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BBC News
04-07-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Sudan war: A simple guide to what is happening
Sudan plunged into a civil war in April 2023 after a vicious struggle for power broke out between its army and a powerful paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).It has led to a famine and claims of a genocide in the western Darfur than 150,000 people have died in the conflict across the country, and about 12 million have fled their homes in what the United Nations has called the world's largest humanitarian is what you need to know. Where is Sudan? Sudan is in north-east Africa and is one of the largest countries on the continent, covering 1.9 million sq km (734,000 sq miles).It borders seven countries and the Red Sea. The River Nile also flows through it, making it a strategically important for foreign powers. The population of Sudan is predominantly Muslim and the country's official languages are Arabic and before the war started, Sudan was one of the poorest countries in the world - despite the fact that it is a gold-producing nation. Its 46 million people were living on an average annual income of $750 (£600) a head in conflict has made things much worse. Last year, Sudan's finance minister said state revenues had shrunk by 80%. What triggered the conflict? The civil war is the latest episode in bouts of tension that followed the 2019 ousting of long-serving President Omar al-Bashir, who came to power in a coup in were huge street protests calling for an end to his near-three decade rule and the army mounted a coup to get rid of civilians continued to campaign for the introduction of democracy.A joint military-civilian government was then established but that was overthrown in another coup in October 2021. The coup was staged by the two men at the centre of the current conflict: Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the armed forces and in effect the country's presidentAnd his deputy, RSF leader Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as "Hemedti".But then Gen Burhan and Gen Dagalo disagreed on the direction the country was going in and the proposed move towards civilian main sticking points were plans to incorporate the 100,000-strong RSF into the army, and who would then lead the new suspicions were that both generals wanted to hang on to their positions of power, unwilling to lose wealth and between the two sides began on 15 April 2023 following days of tension as members of the RSF were redeployed around the country in a move that the army saw as a is disputed who fired the first shot but the fighting swiftly escalated, with the RSF seizing much of Khartoum until the army regained control of it almost two years later in March two generals fighting over Sudan's future Who are the Rapid Support Forces? The RSF was formed in 2013 and has its origins in the notorious Janjaweed militia that brutally fought rebels in Darfur, where they were accused of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the region's non-Arab then, Gen Dagalo has built a powerful force that has intervened in conflicts in Yemen and Libya. He also controls some of Sudan's gold mines, and allegedly smuggles the metal to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).The army accuses the UAE of backing the RSF, and carrying out drone strikes in Sudan. The oil-rich Gulf state denies the allegation. The army also accuses eastern Libyan strongman Gen Khalifa Haftar of supporting the RSF by helping it to smuggle weapons into Sudan, and sending fighters to bolster the early June 2025, the RSF achieved a major victory when it took control of territory along Sudan's border with Libya and Egypt. The RSF also controls almost all of Darfur and much of neighbouring Kordofan. It has declared plans to form a rival government, raising fears that Sudan could split for a second time - South Sudan seceded in 2011, taking with it most of the country's oil fields. What does the army control? The military controls most of the north and the east. Its main backer is said to be Egypt, whose fortunes are intertwined with those of Sudan because they share a border and the waters of the River Burhan has turned Port Sudan - which is on the Red Sea - into his headquarters, and that of his UN-recognised government. However, the city is not safe - the RSF launched a devastating drone strike there in March. This was retaliation after the RSF suffered one of its biggest setbacks, when it lost control of much of Khartoum - including the Republican Palace - to the army in March."Khartoum is free, it's done," Gun Burhan declared, as he triumphantly returned to the city, though not analysts say the conflict is in a strategic stalemate and the army still does not have total control of Khartoum, despite deploying newly acquired weapons from Egypt, Turkey, Qatar and city is a burnt-out shell: government ministries, banks and towering office blocks stand blackened and tarmac at the international airport is a graveyard of smashed planes, its passport and check-in counters covered in ash. Hospitals and clinics have also been destroyed, hit by air strikes and artillery fire, sometimes with patients still