--- title: "Sudan Civil War Reaches Climax: The Fall of Khartoum" description: "It is one of the biggest wars the world has seen in decades, a conflict with as much geopolitical impact as the war in Ukraine, and a body count far beyond that seen in Gaza. Yet Sudan's civil war has barely made a dent in the public consciousness. While university campuses were melting down over Gaza, and world leaders were scrambling to respond to Russia's invasion of its neighbor, the carnage in Sudan has been met by deafening silence. The nation's burned cities and countless dead have been ignored by everyone from the Western media to the African Union. Until now. In March of 2025, the Sudanese Armed Forces retook the capital city following a bloody, monthslong campaign. For the first time since 2023, it is starting to look like one side may be heading towards victory. But even as the fall of Khartoum brings Sudan roaring back into the headlines, questions still remain regarding what happens next, and if the world's worst war could really be reaching its climax. These are questions that will have massive implications for the entire planet.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n- On March 21, 2025, the Sudanese Armed Forces successfully recaptured the Presidential Palace in Khartoum, marking a major turning point in the two-year war.\n- A statistical analysis by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimated that over 26,000 people were killed in the Greater Khartoum area alone between April 2023 and June 2024.\n- The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces carried out extreme atrocities in Darfur, including the targeted slaughter of up to 15,000 members of the Masalit ethnic group in El-Genina.\n- The fall of Wad Madani in January 2025 allowed the Sudanese Armed Forces to cut off critical RSF resupply routes, leading to a cascade of military successes in the capital region.\n- The RSF has relied heavily on an extensive network of foreign backers, receiving massive weapons transfers facilitated by the United Arab Emirates and air defense assistance from the Wagner Group.\n- Iran emerged as the biggest outside actor supporting the Sudanese Armed Forces, with regular weapons deliveries to Port Sudan enabling the military's successful 2024 counteroffensive.\n\n## The Fall of Khartoum and the Carnage of War\n\nFor those who knew Sudan before the war, the recent aftermath has been a head-spinning sight. Media coverage flooding social networks showed armed men in fatigues striding through the ruins of the Presidential Palace, the former seat of power in Africa's third-largest nation, now shattered and pockmarked with bullet holes. The date was Friday, March 21, 2025. That morning, the Sudanese Armed Forces had broken through the last line of resistance put up by their enemies, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Artillery boomed across the city, and the soldiers had retaken the greatest symbol of RSF dominance. It was, as most media observers noted, a turning point in the nearly two-year-old war. The question left unsaid was what this turning point leads toward. After twenty-three months of hell, the direction of the conflict remains uncertain, but if recent history is any judge, the trajectory is pointing nowhere good. Since erupting exactly two years ago on April 15, 2023, the Sudan war has gone from a bitter showdown between two generals to a full-spectrum collapse that ranks among the worst catastrophes happening anywhere on Earth. At its most basic, the fighting pits the official Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, under General Abdul Fattah al-Burhan against the paramilitary RSF under a warlord known as Hemedti. Co-leaders of a military coup that overthrew the civilian-led government in 2021, the two inevitably turned their guns on one another. But such a basic outline does not even begin to describe the carnival of horrors the warring generals have unleashed. Kicking off in the capital city before quickly radiating outwards across the nation, the fighting has been marked by extreme atrocities. In Khartoum alone, there have been reports of mass killings, kidnappings, looting, and the aerial bombardment of civilian areas. As The New York Times reported following a recent visit, entire districts have become a charred wasteland. Bullet-pocked vehicles lay scattered across deserted streets. Apartment blocks stood torched or looted, and banks were blown open. Once a sprawling metropolis of eight million, today it is estimated that a mere two million remain, eking out a living amid the shattered skyscrapers and abandoned districts. While most of the rest have fled, a vast number have likely been killed as well. In a recent study, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine used a statistical method known as capture-recapture analysis to estimate the death toll in the capital region. Between April 2023 and June 2024, long before this latest round of heavy fighting kicked off, the research team estimated that over 26,000 had been killed in the Greater Khartoum area alone. To put that in perspective, that is over half the Hamas-reported death toll for the war in Gaza during a similar timeframe.