Sudan

Explosions were heard in the vicinity of Khartoum International Airport amid uncertainty over its reopening.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have targeted Sudan’s capital Khartoum and its main airport with drones for a fourth consecutive day, as the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) attempts to resume air traffic after regaining control of the city several months ago.

Drones and surface-to-air missiles were heard above the capital in the early hours of Friday morning, residents living close to the Khartoum International Airport told Al Jazeera, before loud explosions went off.

It is unclear whether the capital’s main airport was successfully hit and the extent of the damage.

The attack marks the fourth consecutive day of attacks that began on Tuesday, a day before the airport was scheduled to become operational after at least two years of war.

A single plane operated by the local Badr Airlines landed on Wednesday, before an airport official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the airport’s reopening has been postponed “under further notice” because of incoming attacks.

Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, reporting from Khartoum, said that “despite authorities saying that operations are scheduled to start on October 26, there are concerns that this will not happen”.

The war, which started in April 2023, has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced about 12 million more and left 30 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, making it the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Return to Khartoum

The Sudanese military retook the capital from the paramilitary force in March. Since then, residents have been tentatively returning to their homes, often to find them destroyed.

Alfatih Bashir’s house in Omdurman, which he built using all his savings, has collapsed ceilings and damaged walls. “I built it when I was working abroad,” Bashir told Al Jazeera, adding that now he did not posses the necessary funds to repair the damage.

“I’m not working, I’m just sitting idly with my wife and two children. We sometimes barely have enough to eat. How can I even start to rebuild?” he said.

Authorities are still assessing how many houses have been damaged in the conflict, but the scars of the battle between the military and the RSF are visible across the capital.

Another resident, Afaf Khamed, said she fainted when she saw the extent of the damage.

“This house is where we were born, where all our family members got married. I now live here with my sister, and we can’t rebuild because we don’t have anyone to help us,” she told Al Jazeera.

The collapse of the local currency makes reconstruction an impossible feat even for those who have retained a job during the war. While salaries have remained stable, the Sudanese pound spiked from 600 pounds to the US dollar in April 2023, when the conflict started, to 3,500 pounds.

Goods are also hard to come by in the war-torn country, hampering reconstruction. Shop owner Mohammed Ali said materials take too long to arrive because of security checks, and that makes them more expensive. As a consequence, “fewer and fewer people are coming to buy building materials”, he said.

Sudan’s government has pledged to rebuild the capital, but its focus as so far has been on state institutions, while residents are left to figure out how to rebuild on their own.

The French bank will pay more than $20m to three plaintiffs amid allegations of human rights abuses.

BNP Paribas shares have tumbled as much as 10 percent after a United States jury found the French bank helped Sudan’s government commit genocide by providing banking services that violated American sanctions, raising questions about whether the lender will be exposed to further legal claims.

The bank’s shares were down on Monday morning in New York.

The federal jury in Manhattan on Friday ordered BNP Paribas to pay a combined $20.5m to three Sudanese plaintiffs who testified about human rights abuses perpetrated under former President Omar al-Bashir’s rule.

The Paris, France-based bank said it will appeal the verdict.

“This result is clearly wrong and ignores important evidence the bank was not permitted to introduce,” the company said in a statement on Monday.

Uncertainty about whether BNP Paribas could face further claims or penalties weighed on the bank’s shares on Monday, and would likely continue to do so, traders and analysts said.

The shares dropped as much as 10 percent at one point, and were last down 8.7 percent – set for their biggest daily fall since March 2023.

Lawyers for the three plaintiffs, who now reside in the US, said the verdict opens the door for more than 20,000 Sudanese refugees in the US to seek billions of dollars in damages from the French bank.

BNP said, “this verdict is specific to these three plaintiffs and should not have broader application. Any attempt to extrapolate is necessarily wrong as is any speculation regarding a potential settlement.”

Nonetheless, analysts say the news will likely drag on the bank’s shares in the coming months.

“A combination of a lack of visibility on the potential financial impact and next legal steps, a reminder of 2014 share price performance as well as a capital path that leaves relatively little room for error, is likely to hang over the shares until more visibility is provided,” analysts at RBC Capital Markets said in a note.

BNP Paribas in 2014 agreed to plead guilty and pay an $8.97bn penalty to settle US charges that it transferred billions of dollars for Sudanese, Iranian and Cuban entities subject to economic sanctions.

RBC said the bank’s shares underperformed the sector by 10 percent from the first litigation provision booked in early 2014 to the settlement in June 2014.

