The attacks that struck in El-Fasher, capital of North Darfur, on Friday, 19 September, left about 90 people dead in two incidents: a drone strike on a mosque and another attack at the city market.
These events further deepen the city’s severe humanitarian crisis: El-Fasher has been under the Rapid Support Forces (R.S.F.) siege for over a year and is only one of many places where the war is inflicting atrocities on civilians across Sudan.
More than half of Sudan’s civilians face acute food insecurity, while in North Darfur, the Zamzam displaced-persons camp has endured famine conditions since 2024. Displacement has soared to around 12–13 million people, while civilians keep being subjected to R.S.F. violence, with the forces accused of having committed multiple mass rapes. On top of this comes the uncontrolled spread of diseases such as cholera and dengue due to the deterioration of health facilities.

Now in its third year, the crisis shows no sign of ending.
The conflict began on 15 April 2023, with clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces (S.A.F.), the regular Sudanese army led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the R.S.F. in Khartoum and Merowe.
The key trigger was the security decree contained in the Framework Agreement of 5 December 2022, which redefined relations between civilians and the military and envisaged the dissolution/integration of the R.S.F. into the S.A.F. without setting a clear timetable. For the S.A.F., the absence of a precise deadline for dismantling the R.S.F., which would have allowed a parallel autonomous force to remain, meant relinquishing the monopoly on security. Therefore, the confrontation escalated as each chain of command sought to prevail over the other.

However, the R.S.F. was not always in open rivalry with the S.A.F.. The R.S.F., created under Omar al-Bashir’s regime to repress growing rebellions, is the heir to the largely tribal Janjaweed militias that predated his rule.
Led by Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, they were institutionalised in 2013 and granted an independent legal basis in 2017, becoming in effect a second army alongside the S.A.F., with their own command structure and resources. After Bashir’s fall in 2019, the R.S.F. retained a central role in national security and politics, even joining the 25 October 2021 coup with the S.A.F. while preserving organisational and financial autonomy. They worked with the regular army on multiple occasions, fighting in Darfur and Yemen, and jointly planning and carrying out Bashir’s removal.

Relations began to deteriorate after the 2021 coup, mounted by both forces to halt the democratic transition launched in 2019 after Bashir’s removal, which had brought Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok to lead the country.
Following the coup and amid widespread protests, the military opened a negotiation process with pro-transition parties and Hamdok to reinstate him, which ultimately failed.
Then, in May 2022, the U.N. (U.N.I.T.A.M.S.) and the African Union set up the Trilateral Mechanism, a forum to facilitate communication among Sudan’s competing actors, which led to the 5 December 2022 Framework Agreement and, through its unresolved security-sector provisions, helped trigger the war now underway.

The difficulty of ending Sudan’s war largely stems from long-standing structural factors. In “The Dilemma of Political Transition in Sudan” (International I.D.E.A.), Atta H. el-Battahani notes that since independence in 1956, the country has experienced four waves of democratic opening, each followed by a military counter-wave, and identifies four recurring causes of failed transitions. First, the colonial legacy: under the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1899–1956), Sudan was formally ruled by Britain and Egypt but effectively administered by Britain through “indirect rule” via tribal leaders and local notables, entrenching centre–periphery inequalities and clientelist networks that outlasted decolonisation. The second factor concerns broken constitutional commitments. Repeated promises of federalism and autonomy for the South were not honoured: first in the 1950s (contributing to the 1955 mutiny and the 1958 coup), again after the 1964–65 October Revolution (Round Table recommendations shelved), then with the Addis Ababa Agreement (1972) later reversed in 1983, and even during 2005–2011 under the C.P.A. and the interim constitution, which saw democratic backsliding. Thirdly, the scholar underlines that transitions prioritised quick elections and cabinet deals while leaving the civil war and security-sector reform unsettled, so that violence and parallel chains of command persisted. Fourth, recurrent political practices such as party fragmentation and factionalism produced unstable coalitions and made substantive peace and state reforms easy to derail.

Lastly, concerning the 2019–2022 attempt at democratic transition, el-Battahani argues that, as in the four earlier failures, the absence of substantive changes in power structures, together with the persistence of clientelism, factionalism, and the militarisation of politics, doomed the process. Without those fundamental shifts in the structure of power, the transition remained procedural rather than substantive, creating the conditions for yet another military counter-wave and, ultimately, for the current war.

Beyond the structural factors, specific contingencies in the run-up to the December 2022 Framework Agreement also mattered. Pro-democracy resistance committees and other anti-military groups rejected the deal, arguing they were sidelined by closed-door talks between military and elite civilian leaders; they mobilised protests and demanded accountability for the coup and abuses.

Khidir Haroun Ahmed, a former Sudan ambassador to the United States, echoed this critique, arguing that the U.N.I.T.A.M.S. trilateral mechanism “handpicked individuals from just one segment of the Sudanese political landscape (the F.F.C.)”, leaving “the majority of Sudanese” feeling the deal reflected only “the ideologies and interests of the few.” In particular, he highlighted the lack of respect for local customs, traditions, and religion characterizing the agreement. Therefore, many perceived the deal as imposed from above, through a process that ought to have been civilian-led.

Sudan’s crisis is the result of both structural and conjunctural factors. Another key variable is the economy, above all, competition over revenue streams linked to gold. Therefore, ending the conflict and moving toward a lasting democracy will require major changes in the political order and in how the economy is governed, as well as a greater role for civilians in the institutional process. For this reason, Sudan should be supported on a path of development that promotes economic and democratic growth, not through top-down imposition, but through sustained, structural assistance.