Death in Darfur: The Sudan Crises

One of the world’s largest civilian displacements, a severe hunger emergency, ethnic violence, and a failed political transition have come to define Sudan’s present reality. Despite its rich soil, vast gold reserves, and abundant mineral wealth, the country remains trapped in poverty and instability, making the crisis even more tragic and complex.

The roots of the crisis go back to the long rule of Omar al-Bashir, who came to power in 1989 and built an authoritarian state based on military control, repression, and internal conflict. During his rule, violence in Darfur and other regions deepened ethnic divisions and normalized the use of armed force as a political tool. For the first half of the twentieth century, Sudan was a joint protectorate of Egypt and the United Kingdom, known as the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium. Egypt and the United Kingdom signed a treaty relinquishing sovereignty to the independent Republic of Sudan in 1956. The stark internal divide between the country’s wealthier northern region, which was majority Arab and Muslim, and its less-developed southern region, which was majority Christian or animist, sparked two civil wars, the second of which would see the country split into two states in 2011. The second Sudanese civil war from 1983 to 2005 killed an estimated two million people, with widespread documentation of famine and atrocities. In July 2011, Sudan’s southern territory seceded and formed a new state: the Republic of South Sudan.

When Bashir was removed in 2019, many Sudanese hoped for a democratic transition, but the institutions needed to sustain it were weak. Civilian groups and the military entered a fragile power-sharing arrangement meant to lead Sudan toward democracy but that  arrangement soon became unstable because the military never fully accepted civilian supremacy, while civilian leaders lacked the power to restrain rival armed forces. The October 2021 military coup shattered much of the transition and reopened the struggle over who would control the state.

The two central armed actors are the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) who emerged from the Janjaweed Militias, who  emerged during the Darfur War around 2003 under Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir. At first, the Sudanese government armed and supported these mostly Arab militias to crush rebel groups in Darfur, particularly those associated with non-Arab ethnic communities such as the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa peoples. The Janjaweed became internationally infamous for scorched-earth tactics, village burnings, ethnic massacres, systematic rape, forced displacement, and other atrocities that many international organizations later described as genocide. 

Over time, Bashir transformed these loosely organized militias into a more formal paramilitary structure. In 2013, the Sudanese state reorganized large portions of the Janjaweed into the RSF under the command of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly called “Hemedti.” This gave the group official status, salaries, weapons, and political legitimacy while allowing the regime to continue using irregular forces outside the traditional army chain of command. Initially, they worked alongside the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), helped suppress protests, guarded borders, and even sent fighters to Yemen as part of the Saudi-led coalition. Hemedti also built immense wealth through control of Sudan’s gold trade. However, tensions between the RSF and the regular Sudanese military escalated after Bashir’s fall in 2019, especially over whether the RSF would be integrated into the national army, Open war began in April 2023 after months of tension between SAF and RSF over military reform, command structure, and the future political order. Fighting first erupted in Khartoum and rapidly spread to other regions, turning a political struggle into a full-scale conflict. Ceasefires and negotiations failed repeatedly because neither side trusted the other or wanted to surrender power.

Since the current war began, the RSF has again faced accusations of ethnic cleansing, mass rape, massacres, and genocide-like violence, especially in Darfur. In 2025, the United States formally stated that RSF actions in Darfur amounted to genocide. 

The humanitarian consequences have been enormous. More than 30 million people now need aid, and millions have been displaced from their homes. Food systems have collapsed, with many families surviving on one meal a day or less, while disease, blocked aid routes, and destruction of hospitals have made survival even harder. The conflict has also involved sexual violence, child recruitment, and attacks on civilian infrastructure.

Darfur remains one of the most tragic parts of the crisis because violence there has clear ethnic dimensions and connects to older patterns of abuse. Reports have described atrocities and alleged genocide-like violence against communities in the west of the country. The RSF’s roots in the Janjaweed make the Darfur dimension especially alarming and historically loaded.

The war is also shaped by outside interests. Sudan’s gold, border routes, and strategic position have drawn regional attention, while allegations of external support to the warring parties have complicated peace efforts. The army has accused the UAE and others of helping the RSF, though such claims are disputed. This external involvement has made the conflict harder to isolate and resolve.

Sudan’s crisis is tragic because the country has resources, but weak institutions prevent those resources from benefiting the population. Gold and minerals have strengthened armed networks more than the state, while corruption and war have pushed ordinary people deeper into poverty. In that sense, the crisis is not only about fighting; it is about the collapse of governance, accountability, and national unity.

As of the latest reports, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) control the north, east, southeast, and much of central Sudan, including Port Sudan, and they also regained Khartoum and key government sites in March 2025. The RSF controls much of Darfur and large parts of West and North Kordofan, while fighting and shifting front lines continue in contested areas such as Kordofan.

On the world stage, Sudan is now widely described as the world’s largest displacement and protection crisis, with more than 14 million people forced to flee by March 2026 and roughly 30 million people needing humanitarian aid. Analysts remain unable to precisely assess the conflict’s death toll, with estimates ranging from 61,000 to hundreds of thousands. The UN and other international actors are calling for a ceasefire, protection of civilians, an end to arms flows, and much stronger humanitarian funding, but diplomacy remains weak and fragmented.

Overall, Sudan’s crisis should be understood as the result of a long political decay that moved from authoritarianism to failed transition and then to civil war. The 2023 conflict is a disaster in a lost list of disasters, as the deeper problem is the inability of Sudan’s political and military elites to build a functioning civilian state. Unless there is a genuine ceasefire, humanitarian access, and a credible civilian-led political process, the crisis will continue to produce displacement, famine, and fragmentation.