A New York jury has found that French banking giant BNP Paribas’s work in Sudan helped to prop up the regime of former ruler Omar al-Bashir, making it liable for atrocities that took place under his rule.

The eight-member jury on Friday sided with three plaintiffs originally from Sudan, awarding a total of $20.75m in damages, after hearing testimony describing horrors committed by Sudanese soldiers and the Popular Defence Forces, the government-linked militia known as the Janjaweed.

The plaintiffs – two men and one woman, all now American citizens – told the federal court in Manhattan that they had been tortured, burned with cigarettes, slashed with a knife, and, in the case of the woman, sexually assaulted.

“I have no relatives left,” Entesar Osman Kasher told the court.

The trial focused on whether BNP Paribas’s financial services were a “natural and adequate cause” of the harm suffered by survivors of ethnic cleansing and mass violence in Sudan.

A spokesperson for BNP Paribas said in a statement to the AFP news agency that the ruling “is clearly wrong and there are very strong grounds to appeal the verdict”.

Bobby DiCello, who represented the plaintiffs, called the verdict “a victory for justice and accountability”.

“The jury recognised that financial institutions cannot turn a blind eye to the consequences of their actions,” DiCello said.

“Our clients lost everything to a campaign of destruction fuelled by US dollars, that BNP Paribas facilitated and that should have been stopped,” he said.

BNP Paribas “has supported the ethnic cleansing and ruined the lives of these three survivors”, DiCello said during closing remarks on Thursday.

The French bank, which did business in Sudan from the late 1990s until 2009, provided letters of credit that allowed Sudan to honour import and export commitments.

The plaintiffs argued that these assurances enabled the regime to keep exporting cotton, oil and other commodities, enabling it to receive billions of dollars from buyers that helped finance its operations.

Defence lawyer Dani James argued, “There’s just no connection between the bank’s conduct and what happened to these three plaintiffs.”

The lawyer for BNP Paribas also said the French bank’s operations in Sudan were legal in Europe and that global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) partnered with the Sudanese government during the same period.

Defence lawyers also claimed that the bank had no knowledge of human rights violations occurring at that time.

The plaintiffs would have “had their injuries without BNP Paribas”, said lawyer Barry Berke.

“Sudan would and did commit human rights crimes without oil or BNP Paribas,” Berke said.

The verdict followed a five-week jury trial conducted by US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who last year denied a request by BNP Paribas to get the case thrown out ahead of trial.

Hellerstein wrote in his decision last year that there were facts showing a relationship between BNP Paribas’s banking services and abuses perpetrated by the Sudanese government.

BNP Paribas had in 2014 agreed to plead guilty and pay an $8.97bn penalty to settle US charges it transferred billions of dollars for Sudanese, Iranian and Cuban entities subject to economic sanctions.

The US government recognised the Sudanese conflict as a genocide in 2004. The war claimed some 300,000 lives between 2002 and 2008 and displaced 2.5 million people, according to the United Nations.

Al-Bashir, who led Sudan for three decades, was ousted and detained in April 2019 following months of protests in Sudan.

He is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on genocide charges.

In the months that followed al-Bashir’s ousting in 2019, army generals agreed to share power with civilians, but that ended in October 2021, when the leader of the army, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commander, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, seized control in a coup.

In April 2023, fighting broke out between the two sides, and forces on both sides have been accused of committing war crimes.

Recent battlefield gains by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) may turn the tide in Kordofan, analysts have told Al Jazeera.

Sudan’s devastating war between the SAF and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has raged for two and a half years, resulting in massive displacement and the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations.

Yet SAF’s capture in September of the strategic city of Bara, which the RSF was using for logistics, supplies, and as a muster point for reinforcements, is seen as a sign that SAF may have swung the pendulum in its favour.

Why is Bara important?

Bara lies about 350km (217 miles) southwest of the capital Khartoum along the “Export Road” used to truck goods from Khartoum to el-Obeid, capital of North Kordofan State.

It also exports its own agricultural products and livestock to the rest of Sudan.

The Khartoum-el-Obeid connection is vital because from el-Obeid, roads lead outwards to South Sudan and Sudan’s east and Darfur in the west.

From Khartoum, roads lead northeast to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, where the wartime government was until recently. Roads also lead north to Egypt and east to Eritrea and Ethiopia.

SAF took el-Obeid in February, after a two-year RSF siege, and took Khartoum in March, so taking Bara gave it solid control over the Export Road to use as a supply route, independent Sudanese military and political analyst Akram Ali told Al Jazeera.