\n\n## The Rampage Through Darfur and a Nation Fractured\n\nThe war has not just been confined to Khartoum. Even as the Sudanese capital came to resemble a post-apocalyptic dystopia, other regions were sinking beneath a rising tide of blood. To the south of the capital, the region of South Kordofan erupted with its own battles. But it was to the west, in Darfur, that the worst of the fighting would take place. The homeland of the Rapid Support Forces, the vast region of Darfur was also the site of the paramilitary group’s greatest successes. Even as the army’s leadership fled Khartoum to establish a wartime government in Port Sudan, the SAF was able to keep resupplying bases it held within the capital. But in Darfur, the military was chased out of nearly every stronghold. For months, the RSF rampaged across the region, and everywhere the group went, it brought atrocities in its wake. When the city of El-Genina fell to Hemedti's troops in the summer of 2023, up to 15,000 members of the Masalit ethnic group were slaughtered in targeted killings. When the paramilitaries encircled El-Fasher and the adjoining Zamzam refugee camp, they instituted a blockade that has led to an ongoing famine for the half a million trapped in Zamzam. Elsewhere, RSF fighters engaged in sexual abuse, enslaved civilians, and committed war crimes of profound severity. By mid-2024, the RSF seemed to be on a roll, controlling all of Darfur apart from the besieged holdout city of El-Fasher. Most of Khartoum was in their hands. In the south, the agricultural states of Gezira and Sennar had been seized. The price for all this territorial acquisition has been one of the most harrowing sets of statistics from any conflict on the planet. Although the true death toll remains unknown, estimates by May of 2024 put the figure as high as 150,000. A quarter of the population had fled their homes. Today, 25 million people are facing acute hunger, while famine has taken hold in four additional regions alongside the Zamzam camp. As the independent Egyptian outlet Mada Masr wrote at the end of last summer, for over eighteen months, killing, kidnapping, looting, and occupying homes and hospitals have become daily realities for many Sudanese, both in the capital and beyond. If the fighting seemed bad last summer, though, it was about to get worse. After a year and a half of the Rapid Support Forces steamrollering all in their path, the army was preparing to launch a counterattack. How the SAF got from being on the back foot in the summer to celebrating in the ruins of the recaptured Presidential Palace would upend all the narratives surrounding this war.\n\n## The SAF Counteroffensive and the Recapture of the Capital\n\nBy the time the Sudanese Armed Forces closed in on the Presidential Palace, the fate of the Rapid Support Forces in Khartoum had already been sealed. Back in January 2025, the military had broken a long-standing RSF siege of its Signal Corps and General Command headquarters in Khartoum North, a sister city of the capital otherwise known as Bahri. Come February, the whole of Bahri was in the army’s hands, teeing up their major assault on the capital. Then came March, and the final offensive against Khartoum. According to a timeline compiled by the Sudan War Monitor, the Presidential Palace was encircled by Monday, March 17. Although Hemedti broadcast a defiant address ordering his men to stay and fight, the remaining RSF troops tried to cut and flee on Wednesday, only to be decimated by withering fire. Come Thursday, the survivors were holed up in the palace itself, unable to do anything but watch as the SAF tightened the noose. Of course, this immediate background to the victory on March 21 ignores the months of shaping operations leading up to that moment. Starting back in September 2024, the SAF captured key bridges linking the sister city of Omdurman to both Bahri and Khartoum. That done, military command pivoted to cutting off escape routes from the capital region. First, they retook the southern agricultural state of Sennar, before advancing on the province of Gezira and its capital of Wad Madani. The fall of Wad Madani in January was described as the biggest event the Sudan War had seen in months, since holding the city cut off RSF resupply routes into Khartoum. It was from this single victory that the cascade of army successes in the capital region flows. It is hard to overstate how big of a pivot this operation was. Going into September of last year, the SAF seemed doomed. The war was going so badly that there was talk about overthrowing military leader General Burhan. Meanwhile, the RSF was presenting itself to other nations as an alternative government to Burhan’s crumbling regime. The Polish Institute of International Affairs lists the countries Hemedti toured in 2024, where he was received like a head of state, including Kenya, Uganda, Djibouti, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and South Africa. At the same time, the paramilitaries cut a deal with deposed Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, lending their rule a sheen of legitimacy. This legitimacy was helped by their holding of the Presidential Palace and much of the capital. This is a major reason why retaking Khartoum has been such a significant objective for the military. The Sudan War Monitor wrote in the immediate aftermath of its capture that the fall of the presidential palace represents both a tactical and symbolic victory for the Sudanese army, reasserting its legitimacy in the capital and marking a decisive turning point in the conflict. The palace, a long-standing symbol of Sudanese governance, had been a target for the RSF, which sought to rival the army’s legitimacy by controlling it.\n\n## Geopolitical Shifts, Foreign Backers, and Unlikely Alliances\n\nThe Rapid Support Forces are not the only ones accused of war crimes. While the atmosphere from Sudan may currently reflect major celebrations that the army is on a winning streak, the SAF forces have their own dark record. General Burhan’s troops indiscriminately shell civilian areas, use starvation as a weapon of war, and have been sanctioned by the United States for the death and suffering they have unleashed. This makes it all the more intriguing as to why the SAF now seem to be headed for victory. It is not just superior military tactics that made the recent push into the capital possible, but a series of geopolitical shifts and miscalculations destined to reverberate across the Islamic world. When the Sudan war broke out, almost everyone assumed that the army would win a swift and crushing victory over the RSF. After all, the military possessed both air power and