to address the environmental damage and public health hazards caused by mining activities across the country.

Yet, despite the dangers, Tucker said the state of the Sudanese economy made gold mining appear lucrative to many Sudanese.

During the war, the Sudanese currency’s value has crashed. Before the outbreak of fighting in 2023, about 570 Sudanese pounds could buy a US dollar. By April 2026, the currency had slid to a sixth of that value: It cost 3,500 pounds or more to afford a dollar. That has led to sharp food inflation and a surge in the costs of transport and fuel.

According to estimates by the United Nations Development Programme, Sudan lost $6.4bn of its gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023 alone: That’s a quarter of the country’s $26bn GDP that year. In August, the UN agency reported that 90 percent of the agrarian nation’s farmers had seen yields drop over the previous year.

That economic crisis, Tucker said, “fuels the demand for gold and willingness of miners to work in poor conditions” – even if it proves deadly.

US judges affirm migrants must have opportunities to voice safety concerns before deportation to unfamiliar nations.

A US federal appeals court has rejected the Trump administration’s policy of rapidly deporting migrants to countries other than their own – a ruling that could next go before the Supreme Court.

On Friday, a three-judge panel of the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston largely upheld a February decision that found the Department of Homeland Security’s so-called third-country removal policy unlawful.

The case stems from a class-action lawsuit testing what due process migrants are owed before being sent to nations with which they have no ties.

Writing for the panel, US Circuit Judge Seth Aframe said migrants must be given a “meaningful” chance to raise safety concerns before removal, rejecting the Trump administration’s narrower reading of the law.

The court did overturn part of the ruling on procedural grounds, concerning whether officials must first try deporting migrants to countries they have ties to.

Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for the plaintiffs at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, said the decision confirmed that “due process and the protections Congress enacted against persecution and torture cannot be circumvented by putting someone on a plane to a country that was never part of their removal proceedings”.

The DHS did not immediately comment. The Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling.

Under Trump, the US has struck agreements allowing it to send more than 25,000 migrants to at least 29 third countries, most often Mexico, according to Third Country Deportation Watch, a tracker run by the rights groups Refugees International and Human Rights First.

The policy, adopted in March 2025, allowed removals with only minimal notice if officials had diplomatic assurances against persecution.

The controversial programme has reached the Supreme Court twice.

In 2025, the justices cleared the way for eight men, including nationals of Cuba, Myanmar and Vietnam, to be deported to South Sudan, a country the US State Department advises against visiting because of “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict”.

The DHS called the removals “a win”, while rights groups said they flouted basic protections.

The Trump administration’s immigration agenda has faced a string of setbacks this month.

A federal judge blocked planned caps on student and journalist visas, calling the government’s justification “exceptionally weak”, while a coalition of 22 states and Washington, DC, sued to stop a separate rule that would let officials deny green cards to immigrants who lawfully use public benefits.

CAIRO/NEW YORK: The UN secretary-general’s personal envoy for Sudan, Pekka Haavisto, held talks in Cairo on Sunday and Monday with the Arab League’s secretary-general, Nabil Fahmy, and the Egyptian foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, as preparations continued for UN meetings in New York this month.

The diplomatic efforts came as drone strikes and other hostilities continued to endanger civilians and drive displacement across Sudan’s Darfur and Kordofan regions, and Blue Nile State.

During his meeting with Haavisto on Sunday, Fahmy stressed the importance of launching a comprehensive, Sudanese-led political process that involves all sections of Sudanese society.

He also reaffirmed the Arab League’s support for Sudan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and called for the prevention of external interference in the country’s affairs.

In a separate meeting on Monday, Abdelatty stressed the need to support stability, end the conflict and reach a comprehensive political settlement that preserves Sudan’s sovereignty and meets the aspirations of its people. His talks with Haavisto encompassed the latest developments in the conflict, as well as regional and international efforts to halt the escalation and advance de-escalation measures.

Abdelatty reiterated Egypt’s support for Sudan’s unity, sovereignty, territorial integrity and national institutions. He also emphasized the need to respect Sudanese ownership of any political solution.

Both sides stressed, in an official statement, the important need to respect Sudan’s sovereignty, support de-escalation efforts, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid and alleviate the suffering of the Sudanese people.

Meanwhile, UN spokesperson Farhan Haq said drone strikes and other hostilities in Sudan continued to threaten civilians and force people from their homes.