Bara and el-Obeid lie near the westernmost reaches of SAF control, well to the east of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur and the last city SAF holds in the vast western region. Between the two is a stretch of RSF control – and siege on el-Fasher – that SAF has to breach.

For the RSF, keeping Bara and a foothold in Kordofan was important because it allowed it to put pressure on SAF, which holds territory to the north, and to link the areas it controls in Kordofan and Darfur to South Sudan, links it uses to move weapons and fighters.

How did SAF take Bara?

The army launched an offensive on Bara from the south on September 11, while RSF defences were concentrated on the eastern side, analyst Abdul Majeed Abdul Hamid said.

SAF sent continuous drone strikes against RSF targets, then launched the Darfur Track Armed Struggle Movement, an assault force known for mobility and speed, from el-Obeid.

The force successfully engaged and defeated the RSF unit defending Bara, then entered the city with heavy firepower, according to a military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The officer said the operation relied on speed and keeping the RSF occupied on several fronts to prevent it from sending reinforcements.

Most of Bara’s civilians supported SAF, according to Abdul Hamid, and the RSF quickly retreated.

The operation cut off RSF supply and military support lines, he added, isolating their remaining positions in areas such as al-Khuwei to the west and al-Nahud to the east.

For the RSF, keeping Bara and a foothold in Kordofan was important because it allowed it to put pressure on SAF, which holds territory to the north, and to link the areas it controls in Kordofan and Darfur to South Sudan, links it uses to move weapons and fighters.

Losing Bara also meant that the RSF could no longer keep the city of el-Obeid under siege.

Will the RSF lose the Kordofans?

The RSF announced in February this year that it had entered an alliance with the Southern People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N). South Kordofan includes the Abyei region, disputed between Sudan and South Sudan. The SPLM-N controls the vast, isolated Nuba Mountains region in South Kordofan, right up against the border with South Sudan.

However, despite that new stronghold, analysts told Al Jazeera that losing control over the Export Road spells a serious deterioration in the RSF’s power in the Kordofans.

“The army’s entry into el-Obeid marked the beginning of their actual collapse,” said Ali.

An army unit called “Al-Sayyad” – named after a commander killed in the early days of the war – had moved from Rabak, capital of White Nile State, in a campaign that eventually reached el-Obeid.

Political analyst Ahmed Shamukh said liberating Bara opens the door to reactivating the SAF air base in el-Obeid, the largest in Kordofan, after two years of inactivity, “significantly [enhancing] the logistical and combat capabilities of the Sudanese army” and helping SAF’s campaign to expel RSF from the Kordofans.

Taking back all of Kordofan would allow SAF to work towards liberating Darfur, Abdul Hamid said.

“The army has combat experience and personnel capable of liberating Kordofan with the same capabilities it used to retake the cities of central Sudan and the capital,” Abdul Hamid continued.

The war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 10 million in what has become the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

According to the UN, a total of 24.6 million people face acute food insecurity, while 19 million people lack access to safe water and sanitation.

Renewed fighting between rival leaders forces mass exodus across South Sudan’s borders as fears of wider war rise.

About 300,000 people have fled South Sudan so far in 2025 as armed conflict between rival leaders threatens civil war, the United Nations warns.

The mass displacement was reported on Monday by the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan. The report cautioned that the conflict between President Salva Kiir and suspended First Vice President Riek Machar risks a return to full-scale war.

The commission’s report called for an urgent regional intervention to prevent the country from sliding towards such a tragic event.

South Sudan has been beset by political instability and ethnic violence since it gained independence from Sudan in 2011.

The country plunged into civil war in 2013 when Kiir dismissed Machar as vice president. The pair agreed a ceasefire in 2017, but their fragile power-sharing agreement has been unravelling for months and was suspended last month amid outbreaks of violence among forces loyal to each.

Machar was placed under house arrest in March after fighting between the military and an ethnic Nuer militia in the northeastern town of Nasir killed dozens of people and displaced more than 80,000.

He was charged with treason, murder and crimes against humanity in September although his lawyer argued the court lacked jurisdiction. Kiir suspended Machar from his position in early October.

Machar rejects the charges with his spokesman calling them a “political witch-hunt”.

Renewed clashes in South Sudan have driven almost 150,000 people to Sudan, where a civil war has raged for two years, and a similar number into neighbouring Uganda, Ethiopia and as far as Kenya.