army has also managed to win back near total control of the crucial state of Gezira. Losing it to the RSF in late 2023 had been a huge blow, forcing hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee its main city of Wad Madani, which had become a refuge for those who had escaped conflict in other parts of the is the last major urban centre in Darfur still held by the army and its allies. The RSF has laid siege to the city, causing hundreds of casualties, overwhelming hospitals and blocking food after month of blockade, bombardment and ground attacks have created famine among the residents, with the people of the displaced camp of Zamzam worst-hit. Is there a genocide? Many Darfuris believe the RSF and allied militias have waged a war aimed at transforming the ethnically mixed region into an Arab-ruled March 2024, the UN children's agency, Unicef, gave harrowing accounts of armed men raping and sexually assaulting children as young as one. Some children have tried to end their own lives as a the same month, campaign group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it was possible that the RSF and allied militias were carrying out a genocide in Darfur against the Massalit people and other non-Arab had been killed in el-Geneina city in a campaign of ethnic cleansing with the "apparent objective of at least having them permanently leave the region", it added that the widespread killings raised the possibility that the RSF and their allies had "the intent to destroy in whole or in part" the Massalit this could constitute a genocide, it appealed to international bodies and governments to carry out an investigation.A subsequent investigation by a UN team fell short of concluding that a genocide was taking place. Instead, it found that that both the RSF and army had committed war the US determined in January this year that the RSF and allied militias have committed a genocide."The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys - even infants - on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence," then-Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said. "Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies. Based on this information, I have now concluded that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan," he led to the US imposing sanctions on Gen Dagalo, followed by similar measures against Gen government filed a case against the UAE in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing it of being complicit in the genocide by funding and arming the the ICJ refused to hear the case, saying that it had no jurisdiction over it. The UAE welcomed its ruling, with an official saying that the Gulf state "bears no responsibility for the conflict". The RSF also denies committing genocide, saying it was not involved in what it describes as a "tribal conflict" in Darfur. But the UN investigators said they had received testimony that RSF fighters taunted non-Arab women during sex attacks with racist slurs and saying they will force them to have "Arab babies".How do you define genocide? Have there been attempts to end the conflict? There have been several rounds of peace talks in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain - but they have deputy Africa editor Anne Soy says that both sides, especially the army, have shown an unwillingness to agree to a health chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has also lamented that there is less global interest in the conflict in Sudan, and other recent conflicts in Africa, compared to crises elsewhere in the world."I think race is in the play here," he told the BBC in September 2024. The International Crisis Group (ICG) think-tank has called diplomatic efforts to end the war "lacklustre", while Amnesty International has labelled the world's response "woefully inadequate".Humanitarian work has also been badly affected by the decision of the Trump administration to cut volunteers told the BBC that more than 1,100 - or almost 80% - of the emergency food kitchens have been forced to shut, fuelling the perception that Sudan's conflict is the "forgotten war" of the world. More about Sudan's war from the BBC: 'I lost a baby and then rescued a child dodging air strikes'Sudan in danger of self-destructing as conflict and famine reignFrom prized artworks to bullet shells: how war devastated Sudan's museums Go to for more news from the African us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
Irish Times
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Sudan, Remember Us review: A brief moment of possibility punctuated by shocking violence
