Armed Insurgency and Terrorist Violence in Nigeria

The Sudanese civil war did not begin in April 2023, although that is when the world took notice. Its roots lie in the failed transition that followed the fall of Omar al-Bashir in April 2019, after three decades of dictatorship and mass protests that united civilians and the military against the regime.

What followed was a democratization experiment doomed from the start. The Transitional Sovereign Council, composed of civilians and the military, never resolved the fundamental contradiction: who would control the guns during the democratization process? While civilians from the FFC (Forces for Freedom and Change) tried to build institutions, the generals consolidated economic and military power.

The tension between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary militia commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo "Hemedti", became the axis of the crisis. The RSF, born from Darfur militias and used by Bashir to crush rebellions, had transformed into a parallel army with its own funding (Darfur gold, UAE support) and tribal loyalties distinct from the state.

The tipping point came with the negotiation over integrating the RSF into the regular army. For Burhan, dissolving the RSF meant recovering the state monopoly on force. For Hemedti, integration meant losing autonomy and possibly facing war crimes trials in Darfur. The negotiation became a countdown to war.

On 15 April 2023, fighting erupted simultaneously in Khartoum, Darfur and other cities. What initially seemed a quick coup became a war of attrition. The SAF controls the formal state apparatus (airports, ministries), but the RSF dominates entire neighbourhoods of the capital and the gold trade.

The regionalization of the conflict complicates any solution. Egypt backs the SAF (institutionalism, state control), while the United Arab Emirates maintains financial ties with the RSF (commercial interests, counter-insurgency). The war has become a proxy for influence in the Horn of Africa and control of the Red Sea coast, vital for global trade.