More than 2.5 million South Sudanese refugees now live in neighbouring countries while two million remain internally displaced.

The commission linked the current crisis to corruption and lack of accountability among South Sudan’s leaders.

“The ongoing political crisis, increasing fighting and unchecked, systemic corruption are all symptoms of the failure of leadership,” Commissioner Barney Afako said.

“The crisis is the result of deliberate choices made by its leaders to put their interests above those of their people,” Commission Chairwoman Yasmin Sooka said.

A UN report in September detailed significant corruption, alleging that $1.7bn from an oil-for-roads programme remains unaccounted for while three-quarters of the country faces severe food shortages.

Commissioner Barney Afako warned that without immediate regional engagement, South Sudan risks catastrophic consequences.

“South Sudanese are looking to the African Union and the region to rescue them from a preventable fate,” he said.

Video shows the aftermath of drone and artillery strikes on a shelter in the besieged city of el-Fasher in Sudan’s North Darfur state, which killed at least 60 people. The attack was carried out by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), according to a Sudanese medical advocacy group.

Oct. 11 (UPI) — Locals said a drone and artillery attack on a refugee shelter by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in el-Fasher, Sudan, late Friday killed at least 60.

Local activists said the RSF struck the Dar al-Arqam refugee camp with two drone attacks and eight artillery shells, which the RSF has denied, the BBC reported.

“Children, women and the elderly were killed in cold blood, and many were completely burned,” members of an el-Fasher resistance committee said in a prepared statement on Saturday.

The strikes killed at least 14 children and 15 women in the besieged city that is located in North Darfur in western Sudan.

Another 21 people, including five children, also were injured, according to the Sudan Doctors’ Network.

The SDN called the attack a “massacre” and blamed the RSF, despite the paramilitary unit’s denial.

The attack struck the al Arqam Home that shelters displaced families in el-Fasher, Sky News reported.

The city has been under siege from paramilitary forces and caught in the middle of fighting between Sudan’s military forces and paramilitaries operating in the region.

The RSF is among those paramilitaries and is trying to establish a separatist government in the North Dafur region.

El-Fasher is the last stronghold held by Sudan’s army in the Darfur area and has been surrounded by the RSF for 17 months.

The RSF controls most of the Darfur region and much of the Kordofan province in central Sudan.

The attack by the paramilitary on the hospital wounded 17 others, and is the second such attack in 24 hours.

At least 12 people have been killed and 17 were wounded when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) shelled a hospital in Sudan’s North Darfur state, medical sources said.

A female doctor and a nursing staff member were among the injured in the attack on the el-Fasher Hospital, the Sudan Doctors Network said in a statement on Wednesday.

The medical group said the RSF “directly bombed” the facility. It alleged the attack was a “full-fledged war crime” and showed “a complete disregard for the lives of civilians and international laws that protect health facilities and their workers”.

The group held the RSF “fully responsible” for the attack and appealed to the international community and the United Nations Security Council to take immediate action to stop attacks on health facilities and civilian homes and to protect the devastated health system in the besieged city.

The hospital is one of the last functioning health facilities in the city, with most repeatedly bombed and forced to shut.

Two medical sources confirmed Wednesday’s attack, which was the second on the hospital within 24 hours, after eight people were killed in an attack on a maternity ward on Tuesday.

The RSF is pressing a fierce assault on el-Fasher in an attempt to wrest control of the city away from its rivals, the regular Sudanese army.

Since April 2023, the war between the two forces has killed tens of thousands, displaced some 15 million and pushed nearly 25 million people into acute hunger, according to UN figures, triggering what has widely been described as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Some activists say el-Fasher, the last state capital in the vast western Darfur region to elude the paramilitary’s grasp, has become “an open-air morgue” for starved civilians.

The RSF has imposed a blockade on el-Fasher since May 10, 2024, despite international warnings about the dangers to the city, a hub for humanitarian operations in the five Darfur states.

Nearly 80 percent of households in need of medical care in el-Fasher are unable to access it, according to the UN.

Exhausted medical teams are already scrambling to treat the injured amid daily attacks on the city.

Nearly 18 months into the RSF’s siege, the city – home to 400,000 trapped civilians – has run out of nearly everything. The animal feed families have survived on for months has grown scarce and now costs hundreds of dollars a sack.

The majority of the city’s soup kitchens have also been forced shut for lack of food, according to local resistance committees, volunteer groups that coordinate aid.

More than one million people have fled el-Fasher since the start of Sudan’s civil war, with the exodus dramatically escalating as the RSF has increased attacks following its loss of control of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, earlier this year.