In Blue Nile State, several drone strikes hit fuel stations and other critical infrastructure in the state capital on Sunday, with civilian casualties reported. The UN estimates that nearly 100,000 people were displaced by insecurity across the state between January and August, about 66 percent more than the figure since the start of the year that was reported in late May.

In North Darfur, drone strikes hit several locations in Tina, near the border with Chad.

The UN said nearly 1,200 people were displaced from two villages in El-Fasher between Sept. 10 and 13. More than 1,200 others fled villages in Um Baru over the past week, with most of them crossing into Chad.

Drone attacks were also reported at several locations in West Darfur on Saturday, including a fuel market west of the state capital. Casualties were reported.

Insecurity in Kordofan continues to drive displacement and disrupt humanitarian operations. More than 7,000 people have reportedly arrived in Abassiya, South Kordofan, in recent weeks. In North Kordofan, Al-Mina Al-Bari camp in the state capital, El-Obeid, is hosting about 9,000 families, placing further strain on overcrowded sites and basic services.

Haq reiterated the UN’s call for all parties involved in the conflict to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure, and ensure rapid, safe, unhindered and sustained humanitarian access to those in need.

Sudan descended into civil war in April 2023 after tensions between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces erupted into fighting. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and driven a severe hunger crisis.

A report published in May said nearly 19.5 million people, about 41 percent of Sudan’s population, faced high levels of acute food insecurity.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Programme and UNICEF called for an immediate cessation of hostilities. They also urged the international community to increase funding for food assistance, emergency food production, efforts to rebuild livelihoods, and nutrition, health, water and sanitation services.

Amani El-Taweel, a researcher at Al-Ahram Center, told Arab News that the meetings in Cairo reflected continuing diplomatic efforts to find a solution to the Sudanese crisis.

She said the situation remained extremely complex, particularly amid the wider escalation in the Middle East, and that the emergence of new fronts had further complicated conditions in eastern Sudan.

Ezzat Saad, director of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, told Arab News the only path out of the crisis was to unify Sudanese institutions and secure a ceasefire.

He said any solution must come from within Sudan, without interference from external parties. Haavisto’s meetings in Cairo were part of the preparations for upcoming UN General Assembly sessions in New York at which heads of state would have an opportunity to discuss regional crises, Saad added. Sudanese institutions themselves must also demonstrate a commitment to preserving the country’s unity, he said.

On Saturday, the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, met the UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in India. El-Sisi said any threat to Sudan’s security, unity or sovereignty constituted a “red line,” according to a statement from the Egyptian presidency.

In January, Egypt hosted the fifth meeting of the Consultative Mechanism to Enhance Coordination of Peace Efforts in Sudan, which was chaired by Abdelatty.

The foreign minister said Egypt remained committed to achieving peace and stability in Sudan. He highlighted the launch of the Sudan Neighboring Countries Initiative in July 2023, which emphasized the need for a ceasefire, inclusive political consultations and the guaranteed delivery of humanitarian aid.

KHARTOUM: The World Food Programme’s funding for Sudan — the world’s largest hunger crisis — has fallen by about ​half this year, its acting head told Reuters, as war drives more people into hunger while the regional crisis raises prices and aid budgets plummet. 

Speaking from the Darfur region after a trip across the country, acting Executive Director Carl Skau said that while access had represented humanitarians’ largest obstacle in the past, now “we have (a) presence that we are not fully utilising because of the lack of funding.” 

The gap to sustain current operations was just short of $300 million, he said. 

This year, we’re about half what we were in terms of funding last year, says Carl Skau, Acting executive director of The World Food Programme

“This year, we’re about half what we were in terms of funding last year,” Skau said. Last year, the agency received $645 million, but almost three-quarters into this year funding is only ‌at $206 million. 

The war ‌between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has devastated ​wide ‌swathes ⁠of the ​country, displacing ⁠up to 14 million people, ruining harvests and decimating the economy. 

Almost 20 million people face hunger in Sudan, but budget cuts have forced the agency to focus efforts on the 5 million most in need, of whom it has recently scaled up to reach 4 million people. 

Even then, the organization, the UN’s largest by budget, is forced to make difficult decisions. 

In Tawila, North Darfur, the makeshift home to about 1 million people, the agency is able to reach everyone monthly but with only a half ration that covers two weeks’ food, Skau said. 

“It’s not ⁠clear how they really are surviving the other two weeks,” he said. 

In El-Obeid, the central Sudanese city where about 1 million and counting ‌have sought refuge since the start of the war in April ​2023, the agency is only able to provide help ‌to those who arrived in the past several months. 

