Sudan’s brutal civil conflict has dragged on for greater than 2½ years, displacing hundreds of thousands and killing in far more than 150,000 other folks – making it a few of the most threatening conflicts on the earth as of late.
As of December 2025, the paramilitary Fast Give a boost to Forces seem to be making beneficial properties, seizing a key oil box in central Sudan and forcing the retreat of the Sudanese Armed Forces in key towns within the nation’s west.
However combating has ebbed and flowed all the way through the conflict, with portions of the rustic converting arms various occasions. It has left an advanced image of a country mired in violence. Right here’s a visible information to lend a hand perceive what’s going on and the toll it has taken at the Sudanese inhabitants.
What navy forces are concerned?
Sudanese navy squaddies participate in an army parade.
Ebrahim Hamid, Getty
The 2 primary combatants are the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Fast Give a boost to Forces (RSF).
The SAF is the country’s reliable navy. Previous to the civil conflict, it was once accountable with imposing the border, protective the rustic from overseas entities and keeping up interior safety. As of April 2023, the SAF had an estimated drive of as much as 200,000 other folks.
Individuals of a Fast Give a boost to Forces unit stand on their car right through a military-backed rally.
Hussein Malla/Getty
The paramilitary RSF is a semi-autonomous group that was once created in 2013 to confront rebellion teams. Its origins lie within the feared Janjaweed military that received global notoriety for its scorched-earth techniques, extrajudicial killings and sexual attacks right through a marketing campaign in Darfur between 2003 and 2005.
Rebranding because the RSF, the paramilitary drive advanced to develop into President Omar al-Bashir’s non-public safety drive ahead of al-Bashir’s ouster in 2019.
After that, the RSF and the SAF labored in combination to degree a 2021 coup towards Top Minister Abdalla Hamdok in 2021. However an influence fight emerged between the leaders of the RSF and SAF amid disagreements over the longer term route of the rustic and whether or not the RSF can be integrated into the military.
Through the outbreak of the civil conflict in 2023, the RSF had accrued round 100,000 troops.
Quite a lot of different armed teams have lent their improve to the RSF and SAF right through the battle, together with the rebellion Sudan Other people’s Liberation Motion-North, which helps the RSF, and the army-aligned Justice and Equality Motion
Who’re the principle leaders?
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan visits the Al-Afadh refugee camp in Al Dabbah, Northern State, on Nov. 8, 2025.
Anadolu/Getty
The SAF is led by way of Common Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s best navy commander and de facto head of state. The longtime soldier rose to the rank of regional commander in 2008 and was once promoted a decade later to the placement of navy leader of team of workers.
His popularity has been marred by way of his personal navy’s assaults on civilians in Darfur within the early 2000s and, extra lately, his reliance on improve from Islamist teams.
Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo attends an army commencement rite of particular forces in Khartoum.
Mahmoud Hjaj/Anadolu Company by means of Getty
The RSF chief, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, often referred to as “Hemedti,” was once Burhan’s second-in-command.
Born to a deficient circle of relatives that settled in Darfur, Hemedti was once a part of the Janjaweed military that President Bashir deployed to overwhelm non-Arab resistance within the nation’s west. Changing into chief of the Janjaweed ahead of happening to go the RSF, Hemedti bought a name as a ruthless commander whose brutal strategies disturbed some fellow officials.
The place are the guns, investment coming from?
Some of the verified guns imported and noticed being utilized by either side of the conflict.
Amnesty World – New guns fuelling the Sudan battle
Whilst the combating has in large part been contained to inside Sudan’s obstacles, it’s being fueled from outdoor the rustic.
Amnesty World has reported that in spite of a decades-old fingers embargo by way of the United International locations Safety Council, lately manufactured guns and kit from China, Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates had been utilized by either side within the battle.
United Arab Emirates have exported better apparatus to Sudan, like those armoured body of workers carriers in addition to drones and different materiel.
Amnesty World – New guns fuelling the Sudan battle
The Sudanese executive has accused the UAE of offering navy help to the RSF, which in flip has been accused of the usage of the UAE for unlawful gold trafficking.
Along with offering navy help, the UAE has been accused of offering financial improve for the RSF. In January 2025, the Biden management sanctioned seven UAE-based firms investment Hemedti.
Saudi Arabia, which sees Sudan as an best friend to counter Iran’s regional affect, has supplied monetary improve to the SAF. In October 2025, the SAF-backed executive introduced that Saudi Arabia deliberate to take a position an extra US$50 billion into Sudan, on best of the $35 billion it has already invested.
Egypt, allied with Burhan in a dispute with Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, has provided the SAF with warplanes and pilots.
In the meantime, Iran and Russia have every prolonged improve for the Sudanese executive. It’s believed that Iran, which renewed diplomatic ties with Sudan in October 2023, has supplied the SAF with assault drones, whilst Russia has supplied Sudan’s executive with diplomatic and armed forces improve.
What spaces are managed by way of whom?
As of December 2025, the RSF and SAF keep an eye on other halves of the rustic cut up alongside a kind of north-south axis. The SAF controls somewhat greater than part of the rustic.
The SAF has a stronghold within the country’s capital Khartoum. Within the east, the military controls town of Port Sudan at the Pink Beach. The SAF additionally controls roughly three-quarters of the Sudanese border with Egypt to the north.
Strategically, the spaces beneath SAF keep an eye on supply some great benefits of get admission to to the Pink Sea – a the most important shipping hub by which 12% of the sector’s maritime industry passes – in addition to the ancient demographic and administrative epicenter of Khartoum, positioned on the confluence of the Blue and White Niles, and the livestock-rich Kassala state.
In all, Sudanese researcher Jihad Mashamoun estimates that as of November 2025, the SAF managed 60% of the rustic.
In the meantime, the RSF has consolidated keep an eye on over Darfur – the huge western area that has been a hub for gold mining and trafficking routes – and the regional capital of el-Fasher, an financial hub connecting routes to Libya to the north, the Nile to the east and Chad to the west.
As researcher Bravin Onditi has famous, el-Fasher’s fall to the RSF in past due October eradicated the SAF’s ultimate stronghold in Darfur from which it might assert authority in western Sudan.
Outdoor of Darfur, the RSF controls maximum the rustic’s oil fields, most of the goldfields in central and southwest Sudan, and splits keep an eye on over essential grazing lands with the SAF.
What has been the toll on Sudan’s electorate?
One of the most conflict’s distinguishing horrors has been repeated incidents of civilian killings.
Each side had been accused of conflict crimes that come with focused assaults on civilians, scientific facilities and meals methods. Mass killings in Khartoum, Darfur, Kordofan, Gezira, Sennar and White Nile states replicate the overall scope of slaughter that has swept the rustic.
In some cases, this violence has taken on a decidedly ethnic size. Human Rights Watch stories that from past due April to early November 2023, the RSF and its allied militias systematically sought to take away — together with by way of homicide — ethnic Masalit other folks from El Geneina, capital of West Darfur.
In October 2025, following the RAF’s siege of el-Fasher, the sector watched in horror as satellite tv for pc photographs of “clusters” in step with our bodies and blood-red discoloration may well be noticed at the flooring. The U.N. Safety Council held an emergency assembly condemning the RSF’s killing of just about 500 other folks in el-Fasher’s Saudi Maternity Medical institution.
Greater than 9.5 million persons are labeled as internally displaced, having fled violence. The World Group for Migration stories that North and South Darfur states host the biggest choice of internally displaced other folks, adopted by way of Central and East Darfur states.
In the meantime, over 4 million have fled to the neighboring international locations of Egypt, South Sudan and Chad.
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