artillery. With two such overwhelming advantages, it seemed impossible for the RSF to compete. The answer to how they survived lies in the network of foreign backers aligned with Hemedti. Although a direct descendant of the Janjaweed militias that carried out the Darfur genocide, the RSF started the war with powerful allies. Specifically, the paramilitaries had fought for the United Arab Emirates in Yemen, and Abu Dhabi seemed ready to return the favor. Using an airbase in Chad disguised as a field hospital, the UAE began facilitating massive weapons transfers to the RSF. At the same time, the Wagner Group intervened to help the paramilitaries with air defense. Flush with guns, the RSF were able to quickly neutralize the army's advantages. This process only sped up as mercenaries poured across the borders, swelling the group's ranks. Born out of the nomadic Arab herders who had long dominated life in Darfur, the RSF was able to attract volunteers from other nomad groups in Chad and Niger. Likewise, professional fighters from Libya, South Sudan, and Ethiopia made their way overland to join the fight. While the army had its own outside backers, principally Egypt, the sheer wealth of the network supporting the RSF made it hard to compete. Abu Dhabi reportedly even bribed Cairo to reduce its support, promising investments totaling $35 billion. However, the SAF were not completely abandoned. Turkey has been accused of clandestinely shipping arms to both sides, while Russia appears to have switched its support from the RSF to the military in return for potential access to a Red Sea port. But by far the biggest outside actor helping the SAF today is Iran. Having sat on the sidelines for the first year of the war, the Islamic Republic threw its weight behind the army at the very end of 2023. By the summer of 2024, regular weapons deliveries from Tehran were making their way to Port Sudan. Not long after, the military launched its counteroffensive. Yet had support begun and ended with Iran, the fall of Khartoum would not have occurred. To advance as they are doing today, the army needed allies inside Sudan as well. When the war erupted, Sudan was already a patchwork of ethnic militias and armed rebels, many of whom had long fought against the central government. With the army representing that old era of centralized control under an Islamist regime, many of these groups were happy to sit out the fight, provided it did not impact their region or kinfolk. But as the war ground on, forced choices emerged. While a handful, such as the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North, aligned with the RSF, plenty more decided to back the army. Despite the army's callous bombarding of civilian areas, the treatment of conquered populations by the RSF was orders of magnitude worse, driving disparate groups—from the ethnically Zaghawa Darfur Joint Protection Force to pro-democracy activists—to form an unstable alliance with the military to defeat Hemedti’s forces.\n\n## The Looming Battle for Darfur and the Threat of Regional Spillover\n\nWhile the Sudanese Armed Forces have built up a wide network of alliances capable of inflicting stinging defeats on the paramilitaries, it remains an open question as to whether the Rapid Support Forces can be totally defeated. Although Hemedti may have lost Khartoum, completely driving his men out of Sudan might be more difficult than the international community is willing to admit. The coming battleground is Darfur, a largely arid region made up of five states in Sudan’s far west that is home to roughly eleven million people. It is unimaginably vast, capable of swallowing California and almost rivaling Spain in sheer size. It is also the home region of the RSF and the place where they have put down the deepest roots into governing structures. In four of those states, the army has been completely expelled. In the fifth, North Darfur, it remains only as a minor presence holed up in its 6th Infantry Division headquarters in the city of El-Fasher. El-Fasher, a city of around 1.5 million, has been under siege by the RSF for almost a year. The fact that it is besieged rather than in RSF hands is mostly thanks to the Joint Forces, local ethnic militias that have sided with the army. But even while they have successfully kept the RSF from overthrowing and looting the city by repelling over 180 attacks, signs indicate that time may be running out. The day before Khartoum’s Presidential Palace fell to the military, the RSF took control of the desert city of Al-Maliha. While small, Al-Maliha sits on a strategic crossroads heading towards El-Fasher. With its conquest, army efforts to relieve the siege have become significantly harder. The RSF continues to draw on a strong local base of support in parts of Darfur, particularly in the south and east, supplemented by continuous foreign reinforcement. The Polish Institute of International Affairs recently noted that the RSF has been sourcing reinforcements through Libya, including Colombian mercenaries recruited by the UAE and columns of combat vehicles from General Khalifa Haftar's forces. This deep entrenchment raises severe concerns about regional spillover and the durability of the army's coalition. Lieutenant General Yasser Al-Atta, deputy commander of the Sudanese armed forces, recently threatened to bomb the UAE’s resupply base in neighboring Chad, prompting Chad to warn that such a move would amount to a declaration of war. Atta likewise threatened to attack RSF outposts in South Sudan. This points to one of the international community’s biggest worries: the potential for the conflict to destabilize neighboring nations, with South Sudan already appearing on the brink of its own civil war. Furthermore, as the army marches west, its fragile coalition of historic rivals, united only by their opposition to the RSF, may fracture. If elements of the RSF retreat to the desert to launch a devastating hit-and-run insurgency, the military's effectiveness could be severely limited. Hemedti has sought to establish a parallel government based in the west and south, mimicking the fragmented Libya model, an outcome universally despised by the Sudanese public given the RSF's widespread brutality. Consequently, the worst of the fighting may still be ahead. As the planet’s most horrific conflict reaches its climax, the final act is likely to be apocalyptic, fueled by outside actors desperate for Sudanese gold and Red Sea ports, while the civilian population continues to suffer the devastating consequences of a proxy war.