“We are providing, but less and less. A year ‌ago it was better because of resources,” Skau said. 

agency recently began providing aid in the city of Al-Fashir, once home to 1 million people, where an RSF attack last year, “bore the hallmarks of genocide,” according to investigators. Skau said, “there is little sign of life having returned.”

His organization is not the only one struggling as major donors reduce aid. The ‌International Organization for Migration said on Monday that emergency relief supplies for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the war could run out within weeks ⁠unless donors step in ⁠with urgent funding. 

The UN agency said supplies of shelter materials, sanitation items and emergency household goods are expected to run out by the end of September. The aid system itself can only keep functioning until December without more money. 

Aid groups like IOM are struggling with funding shortfalls after the Trump administration — the US was previously the world’s biggest aid donor — cut billions of dollars in foreign assistanceto UN agencies and charities over the past year. Other major donor countries have also cut aid budgets, citing tight finances and higher defense spending. 

“We simply can’t turn our back on the people of Sudan,” IOM Director General Amy Pope said in a statement, adding: “The entire humanitarian system could collapse within weeks if we don’t act now.” 

IOM says 8.6 million people remain displaced within Sudan, while another 4.9 million have returned to their homes. The agency says it ​needs $15 million to keep the aid pipeline running ​for the rest of the year, supporting about 305,000 people. Without it, more than 100 humanitarian organizations would struggle to quickly deliver lifesaving aid. 

NEW YORK CITY: A five-member international bloc known as the “Quintet” on Thursday rejected the prospect of any “parallel governing structures” in Sudan.

As its representatives wrapped up a “Good Offices” mission to Khartoum, they reaffirmed the need for full respect for the country’s sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity.

The rebuke, a reference to a rival administration the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces seeks to establish amid its conflict with the Sudanese Armed Forces, came after the Quintet — the African Union, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the Arab League, the EU and the UN — held talks with Sudanese leaders in an effort to revive a Sudanese-led political process to end the civil war, which began in April 2023.

The delegates met the chair and deputy chair of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council, the prime minister, and the undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. They also attended a working dinner hosted by the finance minister that drew a number of political and civilian figures.

Beyond government officials, the Quintet said its representatives met a range of political and civilian groups, including the Democratic Bloc, and heard from a committee tasked with fostering the conditions for a nationwide “Sudanese Dialogue,” which briefed the delegates on its work. A meeting with independent women’s and youth groups concluded the Quintet’s mission.

The bloc described the visit as being “in the spirit of listening to the stakeholders on the ground,” with the aim of linking its diplomatic engagement outside of Sudan with initiatives emerging within the country.

“There is no military solution to the conflict in Sudan,” the Quintet said, adding that any durable political process must be paired with concrete steps to protect civilians and end hostilities.

The bloc said it remained convinced that a “credible and inclusive Sudanese led and Sudanese owned” political track can still deliver a transition to a democratic, civilian-led government that reflects the aspirations of the Sudanese people.

NEW YORK CITY: The UN secretary-general’s personal envoy for Sudan, Pekka Haavisto, joined fellow “Quintet” mediators in Khartoum on Tuesday for a round of talks aimed at reviving an inclusive political process that can end the conflict in Sudan, the UN said.

The Quintet group — comprising the African Union, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the League of Arab States, the EU and the UN — held what Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, described as a “good offices mission” to hear an assessment by Sudanese stakeholders of the political and security situation in the country, and to share reflections on efforts to advance peace.

The envoys met at the Sudanese Foreign Ministry before engaging with representatives of UN agencies, Dujarric told reporters in New York. Next, they will meet Sudanese political and civilian representatives, followed by further engagements, he said.

Sudan has been locked in a civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and rival paramilitary faction the Rapid Support Forces since April 2023.

Haavisto arrived in Khartoum on Friday and held a series of meetings with the chairman of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council, the prime minister, the foreign minister and senior government officials, as well as other political leaders and representatives of civil society, Dujarric said.

Haavisto’s talks over the weekend focused on “practical measures to advance deescalation and the protection of civilians,” Dujarric added. He also raised the issue of the release and exchange of detainees, and stressed the importance of a single national examination process for all Sudanese schoolchildren.

Haavisto called for an inclusive political process alongside concrete steps to reduce violence in the country, insisting that a negotiated settlement remained “the only viable path” toward a comprehensive ceasefire agreement and a sustainable end to the conflict.