Sudan, Remember Us Director : Hind Meddeb Cert : None Genre : Documentary Starring : Hind Meddeb Running Time : 1 hr 17 mins This vital time capsule of events sometimes livestreamed or captured on phones taps the emotional and revolutionary fervour of the uprising against Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled Sudan as president for 30 years, in 2018-19. The film opens in uncertain Khartoum four years later. Gunfire on emptied streets signals the country's complex civil war, a conflict that receives scandalously little coverage in the West, despite the displacement of millions. More than 14,000 people have died, including 522,000 children lost to malnutrition. It wasn't meant to be like this. Hind Meddeb, the director of this documentary, filmed the jubilation in Khartoum as young activists took to the streets in 2019, demanding an end to dictatorship and envisioning a democratic, pluralist Sudan. The mood of protesters – many of them women – is buoyant. The Franco-Tunisian-Moroccan film-maker, who chronicled immigrant life in Paris Stalingrad, is an outsider who, as one of her subjects notes, speaks lovely Arabic. She also sees potential for the Sudanese uprising to coalesce into her late father's dream for an Arab world shaken by a feminist revolution. READ MORE 'I saw my country's future in you,' she says as she trains her camera on the crowds calling for a citizens' government. People sing, drum and paint murals. A young woman calls out the theocracy and the military in a graphic musical denouncement: 'God curse fake preachers dressed up as clerics', she raps; 'a corpse has surfaced; after two days it floats on the Nile, a first-year student, throat slit, eye gouged out.' Apart from brief glimpses of a militia stampede, the retaliation unfolds offscreen. Many of the comrades at the jubilant sit-in protest were burned alive in an action that killed more 100 peaceful demonstrators. The violence, followed by the rise of the military junta, dashed hopes for a smooth transition to civilian rule. Sudan, Remember Us gives voice to the ordinary revolutionaries it portrays. As a coda outlines, several of those depicted have fled to Egypt and elsewhere, but the art created to sustain the revolution remains. As one activist hopefully insists, 'Poetry is eternal.' In cinemas from Friday, July 11th
Asharq Al-Awsat
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Sudan's Army Chief Names Former UN Official Idris as New Premier
Sudan's army chief and de facto leader Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan appointed on Monday former UN official Kamil Idris as the country's new prime minister, more than two years into a brutal war. Idris, a career diplomat and past presidential candidate, was the director general of the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization and has also served in Sudan's permanent mission to the UN. 'The chairman of the sovereignty council issued a constitutional decree appointing Kamil El-Tayeb Idris Abdelhafiz as prime minister,' a statement from Sudan's ruling Transitional Sovereignty Council read, AFP reported. In 2010, Idris ran in the presidential elections against longtime ruler Omar Al-Bashir. Since April 2023, the war in Sudan has pitted Burhan's army forces against the Rapid Support Forces, commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. The conflict has killed tens of thousands, displaced 13 million and created what the United Nations describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Idris replaces veteran diplomat Dafallah Al-Hajj Ali, who was appointed by Burhan at the end of April and served less than three weeks as acting prime minister. Burhan had earlier said that he would form a technocratic wartime government to help 'complete what remains of our military objectives, which is liberating Sudan from these rebels.'
Arab News
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
Sudan's army chief names former UN official Idris as new premier
KHARTOUM: Sudan's army chief and de facto leader Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan appointed on Monday former UN official Kamil Idris as the country's new prime minister, more than two years into a brutal war. Idris, a career diplomat and past presidential candidate, was the director general of the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization and has also served in Sudan's permanent mission to the UN. 'The chairman of the sovereignty council issued a constitutional decree appointing Kamil El-Tayeb Idris Abdelhafiz as prime minister,' a statement from Sudan's ruling Transitional Sovereignty Council read. In 2010, Idris ran in the presidential elections against longtime Islamist-military ruler Omar Al-Bashir. Since April 2023, the war in Sudan has pitted Burhan's army forces against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. The conflict has killed tens of thousands, displaced 13 million and created what the United Nations describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Idris replaces veteran diplomat Dafallah Al-Hajj Ali, who was appointed by Burhan at the end of April and served less than three weeks as acting prime minister. Burhan had earlier said that he would form a technocratic wartime government to help 'complete what remains of our military objectives, which is liberating Sudan from these rebels.' In April, the RSF announced it would form a rival government, a few weeks after signing a charter in Kenya with a coalition of military and political allies. The move has raised international fears that Sudan would be permanently divided between the two sides, both of which have been accused of war atrocities. The conflict has already carved up Sudan, with the army holding the north, east and center while the RSF dominates nearly all of Darfur and, with its allies, parts of the south.