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### How did the Sudanese Civil War start?\n\nThe war erupted on April 15, 2023, as a showdown between the two generals who had jointly led the 2021 military coup: General Abdul Fattah al-Burhan commanding the Sudanese Armed Forces and Hemedti commanding the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Co-leaders of the coup that overthrew the civilian-led government, the two inevitably turned their guns on each other, unleashing a conflict that quickly spread from Khartoum across the country.\n\n### What was the significance of the fall of Khartoum's Presidential Palace on March 21, 2025?\n\nThe SAF's recapture of the Presidential Palace was both a tactical and symbolic turning point. The palace had been held by the RSF, lending the paramilitaries a sheen of legitimacy as a rival government; retaking it reasserted the army's claim to national authority. The victory followed months of shaping operations, most critically the January 2025 recapture of Wad Madani, which cut off RSF resupply routes into the capital.\n\n### What atrocities did the Rapid Support Forces commit during the war?\n\nThe RSF carried out some of the conflict's worst violence. When El-Genina fell in the summer of 2023, up to 15,000 members of the Masalit ethnic group were slaughtered in targeted killings. The RSF also besieged El-Fasher and the Zamzam refugee camp, trapping half a million people in an ongoing famine, and committed widespread sexual violence and enslavement across the territories it occupied.\n\n### Who provided foreign support to each side?\n\nThe RSF drew heavily on the United Arab Emirates, which facilitated massive weapons transfers via an airbase in Chad disguised as a field hospital, as well as Wagner Group assistance with air defense. The SAF's most significant outside backer became Iran, which began regular weapons deliveries to Port Sudan at the end of 2023, enabling the military's subsequent counteroffensive. Egypt had initially backed the SAF but reportedly reduced support after the UAE offered Abu Dhabi investments totaling $35 billion.\n\n### Why is a final SAF victory far from certain?\n\nDarfur, home to roughly eleven million people and nearly as large as Spain, remains largely under RSF control, with the army maintaining only a small presence in El-Fasher. The RSF continues to draw on deep local roots in the region and receives ongoing foreign reinforcements through Libya. The SAF's coalition of historic rivals, united chiefly by opposition to the RSF, could fracture as the army pushes west, and the possibility of a devastating RSF insurgency in the desert cannot be ruled out.\n\n## Related Coverage\n- [Sudan's Partition: Ethnic Cleansing and the Push for a Divided State](https://warfronts.pub/geopolitics/sudan-partition-ethnic-cleansing-darfur-crisis)\n- [Is the 21st Century's Deadliest War about to Restart? And More.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/is-the-21st-centurys-deadliest-war-about-to-restart-and-more)\n- [Sudan's Ignored Genocide and the Tragic Fall of El-Fasher](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/sudans-ignored-genocide-and-tragic-fall-of-el-fasher)\n- [South Sudan is on Fire. Here's Why. (And More)](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/south-sudan-is-on-fire-heres-why-and-more)\n- [Sudan's Forgotten War: How Two Generals Plunged Africa Into Catastrophe](https://warfronts-prod.fulcrum-labs.workers.dev/conflicts/sudan-forgotten-war-burhan-hemedti-catastrophe)\n\n## Sources\n1. \n2. \n3. \n4. \n5. \n6. \n7. \n8. \n9. \n10. \n11. \n12. \n13. \n14. \n\n[1]: https://sudanwarmonitor.com/p/sudanese-military-captures-presidential\n[2]: https://pism.pl/publications/course-of-the-war-in-sudan-changes-suddenly\n[3]: https://sudanwarmonitor.com/p/rsf-captures-strategic-desert-city\n[4]: https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2025/02/20/sudans-national-army-is-on-the-brink-of-retaking-the-capital\n[5]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/world/africa/sudan-civil-war-khartoum-battle.html\n[6]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crln9lk51dro\n[7]: https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2024/invisible-and-severe-death-toll-sudan-conflict-revealed\n[8]: https://www.ft.com/content/dedeedba-9a56-463d-a998-b853f928abfd\n[9]: https://www.madamasr.com/en/2024/10/09/feature/politics/concealed-sieges-sexual-violence-in-sudans-war/\n[10]: https://www.wsj.com/world/africa/sudans-army-recaptures-presidential-palace-in-pivotal-advance-c2ecdf03\n[11]: https://apnews.com/article/sudan-rsf-military-army-khartoum-war-darfur-fc7e20cd53208233cdddc09c80be6491\n[12]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/27/sudan-staring-into-abyss-as-mass-starvation-looms-un\n[13]: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/mar/07/here-you-will-die-detainees-speak-of-executions-starvation-and-beatings-at-hands-of-sudans-rapid-support-forces\n[14]: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250405-sudan-may-never-forget-or-forgive-rsf-crimes-during-two-years-of-war/\n\n" url: https://warfronts.pub/article/sudan-civil-war-reaches-climax-fall-of-khartoum.md canonical: https://warfronts.pub/article/sudan-civil-war-reaches-climax-fall-of-khartoum datePublished: 2026-03-04 dateModified: 2026-03-04 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://warfronts.