The envoy is expected to remain in Sudan until the end of this week.

An air strike on a fuel market near Chad’s border with Sudan killed 12 and injured seven, according to officials.

An air strike near Chad’s border with Sudan has killed at least 12 people, with Chad accusing the Sudanese army of launching it.

Addressing Thursday’s strike, a Chadian security source said it “targeted a fuel market where the RSF [Rapid Support Forces] refuel. The strike killed 12 people and wounded seven”, AFP news agency reported about the attack on the paramilitary group.

Chad’s accusation comes against the backdrop of a civil war between Sudan’s army and the RSF which has lasted over three years and displaced millions of people.

Previously, Chad said that Sudan was responsible for an air strike that hit a military convoy in its territory last week. Chad’s army said the strikes took place more than 100km (62 miles) inside its territory in the eastern Ennedi region, and that there were no Chadian casualties.

In response to threats posed by drones, Chad had raised its alert level in the area to its highest point, according to a security source. The country deployed about 100 armoured vehicles and signal-jamming trucks near eastern Tine, close to the Sudanese border, a local source told Reuters news agency.

On Thursday, Sudan said it was surprised by the allegations against its army “before any professional and independent investigation into the circumstances of the incident”.

Sudan’s Foreign Ministry said its forces “are carrying out their constitutional duty to protect Sudan’s sovereignty, security and safety and to face any threats it faces, while respecting the sovereignty of its neighbours and without targeting their territory”.

The US embassy in Khartoum also accused the Sudanese army of launching the recent strikes on Chad, condemning them on Thursday.

The Sudanese army has previously accused Chad of being aligned with the RSF. Meanwhile, nearly one million displaced Sudanese people have fled to Chad, where they have been facing a water crisis.

Sudan’s army has had a good summer. Last month, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) recaptured several towns along the strategic Export Road, known locally as Sadirat, which connects the central Nile valley to the country’s west, and pushed the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) into a defensive crouch across much of the centre of the country.

On the back of these gains, SAF leaders are now speaking more confidently of defeating the RSF entirely, rather than merely containing it.

But look east, to Sudan’s Blue Nile state, and the picture inverts. In mid-August, the RSF and its ally, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (led by Abdulaziz al-Hilu), retook Kurmuk and seized Geisan within days, in attacks that Sudanese military sources said were launched from across the border in Ethiopia. Drone attacks on multiple army-controlled cities this month also showed that the RSF’s reach extends well beyond Darfur, its main territorial stronghold.

The lesson of the summer, then, is not that the SAF is on the verge of decisive victory. It is that military victory and political resolution are becoming two very different things. Even a full RSF defeat may not end Sudan’s war so much as fracture it into several smaller conflicts.

A look at the coalitions doing the fighting helps explain why. The anti-RSF coalition is coordinated and led by the SAF, but the army also relies on allied armed movements, including Darfuri factions that signed the 2020 Juba Peace Agreement (JPA). These include Finance Minister Gibril Ibrahim’s Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Movement, led by Darfur Governor Minni Minnawi. The JPA required their forces to be integrated into Sudan’s military and security services, but they have been reluctant to give up the military autonomy that underpins their political leverage.

Yasser al-Atta, then assistant commander-in-chief and now army chief of staff, announced in March that the army would activate mechanisms to organise and integrate allied irregular groups into the formal military and security services, but little has happened since.

Al-Atta wasn’t even the first to promise to address the problems of the proliferation of weapons and armed groups. Two years earlier, deputy commander-in-chief Shams al-Din Kabbashi told a graduation ceremony for Minni Minnawi’s Sudan Liberation Movement fighters that the army had “begun enacting a law and structures to control the many popular resistance groups”, warning that the array of semi-autonomous militias, tribal coalitions and volunteers backing the SAF’s war efforts, the “popular resistance” as it is called, would “become the next danger if we continue this way”.

More than two years on from Kabbashi’s speech, the underlying problem remains largely unresolved.

Then there is the RSF’s own coalition, which is actively fragmenting. A string of senior figures, al-Nour al-Qubba, al-Savanna, and more recently, the RSF-appointed governor for the Kordofan region, Hamad Khalifa, have defected, amid reports of Saudi financial inducements as well as tribal grievances.

When al-Nour al-Qubba left, he took dozens of combat vehicles and a large contingent of fighters with him. Given that the RSF is a franchise more than a unified fighting force, these defections should worry the SAF as much as they comfort it: defectors often arrive as intact forces loyal to their commanders, not soldiers used to reporting to a chain of command. In a way, the SAF inherits the RSF’s structural weakness with each defection.

