Sudan: A Year of War A

Conflict erupted in April 2023 in the heart of Hemedti’s RSF has outmatched the army the capital, Khartoum, amid a standoff over for much of the war, seizing most of Khartoum plans to fold the paramilitary Rapid Support in the early days of conflict and keeping the INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP · 11 APRIL 2024 2 momentum for some time as its foe struggled to by joining army training camps or organisi. [...] The army is also likely to seek By the end of 2023, some Sudanese wondered if to oust the RSF from the oil refinery north of the RSF would continue marching east to assail Khartoum, which the paramilitaries still rely the army’s new redoubt in Port Sudan on the on for fuel. [...] Several of the armed groups from cally driven violence, along the lines of the mass Darfur have aligned themselves with the army killing and displacement of non-Arabs in West and even joined the conflict in Khartoum and Darfur by the RSF and its affiliates and simi- Gezira, sparking concerns that the RSF and lar depredations by the army targeting Arabs affiliated militias may retaliate against ass. [...] The army the other side, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been engaged in a campaign to arm popular is the major patron of the RSF. [...] Not least, the early and mid-2000s include Bashir himself, many of the Arab and African powers involved as well as security strongman Ahmed Haroun, in the war view it as central to jostling over who is at large and reportedly active in the cur- access to and control of the strategic Red Sea, rent war.