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: Warfronts image: "https://media.warfronts.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/U5TDKknYYq8/hero.jpg" type: NewsArticle contentHash: 9a6177087768308a882371970e62f2e445088dc0363e636b5454d0a679accb8f tokens: 6139 summaryUrl: https://warfronts.pub/article/sudan-civil-war-reaches-climax-fall-of-khartoum.md.summary.md --- It is one of the biggest wars the world has seen in decades, a conflict with as much geopolitical impact as the war in Ukraine, and a body count far beyond that seen in Gaza. Yet Sudan's civil war has barely made a dent in the public consciousness. While university campuses were melting down over Gaza, and world leaders were scrambling to respond to Russia's invasion of its neighbor, the carnage in Sudan has been met by deafening silence. The nation's burned cities and countless dead have been ignored by everyone from the Western media to the African Union. Until now. In March of 2025, the Sudanese Armed Forces retook the capital city following a bloody, monthslong campaign. For the first time since 2023, it is starting to look like one side may be heading towards victory. But even as the fall of Khartoum brings Sudan roaring back into the headlines, questions still remain regarding what happens next, and if the world's worst war could really be reaching its climax. These are questions that will have massive implications for the entire planet. ## Key Takeaways - On March 21, 2025, the Sudanese Armed Forces successfully recaptured the Presidential Palace in Khartoum, marking a major turning point in the two-year war. - A statistical analysis by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimated that over 26,000 people were killed in the Greater Khartoum area alone between April 2023 and June 2024. - The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces carried out extreme atrocities in Darfur, including the targeted slaughter of up to 15,000 members of the Masalit ethnic group in El-Genina. - The fall of Wad Madani in January 2025 allowed the Sudanese Armed Forces to cut off critical RSF resupply routes, leading to a cascade of military successes in the capital region. - The RSF has relied heavily on an extensive network of foreign backers, receiving massive weapons transfers facilitated by the United Arab Emirates and air defense assistance from the Wagner Group. - Iran emerged as the biggest outside actor supporting the Sudanese Armed Forces, with regular weapons deliveries to Port Sudan enabling the military's successful 2024 counteroffensive. ## The Fall of Khartoum and the Carnage of War For those who knew Sudan before the war, the recent aftermath has been a head-spinning sight. Media coverage flooding social networks showed armed men in fatigues striding through the ruins of the Presidential Palace, the former seat of power in Africa's third-largest nation, now shattered and pockmarked with bullet holes. The date was Friday, March 21, 2025. That morning, the Sudanese Armed Forces had broken through the last line of resistance put up by their enemies, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Artillery boomed across the city, and the soldiers had retaken the greatest symbol of RSF dominance. It was, as most media observers noted, a turning point in the nearly two-year-old war. The question left unsaid was what this turning point leads toward. After twenty-three months of hell, the direction of the conflict remains uncertain, but if recent history is any judge, the trajectory is pointing nowhere good. Since erupting exactly two years ago on April 15, 2023, the Sudan war has gone from a bitter showdown between two generals to a full-spectrum collapse that ranks among the worst catastrophes happening anywhere on Earth. At its most basic, the fighting pits the official Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, under General Abdul Fattah al-Burhan against the paramilitary RSF under a warlord known as Hemedti. Co-leaders of a military coup that overthrew the civilian-led government in 2021, the two inevitably turned their guns on one another. But such a basic outline does not even begin to describe the carnival of horrors the warring generals have unleashed. Kicking off in the capital city before quickly radiating outwards across the nation, the fighting has been marked by extreme atrocities. In Khartoum alone, there have been reports of mass killings, kidnappings, looting, and the aerial bombardment of civilian areas. As The New York Times reported following a recent visit, entire districts have become a charred wasteland. Bullet-pocked vehicles lay scattered across deserted streets. Apartment blocks stood torched or looted, and banks were blown open. Once a sprawling metropolis of eight million, today it is estimated that a mere two million remain, eking out a living amid the shattered skyscrapers and abandoned districts. While most of the rest have fled, a vast number have likely been killed as well. In a recent study, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine used a statistical method known as capture-recapture analysis to estimate the death toll in the capital region. Between April 2023 and June 2024, long before this latest round of heavy fighting kicked off, the research team estimated that over 26,000 had been killed in the Greater Khartoum area alone. To put that in perspective, that is over half the Hamas-reported death toll for the war in Gaza during a similar timeframe. ## The Rampage Through Darfur and a Nation Fractured The war has not just been confined to Khartoum. Even as the Sudanese capital came to resemble a post-apocalyptic dystopia, other regions were sinking beneath a rising tide of blood. To the south of the capital, the region of South Kordofan erupted with its own battles. But it was to the west, in Darfur, that the worst of the fighting would take place. The homeland