Another example is Abu Aqla Keikel, an SAF-trained officer who initially fought on the army’s side after the war erupted in 2023, before defecting to the RSF later that year and then back to the SAF in October 2024. His Sudan Shield Forces remain, in practice, more under his own command than the army’s, even as he appears alongside SAF leadership and Darfuri commanders at recent battlefield-victory photo ops.

Many commanders inside the anti-RSF camp maintain a fairly wide margin of operational independence and consequently their own political calculations. This will become far more apparent once the war ends and there is no longer a common enemy to paper over the differences.

Sudan’s Islamists, meanwhile, occupy a strange position. Brigades like al-Baraa ibn Malik, affiliated with Sudan’s Islamic Movement, which underpinned Omar al-Bashir’s former ruling National Congress Party (NCP), supplied thousands of fighters and were instrumental in retaking Khartoum from the RSF. The United States has sanctioned al-Baraa ibn Malik, while the European Union has sanctioned its leader, al-Misbah Abu Zaid. Amid this international pressure and SAF battlefield gains, some Islamist fighters and leaders have begun pulling back, in what one Sudan Tribune report described as a “tactical withdrawal”. Al-Misbah recently posted that “we have returned to our civilian lives”.

But retreating from the battlefield is not the same as retreating from politics. Ahmed Haroun, chairman of the former ruling NCP, told Reuters news agency last year that the Islamic Movement could support an extended period of army rule, with an eye towards returning to government through “the ballot box”, as Haroun put it.

Indeed, another potential flashpoint for the SAF is that the war has given fighters in Islamist brigades like al-Baraa ibn Malik years of battlefield experience. There is little reason to think fighters who helped recapture the capital will disarm and disband the moment the war is over, at least not without a political settlement that creates a path for demobilisation.

This is the context in which SAF chief and de facto president General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s recently announced national dialogue should be read, less as a comprehensive resolution to the country’s militia problem than as a political process that could convert the army’s wartime alliances into post-war influence.

Burhan has explicitly ruled out the return of RSF leaders to power, promising there would be no “incomplete peace” that allowed Hemedti or other RSF leaders back into government. Given the RSF’s abysmal human rights record during the war, the exclusion is defensible, but the broader armed-group problem remains unresolved: namely, how the RSF’s remaining forces would actually be dismantled or integrated, particularly in Darfur, and how the SAF’s own allied militias would be brought under a single chain of command once the shooting slows down.

Another structural problem that is older than this war reinforces why claims of total victory remain elusive. The Sudanese army has long struggled to project sustained power across the country’s peripheries. Under Omar al-Bashir, the government relied on Janjaweed militias to help the army fight the rebellion in Darfur. In 2013, many Janjaweed fighters were brought into the newly created RSF.

There is little reason to think a hollowed-out, cash-poor SAF, dependent on volunteer recruits, Islamist militias and Juba Peace Agreement signatory forces, can now succeed where the pre-war state repeatedly struggled: in Darfur, a region roughly the size of France, where the RSF continues to use cross-border supply routes.

Even if the RSF is somehow eventually broken, its weapons and its fighters will not simply disappear. They will pass to whichever political entrepreneur is best positioned to pick them up. Meanwhile, in Khartoum, the questions of the day after will pry open conflicts that the war has, for now, kept closed.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Sudan’s war is showing signs of a changing dynamic. Sudanese armed forces (SAF) have made a series of gains in North Kordofan state; the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is facing a new wave of defections; and army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan is opening a political track while insisting the military campaign will continue.

Army advances are putting pressure on RSF supply lines; defections are raising questions about the force’s cohesion; and al-Burhan, who also heads the Transitional Sovereignty Council, is seeking to shape a political process from a position strengthened by developments on the battlefield.

But the wider battlefield remains contested. Together, the military pressure, defections and political outreach point to a potentially important shift: battlefield developments may be starting to affect the political balance.

What has the army gained?

The clearest recent gains have come in North Kordofan, a state in central Sudan that links the capital, Khartoum, with the country’s western regions.

In late July, the army announced that it had retaken Bara, Jabra al-Sheikh and Umm Sayala, along with other positions in the state. Al Jazeera reported that the advances also secured the national Exports Road, a key route linking Khartoum, through Omdurman, with el-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan.

The gains do not amount to control of the wider Kordofan region. But they have significance beyond the territory captured.