The National
14-04-2025
- Politics
- The National
Sudan's identity fractures under fire as war grinds into third year
Sudan's war enters its third year this week, a grim milestone that analysts see as the culmination of the country's feeble nationhood credentials and the chronic lust for power that has been the hallmark of its military since independence nearly 70 years ago. A diverse nation in which ethnic and religious groups have endlessly fought each other, the latest war pits the national army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Although both sides claim to be fighting in the name of democracy and freedom, the war is widely seen as a fight between two generals determined to rule unchallenged and prepared to pursue that goal regardless of the cost to Sudan. Already, tens of thousands have been killed in the war since it broke out on April 15, 2023. More than half the population – about 26 million people – are facing acute hunger, with many of them inching closer to famine. Moreover, around 12 million people have been displaced by the war, which experts believe will likely morph into a low-intensity conflict that will continue for years to come. And, just as ominously, the war is taking on increasingly sectarian undertones, the effects of which on Africa's third largest country could be felt for years to come, denying the Sudanese yet again a shot at adopting a socio-political formula to transform diversity and rivalries into national unity. With the tide of war now largely in favour of the army, the conflict will most likely produce another one of Sudan's military strongmen in army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan. His promises of free elections and a civilian-led government are at odds with his track record since he rose to prominence after the removal in 2019 of long-time authoritarian ruler Omar Al Bashir amid a popular uprising. The US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control has imposed sanctions on Mr Al Burhan, accusing him of 'destabilising Sudan and undermining the goal of a democratic transition'. 'This war is not about ideology; it's about who gets to rule the country,' said Sami Saeed, a US-based Sudan expert. 'There is no intention among the officer corps to hand over power to civilians when and if this war ends. They don't believe in elections and are convinced civilians are not qualified to run Sudan. 'A lust for power has been a constant trait among officers of the Sudanese armed forces,' added Mr Saeed, who is vice president of the pro-democracy African Network of Constitutional Lawyers. African and other countries, including the UAE, have called for accountability over breaches of international law by both sides in Sudan's conflict. Since independence in 1956, Sudan has since independence seen a stream of military coups, some successful and many bloody. They were mostly led by ambitious and power-hungry generals convinced only they could put Sudan on the road to unity and prosperity. They toppled elected but ineffective governments and ruled unchallenged before they were removed from power by other generals, often amid popular uprisings. That cycle of military rule and incompetent civilian administrations continued in parallel with bouts of civil strife that drained the nation's vast but marginally tapped resources and deepened its sectarian, religious and geographical fault lines. Atrocities committed during those conflicts – some labelled as ethnic cleansing or genocide – bred hatred and left scars that will take generations to heal. Both Gen Al Burhan and Gen Dagalo stand accused in the current war. 'There is no hope for Sudan as long as the military stands by its conviction that it's the legitimate successor of the British colonialists,' said analyst Mohammed Othman. 'Civilian politicians are ineffective and neither the army nor the Rapid Support Forces have any intention of leaving politics.' The events leading to and following the outbreak of the current war mirror Sudan's vicious cycle of military and civilian rule. After months of publicly discrediting civilian politicians, Gen Al Burhan and RSF commander Gen Mohamed Dagalo jointly toppled a civilian-led government in a coup that derailed Sudan's democratic transition, plunged it into economic chaos and created a dangerous security vacuum. Both claim to have staged the coup to spare Sudan a civil war and to launch what they described at the time as a new and more inclusive democratic transition. That shift never happened and the months that followed the coup saw scores of anti-military protesters killed by security forces on the streets. But it did not take long before differences between the two generals surfaced, with the pair at sharp odds over their role in a future, democratic Sudan and the thorny question of assimilating the RSF into the armed forces. Inevitably, their differences boiled over into the conflict that has been ravaging Sudan. Ironically, Gen Al Burhan, perhaps unwittingly, contributed to building up the RSF as a formidable force, allowing Gen Dagalo to deploy his men across the capital and have the exclusive use of large military bases there. 