of the Rapid Support Forces, the vast region of Darfur was also the site of the paramilitary group’s greatest successes. Even as the army’s leadership fled Khartoum to establish a wartime government in Port Sudan, the SAF was able to keep resupplying bases it held within the capital. But in Darfur, the military was chased out of nearly every stronghold. For months, the RSF rampaged across the region, and everywhere the group went, it brought atrocities in its wake. When the city of El-Genina fell to Hemedti's troops in the summer of 2023, up to 15,000 members of the Masalit ethnic group were slaughtered in targeted killings. When the paramilitaries encircled El-Fasher and the adjoining Zamzam refugee camp, they instituted a blockade that has led to an ongoing famine for the half a million trapped in Zamzam. Elsewhere, RSF fighters engaged in sexual abuse, enslaved civilians, and committed war crimes of profound severity. By mid-2024, the RSF seemed to be on a roll, controlling all of Darfur apart from the besieged holdout city of El-Fasher. Most of Khartoum was in their hands. In the south, the agricultural states of Gezira and Sennar had been seized. The price for all this territorial acquisition has been one of the most harrowing sets of statistics from any conflict on the planet. Although the true death toll remains unknown, estimates by May of 2024 put the figure as high as 150,000. A quarter of the population had fled their homes. Today, 25 million people are facing acute hunger, while famine has taken hold in four additional regions alongside the Zamzam camp. As the independent Egyptian outlet Mada Masr wrote at the end of last summer, for over eighteen months, killing, kidnapping, looting, and occupying homes and hospitals have become daily realities for many Sudanese, both in the capital and beyond. If the fighting seemed bad last summer, though, it was about to get worse. After a year and a half of the Rapid Support Forces steamrollering all in their path, the army was preparing to launch a counterattack. How the SAF got from being on the back foot in the summer to celebrating in the ruins of the recaptured Presidential Palace would upend all the narratives surrounding this war. ## The SAF Counteroffensive and the Recapture of the Capital By the time the Sudanese Armed Forces closed in on the Presidential Palace, the fate of the Rapid Support Forces in Khartoum had already been sealed. Back in January 2025, the military had broken a long-standing RSF siege of its Signal Corps and General Command headquarters in Khartoum North, a sister city of the capital otherwise known as Bahri. Come February, the whole of Bahri was in the army’s hands, teeing up their major assault on the capital. Then came March, and the final offensive against Khartoum. According to a timeline compiled by the Sudan War Monitor, the Presidential Palace was encircled by Monday, March 17. Although Hemedti broadcast a defiant address ordering his men to stay and fight, the remaining RSF troops tried to cut and flee on Wednesday, only to be decimated by withering fire. Come Thursday, the survivors were holed up in the palace itself, unable to do anything but watch as the SAF tightened the noose. Of course, this immediate background to the victory on March 21 ignores the months of shaping operations leading up to that moment. Starting back in September 2024, the SAF captured key bridges linking the sister city of Omdurman to both Bahri and Khartoum. That done, military command pivoted to cutting off escape routes from the capital region. First, they retook the southern agricultural state of Sennar, before advancing on the province of Gezira and its capital of Wad Madani. The fall of Wad Madani in January was described as the biggest event the Sudan War had seen in months, since holding the city cut off RSF resupply routes into Khartoum. It was from this single victory that the cascade of army successes in the capital region flows. It is hard to overstate how big of a pivot this operation was. Going into September of last year, the SAF seemed doomed. The war was going so badly that there was talk about overthrowing military leader General Burhan. Meanwhile, the RSF was presenting itself to other nations as an alternative government to Burhan’s crumbling regime. The Polish Institute of International Affairs lists the countries Hemedti toured in 2024, where he was received like a head of state, including Kenya, Uganda, Djibouti, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and South Africa. At the same time, the paramilitaries cut a deal with deposed Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, lending their rule a sheen of legitimacy. This legitimacy was helped by their holding of the Presidential Palace and much of the capital. This is a major reason why retaking Khartoum has been such a significant objective for the military. The Sudan War Monitor wrote in the immediate aftermath of its capture that the fall of the presidential palace represents both a tactical and symbolic victory for the Sudanese army, reasserting its legitimacy in the capital and marking a decisive turning point in the conflict. The palace, a long-standing symbol of Sudanese governance, had been a target for the RSF, which sought to rival the army’s legitimacy by controlling it. ## Geopolitical Shifts, Foreign Backers, and Unlikely Alliances The Rapid Support Forces are not the only ones accused of war crimes. While the atmosphere from Sudan may currently reflect major celebrations that the army is on a winning streak, the SAF forces have their own dark record. General Burhan’s troops indiscriminately shell civilian areas, use starvation as a weapon of war, and have been sanctioned by the United States for the death and suffering they have unleashed. This makes it all the more intriguing as to why the SAF now seem to be headed for victory. It is not just superior military tactics that made the recent push into the