The centre of Sudan’s brutal civil war has shifted west as fighting between the army and paramilitary forces intensifies.
The Sudanese army drove the paramilitary group, known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), from central Khartoum, the capital, in March. Since then, the RSF has turned its attention to the western Kordofan region, and Darfur, where it already controls most territory, except El Fasher, the only city in western Darfur that is still held by the Sudanese army.
Now, Kordofan has become a strategic crossroad for both sides in the conflict. If the RSF wants to strike central Sudan again, it has to go through Kordofan from Darfur. And if the Sudanese army wants to push the war into RSF territory in Darfur, it likewise needs to go to Kordofan.
As the two sides vie for more power in the area, more civilians are being killed in what rights groups say is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Taking Kordofan “would shift the momentum of this war quite dramatically”, said Alan Boswell, director of the Horn of Africa project at the International Crisis Group.
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The RSF declared a parallel government based in Darfur in April. Last week, the group repelled an organised attack by the Sudanese army and launched its own strike in North Kordofan state, according to Sudan War Monitor, a research group tracking the war. The RSF detained and executed dozens of military prisoners, the group said.
The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner verified the killing of 60 civilians at the hands of the RSF in North Kordofan’s Bara region in July, the group said in a statement. Other estimates place the death toll in the hundreds. Unicef reported that 35 children and two pregnant women were killed in the violence.
The human rights office also reported that Sudanese army air strikes killed at least 34 people in West and North Kordofan states during the same month. Sheldon Yett, Unicef’s representative to Sudan, said the organisation had seen schools, health centres and civilians targeted in the fighting in Kordofan.
“We’re on the cusp of a catastrophe,” he said. “We’ve been trying for months and months and months to get supplies in, but when you’re a driver and you see a man with an AK-47 telling you to turn around, you turn around.”
The fighting has made it nearly impossible for aid groups to send life-saving supplies or even clearly assess the situation. “What’s happening in Kordofan is invisible,” Yett added. “We can’t get our supplies there or our people there. Bad things happen in darkness.”
In June, the Sudanese army announced its retreat from the northwestern border, giving the RSF unfettered access to supplies passed along the country’s borders with Chad, Egypt and Libya, after accusing Libyan forces of supporting the Sudanese paramilitary forces. While the triangle border area is relatively far from the Kordofan and Darfur regions, Boswell said, the Sudanese army’s evacuation could have some effect on the fighting in Kordofan.
“It looks like taking that border area has eased supply lines for the RSF,” he said. “Keeping the RSF supplied is a massive logistical operation because Darfur is a very difficult place to reach.”
Authorities in eastern Libya reported deporting 700 Sudanese citizens in July after they were detained in central and southeastern Libya. Some deportees had hepatitis and Aids, while others had been charged with crimes, officials said.
Sudan’s civil war began in April 2023, after a feud between rival generals. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, and millions have fled their homes. Famine has gripped parts of the country. Both the RSF and the Sudanese army have been accused of war crimes and human rights violations, and both are backed by foreign powers that supply the weapons fuelling the war.
The United Arab Emirates, despite branding itself as a force for peacemaking in the war, has for years supported the RSF with drones, which have become a major part of the war in Kordofan and other parts of the country.
The UAE denies supplying weapons to any party in the conflict and says it is committed to efforts aimed at an immediate ceasefire.
In May, the RSF pummelled Port Sudan with drone strikes, bringing the war to a city that had been a haven for civilians fleeing war. That same month, the International Criminal Court dismissed a case accusing the UAE of perpetuating the war by assisting the RSF.
– This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