'Omar Al Bashir empowered the Rapid Support Forces to protect his rule against possible military coups and Al Burhan kept it happy, also as security against a coup that could topple him,' said analyst and newspaper publisher Osman Al Mirghani. The RSF is mostly made up of Arab tribesmen from the Darfur region. Its forerunner is the notorious Janjaweed militia, which stands accused of war crimes during the civil war in Darfur in the 2000s. Its fighters are blamed for the killing of thousands of ethnic Africans in Darfur during the summer of 2023 as well as looting and extrajudicial killings in the capital and central Sudan. Although its fighters have been forced out of the capital, where they had almost full control for nearly two years, and driven out of central Sudan, the RSF continues to hold on to most of Darfur and parts of Kordofan to the south-west, as well as Blue Nile in the south. That leaves the army and its allied volunteers in control of the capital and the eastern, northern and central parts of the country. This division of territory reflects fault lines within the country, with the RSF wielding control over the impoverished west and the army in the Arabised and more prosperous remainder of the country. It is a division that is at the heart of the RSF narrative, which frequently portrays itself to be fighting for the 'muhamasheen' – or 'people of the margins' – a reference to natives of Darfur and Kordofan, two vast states with a history of enmity between cattle-herding Arab tribes and farming communities of ethnic Africans. It is against this backdrop that the RSF this month staged two attacks on a region of northern Sudan that had mostly been untouched by the war. Importantly, it is also home to the nation's political, military and economic elite. Using suicide drones, the paramilitary targeted the power station of a Nile hydroelectric dam in Maroue and later the airport at Dongola, both in the Shamaliyah state, north of the capital. Those growing sectarian and tribal undertones of the war are rooted in time-honoured practices by Sudanese leaders that have enshrined divisions for political or military gain. They also point to the continuing absence of effective state institutions. 'What the British left in Sudan when their occupation ended in 1956 could have been the basis on which we build on,' said Mr Saeed. 'They left dams, vast agricultural projects, a railway and a good university. But we chose to enter ethnic conflicts and now we have no modern institutions. We are left with banners and headlines, but no real institutions.' Mr Al Bashir, who ruled for 29 years, provided a potent example of how Sudanese leaders have sacrificed nation-building in return for political survival. He bankrolled and armed the Janjaweed and later the RSF to fight against ethnic Africans who rose up against his regime in Darfur in the 2000s. More than a decade later, he summoned the RSF from Darfur to the capital to protect his rule against a popular uprising in 2018-19 that eventually toppled him. Mr Al Bashir stoked old tribal rivalries in the mainly Christian and animist south to weaken the Dinka tribe, by far Sudan's largest Nilotic group and primary source of fighters in a civil war against the north that lasted more than two decades. The war ended with a 2005 peace agreement and the secession of South Sudan six years later, a move that deprived Sudan of a third of its territory and most of its oil wealth. He also enlisted the help of loyal Islamists to fight the southern rebels, capitalising on their religious zeal and dream of disenfranchising non-Muslims. Gen Al Burhan has in some ways followed in Al Bashir's footsteps. With an officers corps filled with Islamists once promoted by Mr Al Bashir, he has recruited members of the dictator's reviled militias to fight the RSF and, according to the analysts, took little action to rein them in following charges they administered kangaroo justice to civilians suspected of sympathising or collaborating with the paramilitary. And, like many Sudanese leaders before him, he routinely accuses foreign and regional powers of scheming against Sudan or supporting the RSF. 'Contrary to what our politicians like to have us believe, Sudan's many crises are a product of domestic policies not foreign meddling or conspiracies,' said Mr Al Mirghani. 'This grave mistake distracts us from remedying the roots of our problems.'