capital possible, but a series of geopolitical shifts and miscalculations destined to reverberate across the Islamic world. When the Sudan war broke out, almost everyone assumed that the army would win a swift and crushing victory over the RSF. After all, the military possessed both air power and artillery. With two such overwhelming advantages, it seemed impossible for the RSF to compete. The answer to how they survived lies in the network of foreign backers aligned with Hemedti. Although a direct descendant of the Janjaweed militias that carried out the Darfur genocide, the RSF started the war with powerful allies. Specifically, the paramilitaries had fought for the United Arab Emirates in Yemen, and Abu Dhabi seemed ready to return the favor. Using an airbase in Chad disguised as a field hospital, the UAE began facilitating massive weapons transfers to the RSF. At the same time, the Wagner Group intervened to help the paramilitaries with air defense. Flush with guns, the RSF were able to quickly neutralize the army's advantages. This process only sped up as mercenaries poured across the borders, swelling the group's ranks. Born out of the nomadic Arab herders who had long dominated life in Darfur, the RSF was able to attract volunteers from other nomad groups in Chad and Niger. Likewise, professional fighters from Libya, South Sudan, and Ethiopia made their way overland to join the fight. While the army had its own outside backers, principally Egypt, the sheer wealth of the network supporting the RSF made it hard to compete. Abu Dhabi reportedly even bribed Cairo to reduce its support, promising investments totaling $35 billion. However, the SAF were not completely abandoned. Turkey has been accused of clandestinely shipping arms to both sides, while Russia appears to have switched its support from the RSF to the military in return for potential access to a Red Sea port. But by far the biggest outside actor helping the SAF today is Iran. Having sat on the sidelines for the first year of the war, the Islamic Republic threw its weight behind the army at the very end of 2023. By the summer of 2024, regular weapons deliveries from Tehran were making their way to Port Sudan. Not long after, the military launched its counteroffensive. Yet had support begun and ended with Iran, the fall of Khartoum would not have occurred. To advance as they are doing today, the army needed allies inside Sudan as well. When the war erupted, Sudan was already a patchwork of ethnic militias and armed rebels, many of whom had long fought against the central government. With the army representing that old era of centralized control under an Islamist regime, many of these groups were happy to sit out the fight, provided it did not impact their region or kinfolk. But as the war ground on, forced choices emerged. While a handful, such as the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North, aligned with the RSF, plenty more decided to back the army. Despite the army's callous bombarding of civilian areas, the treatment of conquered populations by the RSF was orders of magnitude worse, driving disparate groups—from the ethnically Zaghawa Darfur Joint Protection Force to pro-democracy activists—to form an unstable alliance with the military to defeat Hemedti’s forces. ## The Looming Battle for Darfur and the Threat of Regional Spillover While the Sudanese Armed Forces have built up a wide network of alliances capable of inflicting stinging defeats on the paramilitaries, it remains an open question as to whether the Rapid Support Forces can be totally defeated. Although Hemedti may have lost Khartoum, completely driving his men out of Sudan might be more difficult than the international community is willing to admit. The coming battleground is Darfur, a largely arid region made up of five states in Sudan’s far west that is home to roughly eleven million people. It is unimaginably vast, capable of swallowing California and almost rivaling Spain in sheer size. It is also the home region of the RSF and the place where they have put down the deepest roots into governing structures. In four of those states, the army has been completely expelled. In the fifth, North Darfur, it remains only as a minor presence holed up in its 6th Infantry Division headquarters in the city of El-Fasher. El-Fasher, a city of around 1.5 million, has been under siege by the RSF for almost a year. The fact that it is besieged rather than in RSF hands is mostly thanks to the Joint Forces, local ethnic militias that have sided with the army. But even while they have successfully kept the RSF from overthrowing and looting the city by repelling over 180 attacks, signs indicate that time may be running out. The day before Khartoum’s Presidential Palace fell to the military, the RSF took control of the desert city of Al-Maliha. While small, Al-Maliha sits on a strategic crossroads heading towards El-Fasher. With its conquest, army efforts to relieve the siege have become significantly harder. The RSF continues to draw on a strong local base of support in parts of Darfur, particularly in the south and east, supplemented by continuous foreign reinforcement. The Polish Institute of International Affairs recently noted that the RSF has been sourcing reinforcements through Libya, including Colombian mercenaries recruited by the UAE and columns of combat vehicles from General Khalifa Haftar's forces. This deep entrenchment raises severe concerns about regional spillover and the durability of the army's coalition. Lieutenant General Yasser Al-Atta, deputy commander of the Sudanese armed forces, recently threatened to bomb the UAE’s resupply base in neighboring Chad, prompting Chad to warn that such a move would amount to a declaration of war. Atta likewise threatened to attack RSF outposts in South Sudan. This points to one of the international community’s biggest worries: the potential for the conflict to destabilize neighboring