The International Criminal Court has found Sudanese militia chief Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman guilty of war crimes committed during Sudan’s Darfur conflict more than two decades ago. He was accused of playing a crucial role in the atrocities that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Displacement has surged in el-Fasher as paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) intensified attacks on North Darfur’s capital, according to a United Nations report.

More than one million people have fled el-Fasher since the start of Sudan’s civil war, with the exodus dramatically accelerating as the RSF has increased attacks following its loss of control of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, earlier this year, according to data published by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Sunday.

The number of internally displaced people (IDP) sheltering in el-Fasher plummeted 70 percent, from approximately 699,000 to 204,000, between March and September, the IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix says.

El-Fasher’s overall population has now shrunk by 62 percent from its pre-war level of 1.11 million to just 413,454 people.

Sharp decline

The sharp decline follows the recapture of Khartoum by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in late March, after which the RSF pivoted to consolidating control over Darfur. El-Fasher represents the army’s last major urban stronghold.

April has been one of the most violent months this year, with nearly 500,000 people – representing almost all of the camp’s population – displaced from Zamzam IDP camp in a single incident.

The Sudanese army has been battling the RSF for control of the country since April 2023, triggering what has widely been described as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Millions have fled to neighbouring countries, with Egypt and Chad absorbing the majority.

Cross-border movement into Chad surged by 45 percent year-on-year in 2025, reaching nearly 1.2 million people.

Those who are unable to leave the country have been internally displaced to surrounding areas. The IDP population in the nearby Tawila locality more than doubled from 238,000 to 576,000 between March and September.

The RSF has maintained a siege of el-Fasher since May 2024, cutting off supply routes and trapping an estimated 260,000 civilians, including 130,000 children, without sustained humanitarian access for more than 16 months.

The Yale Humanitarian Lab, which has been monitoring the war, published satellite imagery which it said showed earthen berms built by the RSF almost encircling the city, helping to enforce the siege and preventing the movement of supplies and people.

Recent weeks have seen escalating violence. A September drone attack on a mosque during Friday prayers killed more than 70 worshippers, prompting the UN to raise the alarm about the possibility of “ethnically motivated” killings if the city falls to the RSF.

The RSF has been widely reported to have targeted non-Arab populations across Darfur, with their fighters frequently filming themselves shouting racial slurs at their victims.

In early September, UN investigators accused both sides of committing atrocities. They said the RSF is committing “murder, torture, enslavement, rape, sexual slavery, sexual violence, forced displacement and persecution on ethnic, gender and political grounds”.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation continues to worsen.

Among households surveyed in August, 87 percent reported needing healthcare, but 78 percent were unable to access treatment due to destroyed facilities, insecurity, and lack of medicine.

Food security has deteriorated sharply, with 89 percent of households facing poor or borderline food consumption.

Since the siege began, more than 1,100 grave violations against children have been verified in el-Fasher, including over 1,000 children killed or maimed, according to UNICEF.

The battle for el-Fasher has become central to the broader war’s trajectory.

Key city

The RSF controls most of western Sudan, including nearly all of Darfur, while government forces hold the north and the east.

In July, the RSF and its allies announced a widely condemned “parallel government” in the country, underlining the deep political divide which has become more entrenched in the country.

El-Fasher’s potential fall would give the paramilitary force control over virtually the entire Darfur region.

As the world’s pontificators and peacemakers gather over the coming months in their various forums—be those the UN General Assembly or the backrooms of Europe and the United States—to discuss the world’s worst conflict-driven humanitarian crisis, Sudan, they would do well to think hard about what they are really hoping to achieve. A quick peace, or an enduring settlement? 

To do that, they will need to peel away the almost cartoon-like representations that have come to dominate media imagery and international perceptions of what this conflict is about, and seek a better understanding of the historical tensions within the Sudanese state, and of the competing visions for how it should be governed—if it is not to be further divided.

A recent analysis by Daniel J Deng, published by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, would be a useful place to start. Deng, an East Africa and South Sudan peace-building specialist, argues that the war is not merely a quest for military dominance but is, significantly, a “war of visions” over the future architecture of the Sudanese state.

Deng sees the Rapid Support forces, led by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemedti”), as a product of both the collapse of centralized governance and, potentially, as a catalyst for more inclusive, decentralized national reconstruction—the ‘New Sudan’. The Sudanese Armed Forces under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, is cast as the contemporary custodian of Sudan’s long-standing centralist, military-Islamic order.

