Out of One, Many

Late last month, Sudan’s army (SAF) entered the central Sudanese city of Wad Medani and pushed out its rivals, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in an advance that could become its biggest gain since the East African country’s descent into war almost two years ago.

The advance on the strategic city, the capital of El Gezira state, an agricultural, trading, and supply hub that lies at a crossroads of several states, would mark a turning point in the war if the SAF could take the entire state and also the country’s capital, Khartoum, wrote Reuters.

Even so, it may come too late for Sudan, Africa’s third-largest country, which is on the verge of collapse, analysts say.

There are now “at least four de facto areas of administration” in Sudan, Jonas Horner of the European Council on Foreign Relations told the Economist, detailing how the country has been carved into pieces by the Sudanese government, the RSF, and other rebel militias. “Sudan’s break-up is on the horizon.”

Following a popular revolution in 2019 that ousted longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir, who was in power for 30 years, a transitional civilian council took over the country before being deposed by another military coup in 2021. Afterward, protesters continued to fight for a transition to democracy. As that transition was being discussed, power struggles grew between the army commander leading the country, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan of the SAF, and his deputy, Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti), head of the paramilitary RSF, a force formed from the Arab Janjaweed militia in western Darfur that killed thousands of people there in the 1980s.

In April 2023, war broke out over the integration of the two forces. In the two years since, the fight has been brutal, killing about 60,000 people, while creating one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, displacing more than 12 million people. In January, the UN announced that unstable South Sudan is now hosting one million Sudanese refugees. It has also left half of the 50 million Sudanese people still in the country facing starvation. The Sudanese, concluded the UN, have endured “unimaginable suffering and atrocities.”

On Jan. 7, the United States placed sanctions on the RSF, its commander, and seven linked companies, labeling its campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, targeting non-Arab farming tribes known as the Massalit, as genocide. A week later, the US sanctioned the SAF for war crimes and said it suspects the SAF of using chemical weapons. “Neither man is fit to govern a future, peaceful Sudan,” a US official said.

Both the SAF and the RSF have targeted civilians and indiscriminately shelled residential areas, hospitals, and schools. Both forces are accused of summary killings, rampant looting, systematic sexual violence that includes widespread gang rapes and sexual slavery, and laying siege to entire towns to deny inhabitants food and other basic supplies.

The state of Gezira has seen some of the RSF’s bloodiest attacks on civilians and like many parts of Sudan, much of it lies in ruins. Recently, the Washington Post verified videos after the retaking of Wad Medani that showed horrific, torturous, and deliberately brutal retaliatory killings of civilians by the SAF.

But the army also burned fields and flooded irrigation ditches to disrupt crops. The area is particularly vulnerable to famine due to the blockades of humanitarian supplies imposed by the SAF as punishment, as well as drought, flooding, and locust invasions that have caused disruptions in agriculture.

As the International Crisis Group detailed, the SAF controls the north, the east, parts of the capital of Khartoum, and Sennar state in the south. The RSF controls most of the west of the country, where it is fighting the army over control of al-Fashir, its last stronghold in the resource-rich Darfur region, and parts of the south and center. The two forces are also actively fighting over the White Nile state in the south of the country and the capital. Meanwhile, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), another rebel militia, is based in Kauda, the self-designated capital of the self-governing state of South Kordofan. It fights both the RSF and the SAF. Elsewhere in the country, there are other rebel groups and tribal militias holding on to smaller fiefdoms.

As the government forces try to get a hold of the country again and make deals with Russia –for a naval base on the Red Sea – and Iran, the rebel militias are trying to solidify their gains, especially in Darfur, which could be the next part of Sudan to break off – South Sudan became independent in 2011 after decades of war with Sudan. To that effort, the RSF is working on nation-building, creating a system of taxation, setting up its own currency, and also a government. In the south, the SPLM-N has already had a bureaucracy set up for years.

Last month, the SAF issued new banknotes in areas it controls, aimed at undermining its paramilitary rivals and bolstering its finances, reported Agence France-Presse. It has caused long lines at banks, disrupted trade, and entrenched division. The RSF has banned the new notes in areas it controls, and accused the army of orchestrating a “conspiracy to divide the country.”

But Kholood Khair, founder of Sudanese think tank Confluence Advisory, says it’s already too late.

“The move has catalyzed the already existing trajectory towards a split,” she told AFP.

“A split would be the beginning of the end for Sudan,” she added. “The country would disintegrate immediately, and there would be less of an opportunity to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”