nations, with South Sudan already appearing on the brink of its own civil war. Furthermore, as the army marches west, its fragile coalition of historic rivals, united only by their opposition to the RSF, may fracture. If elements of the RSF retreat to the desert to launch a devastating hit-and-run insurgency, the military's effectiveness could be severely limited. Hemedti has sought to establish a parallel government based in the west and south, mimicking the fragmented Libya model, an outcome universally despised by the Sudanese public given the RSF's widespread brutality. Consequently, the worst of the fighting may still be ahead. As the planet’s most horrific conflict reaches its climax, the final act is likely to be apocalyptic, fueled by outside actors desperate for Sudanese gold and Red Sea ports, while the civilian population continues to suffer the devastating consequences of a proxy war. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How did the Sudanese Civil War start? The war erupted on April 15, 2023, as a showdown between the two generals who had jointly led the 2021 military coup: General Abdul Fattah al-Burhan commanding the Sudanese Armed Forces and Hemedti commanding the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Co-leaders of the coup that overthrew the civilian-led government, the two inevitably turned their guns on each other, unleashing a conflict that quickly spread from Khartoum across the country. ### What was the significance of the fall of Khartoum's Presidential Palace on March 21, 2025? The SAF's recapture of the Presidential Palace was both a tactical and symbolic turning point. The palace had been held by the RSF, lending the paramilitaries a sheen of legitimacy as a rival government; retaking it reasserted the army's claim to national authority. The victory followed months of shaping operations, most critically the January 2025 recapture of Wad Madani, which cut off RSF resupply routes into the capital. ### What atrocities did the Rapid Support Forces commit during the war? The RSF carried out some of the conflict's worst violence. When El-Genina fell in the summer of 2023, up to 15,000 members of the Masalit ethnic group were slaughtered in targeted killings. The RSF also besieged El-Fasher and the Zamzam refugee camp, trapping half a million people in an ongoing famine, and committed widespread sexual violence and enslavement across the territories it occupied. ### Who provided foreign support to each side? The RSF drew heavily on the United Arab Emirates, which facilitated massive weapons transfers via an airbase in Chad disguised as a field hospital, as well as Wagner Group assistance with air defense. The SAF's most significant outside backer became Iran, which began regular weapons deliveries to Port Sudan at the end of 2023, enabling the military's subsequent counteroffensive. Egypt had initially backed the SAF but reportedly reduced support after the UAE offered Abu Dhabi investments totaling $35 billion. ### Why is a final SAF victory far from certain? Darfur, home to roughly eleven million people and nearly as large as Spain, remains largely under RSF control, with the army maintaining only a small presence in El-Fasher. The RSF continues to draw on deep local roots in the region and receives ongoing foreign reinforcements through Libya. The SAF's coalition of historic rivals, united chiefly by opposition to the RSF, could fracture as the army pushes west, and the possibility of a devastating RSF insurgency in the desert cannot be ruled out. ## Related Coverage - [Sudan's Partition: Ethnic Cleansing and the Push for a Divided State](https://warfronts.pub/geopolitics/sudan-partition-ethnic-cleansing-darfur-crisis) - [Is the 21st Century's Deadliest War about to Restart? And More.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/is-the-21st-centurys-deadliest-war-about-to-restart-and-more) - [Sudan's Ignored Genocide and the Tragic Fall of El-Fasher](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/sudans-ignored-genocide-and-tragic-fall-of-el-fasher) - [South Sudan is on Fire. Here's Why. (And More)](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/south-sudan-is-on-fire-heres-why-and-more) - [Sudan's Forgotten War: How Two Generals Plunged Africa Into Catastrophe](https://warfronts-prod.fulcrum-labs.workers.dev/conflicts/sudan-forgotten-war-burhan-hemedti-catastrophe) ## Sources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. [1]: https://sudanwarmonitor.com/p/sudanese-military-captures-presidential [2]: https://pism.pl/publications/course-of-the-war-in-sudan-changes-suddenly [3]: https://sudanwarmonitor.com/p/rsf-captures-strategic-desert-city [4]: https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2025/02/20/sudans-national-army-is-on-the-brink-of-retaking-the-capital [5]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/world/africa/sudan-civil-war-khartoum-battle.html [6]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crln9lk51dro [7]: https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2024/invisible-and-severe-death-toll-sudan-conflict-revealed [8]: https://www.ft.com/content/dedeedba-9a56-463d-a998-b853f928abfd [9]: https://www.madamasr.com/en/2024/10/09/feature/politics/concealed-sieges-sexual-violence-in-sudans-war/ [10]: https://www.wsj.com/world/africa/sudans-army-recaptures-presidential-palace-in-pivotal-advance-c2ecdf03 [11]: https://apnews.com/article/sudan-rsf-military-army-khartoum-war-darfur-fc7e20cd53208233cdddc09c80be6491 [12]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/27/sudan-staring-into-abyss-as-mass-starvation-looms-un [13]: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/mar/07/here-you-will-die-detainees-speak-of-executions-starvation-and-beatings-at-hands-of-sudans-rapid-support-forces [14]: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250405-sudan-may-never-forget-or-forgive-rsf-crimes-during-two-years-of-war/ <!-- youtube:U5TDKknYYq8 -->