That vision of a ’New Sudan’ was the life’s work of John Garang, rebel leader and, briefly before his death in a helicopter crash in 2005, first vice president of Sudan and president of the South Sudan Autonomous Region. Garang articulated a Sudan centred on pluralism, federalism, and inclusive governance, in which he “imagined a pluralistic, democratic Sudan anchored in inclusive governance, ethnic equality, and political secularism,” transcending both northern and southern regional chauvinism.

This vision was central to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed between North and South in 2005, but with Garang’s death, the Islamist-dominated Bashir regime in Khartoum let it drift, leading to South Sudan’s secession in 2011. And, it can be argued, Hemedti, whether by conviction or design, is the inheritor of that vision. Certainly in his rhetoric, he appears to have adopted its central tenets and made them central to the vision that lies behind his political coalition, Tasis, and the ‘government of peace and unity’ it has set up in Nyala.

After Omar al-Bashir fell in 2019, the RSF sought to transform its image from a militia rooted in state repression to “a political actor speaking on behalf of Sudan’s neglected peripheries.” Hemedti’s own rhetoric is purposefully populist and ‘Africanist,’ explicitly distancing the RSF from the legacy of Khartoum’s “Islamist deep state”. He has called for “an end to discrimination, equal citizenship, and the rights of all Sudanese, regardless of region or ethnicity.” And in April 2023, as tensions between himself and General Burhan were about to boil over into war, he said: “We want a Sudan that belongs to all Sudanese, not just a select group… a Sudan where every citizen, from Darfur to Kassala, is treated with dignity and equality.”

According to Deng, Hemedti frames himself as “a man of the people, not one of the elites who live in glass towers.” He refers to his roots in Darfur and deep-rural Sudan, and his life as a camel driver—a far cry from Sudan’s tradition of urban, Nile-side Islamist elite dominance. Moreover, the alliances he has forged with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N, particularly the al-Hilu faction) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), suggest a leader who understands that Sudan’s future governance must of necessity be decentralised to reflect the aspirations of its diverse ethnicities. 

In contrast, Burhan and the SAF represent the “traditional centralist, military-Islamist dominated model of government”. After the 2021 coup which ousted civilian prime ministerAbdalla Hamdok, Burhan “sought to reintroduce Islamist figures into state structures, consolidating SAF’s traditional base and reactivating elements of the National Congress Party’s old guard.” In Deng’s view, this effort simply “reinforces a statist governance model misaligned with Sudan’s emerging decentralized realities” and represents a direct continuation of the old order, “domination by centre or clique”, instead of plural citizenship and regional equity.

And that’s pretty much where the Juba Peace Agreement of 2020 fell down: implementation was top-down and elite-centric: “The JPA institutionalized parallel sovereignties… Rather than demobilizing insurgents into a unified national force, the JPA institutionalized parallel sovereignties.” These were the same design flaws that led to the collapse, in South Sudan, of its own internal peace process in 2016. Both failures—that of South Sudan, and of Juba in Sudan and the subsequent coup, underline the perils of centralist bargains unmoored from grassroots legitimacy, writes Deng. “By replacing institutional pluralism with top-down military rule, the post-2019 transition drifted into warlord competition masked as governance.”

At no point does Deng attempt to downplay the RSF’s part in the conflict, but he makes clear that Sudan’s future depends on ‘moving beyond binary paradigms of unity versus secession’and reconstructing a governance model that is neither rigidly centralist nor hopelessly fragmented, but layered, decentralized, and rooted in local legitimacy—an outcome that, on the face of it, is more closely aligned with Hemedti’s public posture than Burhan’s. 

And here’s where the pontificators and peacemakers need to pay attention. There is no Nobel Prize-gaming quick fix. Peace in Sudan, and the viability of a future state, will depend on the old Islamist-centralist-elitist-militarist model giving way—through committed, sustained peace and institution building—to a new model of inclusion and distributed power, anchored in accountable, civilian-led, and grassroots-rooted governance. It’s either that or suffering Sudan goes back to Square One. 

Sudan’s transitional Prime Minister Kamil Idris told the 80th United Nations General Assembly Sudan’s civil war has killed 150,000 and displaced 12 million. He urged lifting chemical weapons sanctions he called “political,” condemned foreign mercenaries, and demanded an end to the siege of el-Fasher.

Director of Confluence Advisory, Khalood Khair, explains why she believes the United Nations could play an important role in alleviating the humanitarian crisis in Sudan.