The army’s control of the Exports Road has strengthened its position in North Kordofan and added pressure on RSF supply lines. Al Jazeera reported on August 21 that the army was continuing efforts to cut those supply lines as fighting expanded across Kordofan, Darfur and the Blue Nile region.

What do the RSF defections mean?

The battlefield pressure has coincided with a marked increase in defections from the RSF.

On August 20, the army announced that about 318 people, including four officers, had joined its ranks, arriving in Northern state in about 50 combat vehicles before moving to Omdurman. Al Jazeera also reported separate groups from Kordofan and Khartoum, including 270 people, among them 21 field commanders, as well as 45 fighters and commanders from the Bara area who surrendered to the army.

The numbers alone do not tell the story. The timing does.

Al Jazeera’s August 21 analysis links the growing defections to several factors, including battlefield developments, internal problems within the RSF, social and tribal dynamics, and pressure created by the army’s advances and efforts to disrupt RSF supply lines. It also notes that the trend does not by itself mean the RSF is collapsing.

If the trend continues, it could become increasingly significant, particularly if more commanders and fighters conclude that the battlefield balance is shifting against the RSF.

For now, the more cautious conclusion is that battlefield pressure may be affecting the RSF’s cohesion without yet amounting to a broader breakdown of the organisation.

Why is al-Burhan opening a political track?

The SAF chief’s political initiative is unfolding alongside these military developments.

On August 15, he announced that the state would provide temporary immunity and legal, political and security guarantees to participants in a national dialogue managed by an independent national mechanism. Criminal proceedings against participants facing charges would be suspended during their involvement in the dialogue, without removing the rights of those who had filed complaints.

Al-Burhan said the initiative came from a group of Sudanese who had approached him with a proposal for dialogue. He said the group would independently manage the process and that the state would not determine its agenda or outcomes. He also said he had begun engaging with national forces that had supported the state and its institutions, with the aim of involving them in completing state institutions, including a legislative council.

But this is not a move away from the war.

Al-Burhan said he would not accept what he called a “peace without substance” that would bring RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, and his supporters to power. He also said the path to peace begins with the RSF leaving cities and being gathered in designated areas.

On August 21, Al Jazeera reported that al-Burhan said the fighting would continue until what he described as the rebellion was ended, while the army was working to cut RSF supply lines. He also rejected a truce that would allow the RSF to reorganise, while saying he remained open to a just peace and national dialogue that excluded the RSF.

Al-Burhan is therefore not choosing between war and politics. He is pursuing both, maintaining military pressure while opening a political process he says should preserve the state and its institutions.

What does Malik Agar’s position reveal?

Malik Agar, deputy chairman of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, has made the government’s position even clearer.

In an interview with Al Jazeera on August 22, Agar said the current option was military resolution unless serious conditions for negotiations emerged. He said the RSF would have to withdraw from cities and residential areas before negotiations could begin, stressing that the government remained open to initiatives that preserve Sudan’s unity and state institutions.

In a separate Al Jazeera interview published on August 23, Agar said the army would win but that the war would ultimately end through negotiations.

He argued that Sudan’s crisis was rooted in deeper problems, including the weakness of the state and the failure of political elites to manage the country’s ethnic, cultural, religious and geographic diversity.

His position reflects the government’s broader calculation: maintain military pressure while leaving the door open to negotiations from a stronger position on the battlefield.

Can al-Burhan turn battlefield pressure into political leverage?

The army’s gains in North Kordofan have strengthened its position along a strategically important route. The growing defections from the RSF are raising questions about the force’s cohesion. At the same time, the RSF remains active on several fronts, and the wider battlefield remains contested.

That combination gives the recent developments significance beyond individual battles or defections. The changing military balance may now be beginning to shape the terms of Sudan’s next political phase.

For al-Burhan, the potential advantage is not simply territorial. If military pressure continues to produce defections and weaken RSF cohesion, it could give the SAF greater room to shape who participates in a political process and the conditions under which future negotiations take place.

For the RSF, the challenge is therefore not only to hold territory. It is to prevent battlefield pressure from becoming an internal crisis of cohesion.

That has not happened yet. Military setbacks do not automatically translate into political marginalisation.

The army’s recent gains are best understood not as evidence of a decisive victory, but as a shift in the conditions under which the next phase of the war may be fought, and eventually negotiated.

Can the RSF contain the defections and preserve its bargaining position, or will continued military pressure give al-Burhan greater leverage in Sudan’s next political phase?