The latest break between the two foremost military and political leaders risks igniting civil war again for the embattled nation.

South Sudan has started holding a trial for First Vice President Riek Machar, who has been sacked by his decades-long rival, President Salva Kiir, and charged with murder, treason and crimes against humanity in relation to rebellion and an attack by a militia linked with ethnic tensions.

Machar and seven others who have been charged alongside him, including Petroleum Minister Puot Kang Chol, were seen sitting inside a barred cage in the court on Monday during a live broadcast on national television.

Machar has been held in house arrest at his residence in the capital, Juba, for months following investigations by the government of his allies.

The Trial of Dr. Riek Machar Teny https://t.co/3T7CVp2ZDR

— South Sudan Eagles Media (@ssemtv) September 22, 2025

Earlier this month, a decree read on state radio said Kiir suspended the first vice president due to charges stemming from his alleged involvement in attacks by the White Army against federal forces in March.

The White Army, a loose band of armed youths, attacked a military base in Nasir, northeastern South Sudan, and killed more than 250 soldiers on Machar’s orders, according to the government.

Edmund Yakani, executive director of South Sudan activist group Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, told local media that the trial must be transparent and fair to build up trust in the judicial system.

He urged both leaders and their parties to “adhere to the principle of resolving political misunderstanding through dialogue” rather than violence, which would benefit no one.

Machar’s party, Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-in Opposition (SPLM/IO), has called the charges “fabricated” and said its members were arrested illegally. Machar’s lawyer on Monday said “an incompetent court” that lacks jurisdiction is judging him.

Fears of a return to ruinous civil war

After the vice president’s arrest, the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) called on all parties to exercise restraint and warned that they risked losing the “hard-won gains of the past seven years” and returning to a state of civil war.

South Sudan is the world’s youngest country and also one of its most impoverished.

In 2013, two years after the country gained independence from Sudan following decades of war, oil-producing South Sudan descended into a civil war.

The devastating conflict, which scarred the country and left some 400,000 people killed, pitted Kiir and his allies from the ethnic Dinka group against Machar, who is from the Nuer, the second-largest ethnic group in South Sudan.

More than four million people, or about one-third of the population, were displaced from their homes before a 2018 peace deal saw the pair form a “national unity” government.

But they never fully saw eye-to-eye, leaving the country in a state of limbo.

Both leaders held on to their armed factions that were never fully integrated and unified despite agreements, while reforms were delayed, and presidential elections were repeatedly postponed.

Armed clashes have erupted in several parts of the country over the past months, with both sides accusing each other of breaking ceasefire agreements.

Authorities in South Sudan are, in the meantime, plundering billions of dollars in public funds as the impoverished country also deals with a deepening food crisis, according to the UN.

“The country has been captured by a predatory elite that has institutionalised the systematic looting of the nation’s wealth for private gain,” the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said last week.

A mosque bombed in Sudan is the latest atrocity in a conflict that has led to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, says the United Nations.

Meanwhile, a new US-led political initiative gets a cool response from Khartoum.

What’s happening in the conflict – and what are the hopes for peace?

Presenter: Tom McRae

Guests:

Amgad Fareid Eltayeb – executive director of Fikra for Studies and Development

Kholood Khair – Sudanese political analyst

Cameron Hudson – senior associate in the Africa programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies

At least 70 people were killed when the paramilitary RSF struck a mosque in Sudan’s el-Fasher in Darfur. The attack came the same day the UN warned of deepening ethnic violence in Sudan’s civil war, which has already killed tens of thousands and displaced millions.

Report says ethnic violence has risen as the civil war passed two-year anniversary in the first half of 2025.

Civilians are bearing the brunt as Sudan‘s vicious civil war extends and intensifies, the United Nations has warned.

The UN’s Human Rights Office (OHCHR) said in a report released on Friday that civilian deaths and ethnic violence rose significantly as the war passed its two-year anniversary during the first half of 2025. The same day, reports said that dozens were killed by paramilitaries in an attack on a mosque in Darfur.

The rate of civilian deaths across Sudan has increased, the report says, with 3,384 civilians dying in the first six months of the year, a figure equalling 80 percent of the 4,238 civilian deaths throughout the whole of 2024.

“Sudan’s conflict is a forgotten one, and I hope that my office’s report puts the spotlight on this disastrous situation where atrocity crimes, including war crimes, are being committed,” OHCHR chief Volker Turk said in a statement.

#Sudan crisis deepens amid rising civilian casualties, worsening ethnic violence & humanitarian situation, finds @UNHumanRights report.

States must face grim reality of what has now evolved into a wider protection crisis & use their influence to end this conflict.

Many more… pic.twitter.com/c7OOcLUgdH

— UN Human Rights (@UNHumanRights) September 19, 2025

“Several trends remained consistent during the first half of 2025: a continued pervasiveness of sexual violence, indiscriminate attacks, and the widespread use of retaliatory violence against civilians, particularly on an ethnic basis, targeting individuals accused of ‘collaboration’ with opposing parties,” said the report.

New trends include the use of drones, including in attacks on civilian sites and in Sudan’s north and east, which until now have been largely spared by the war, it said.

“The increasing ethnicisation of the conflict, which builds on longstanding discrimination and inequalities, poses grave risks for longer-term stability and social cohesion within the country,” said Turk.

“Many more lives will be lost without urgent action to protect civilians and without the rapid and unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid.”

Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a brutal war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The conflict has killed tens of thousands and displaced some 12 million people. The UN has described it as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with famine prevalent in parts of Darfur and southern Sudan.

The war has, in effect, split the country, with the army holding the north, east and centre, while the RSF dominates parts of the south and nearly all of the western Darfur region.

Efforts by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to broker a ceasefire between the warring parties have so far failed.

The RSF killed 43 civilians in a drone strike on a mosque early on Friday in the besieged city of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, the Sudan Doctors’ Network NGO said in a social media post.

The NGO labelled the attack a “heinous crime” against unarmed civilians that showed the group’s “blatant disregard for humanitarian and religious values and international law”.

The Resistance Committees in el-Fasher, a group comprised of local citizens from the community that includes human rights activists, who track abuses, posted a video reportedly showing parts of the mosque reduced to rubble with several bodies scattered on the site, now filled with debris.

The same group reported on Thursday that the RSF had targeted several unarmed civilians, including women and older adults, in displacement shelters in the city.

A day earlier, it said that heavy artillery by the RSF had continuously targeted residential neighbourhoods.

Fatma Ali and her children find hope after reuniting with husband and father Shamoun Idris amid Sudan’s ongoing humanitarian crisis.

A Sudanese father who had lost contact with his wife for 18 months has been reunited with his family after recognising them in an Al Jazeera news report.

Shamoun Idris lived with his wife, Fatma Ali, and their children in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, until the city became a battleground between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in August 2023, a few months after the war in Sudan started.

As the war intensified and shelling increased near their home, the couple decided that Fatma would try to escape Khartoum with their children. Shamoun would stay behind and protect the house as RSF forces advanced, looting homes and attacking civilians.

“I decided that they should leave,” Shamoun told Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, who reported on the initial story featuring Fatma and their children. “I stayed behind to guard the house. We thought the war would end soon and they would be able to return.”

But soon after, and with the violence in the capital increasing, Idris was also forced to flee. In the process, both Shamoun and Fatma lost their phones and were unable to contact each other, with no knowledge of where the other was.

The couple became two of the 7,700 Sudanese people searching for missing relatives, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“I kept telling the children he was somewhere, just unable to reach us, but, in fact, I was completely at a loss, and I was wondering what really happened to him. I couldn’t focus on the children or on him being missing,” said Fatma.

Reunion

Fatma and the children eventually reached Sennar, south of Khartoum, where they sheltered in a school.

Meanwhile, Shamoun searched for them in vain, until he eventually saw an Al Jazeera news report from February about missing relatives.

In the report was his wife, Fatma.

“I said, ‘Man, this is my family!’ I said, ‘I swear, it’s my family.’ It was such a huge surprise,” Shamoun said.

As Fatma listened to her husband tell the story of their recent reunion, she began to cry, overwhelmed with the emotion of Shamoun’s absence.

She said her hope now is for the family to rebuild their lives. “I hope we can go back and return to our previous life. I knew my children would be OK as long as I was with them, but for their father to be gone, that was a real problem.”

“Our children went to school and were very happy. Not one of our children was out of school; they even went to private schools, not public ones,” she said. “Now, it’s been more than two years since they saw the inside of a classroom, except as somewhere to shelter.”

Since being reunited, Shamound has found a small plot of land in Sennar, where he has built a little shack for the family.

It has no door to keep out rain, wind or sun, but thousands of other displaced people in Sudan do not have any shelter at all.

For now, Shamoun and Fatma are grateful for the little privacy and freedom it provides, and for being together.