Selective outrage
It is our intention in each of our published works to address issues as objectively as possible, always with the aim of helping to understand what is happening around us, offering insights into different conflicts and situations, and proposing possible scenarios arising from them.
However, at this moment in time, objectivity is accompanied by deep outrage.
Situation in Sudan
Over the years, we have examined the situation in Sudan on more than one occasion, looking at developments in the country in general and in the Darfur region in particular, analysing different aspects related to the conflict there.
We have explained the origins of the conflict that began in 2005, which even then led to genocide and an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. We have detailed what was happening there, as well as the interests and involvement of third countries, and we have always concluded by warning of what was to come and what we are now experiencing.
Today, we delve into the heart and roots of the current conflict, highlighting its relationship with what began twenty years ago.
Civil war and conflict in Darfur
In previous articles, we have repeated ad nauseam that the so-called ‘Darfur conflict’ was much more complex than we were led to believe, and that it never stopped, let alone was resolved, and we denounced the hypocrisy of the media, international organisations and governments.
But unfortunately, everything has remained the same, and the attention it has attracted has been strikingly scarce. And for some strange reason that I cannot understand, we are totally oblivious and immune to everything that happens in Africa.
Many seem to have discovered the Darfur region in recent days, and will in all likelihood forget about it in less than a week. But for some of us, what is happening as we write these lines is nothing more than a natural, predictable and foretold consequence of the evolution of events.
The civil war that broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) under the command of General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), has, unsurprisingly, found its most violent and geopolitically decisive epicentre in the Darfur region, the region of origin of the RSF leader, which is not only another area of operations where the SAF and RSF have clashed, but has also become the main strategic objective for the territorial consolidation of the paramilitary forces.
El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, was the last major urban stronghold in Darfur that remained outside the control of the RSF. Its resistance prevented the paramilitaries from declaring total dominance over the vast western region of Sudan. The fall of El Fasher was not simply a local military victory, but a turning point that could reshape Sudan's geopolitical map and determine the RSF's future strategy.
The course of events over the last two months, culminating in the capture of this city, has marked an irreversible shift in the dynamics of the war, from a conflict over control of the capital (Khartoum) to a struggle for territorial partition, with the inhabitants of the Darfur region once again bearing the brunt of the suffering.
When analysing what is happening in Darfur, there is no choice but to do so within the context of ineffective international monitoring and intervention. The UN Security Council still maintains the mandate of the Panel of Experts originally established under Resolution 1591 (2005), whose work was extended until 12 March 2026 (21 years without achieving any results, but spending hundreds of millions of dollars). Some cite these two decades of measures taken in 2005 as an example of interest and concern for Sudan. However, it is a perfect example of the ineffectiveness and inability to solve anything, if not the lack of real will that is shown elsewhere.
Empirical evidence shows that any measure taken that is not accompanied by the application of credible force or unified political pressure is, in practice, tantamount to tacit permission for escalation. The international community's inability to protect civilians in an area with a documented history of genocide, such as Darfur, was anticipated by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, who warned that the attacks in El Fasher ‘recall the horrors’ that Darfur suffered twenty years ago. The sequence of events that unfolded during October has shown that these warnings were entirely justified, but as always, whatever is done is too little, too late.
During September, the Rapid Support Forces implemented a strategy of progressive encirclement and suffocation around El Fasher. This encirclement focused on isolating the city by cutting off supply routes used by both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the militias supporting them. The offensive was characterised by attacks on essential infrastructure. By early October, the intensity and intentionality of the fighting was demonstrated by attacks that caused at least 20 deaths in a mosque and a hospital in El Fasher.
Humanitarian crisis
The offensive was not only aimed at breaking military resistance, but also at making life unsustainable for the civilian population. Through an almost medieval siege, restricting all access to the city and attacking the places where civilians were sheltering, the RSF managed to increase pressure on the local authorities and accelerate the flight of the population, facilitating the capture of the city with less resistance.
The intensity of the fighting in Darfur has caused a mass exodus, which serves as a key indicator of the brutality of the conflict. According to the report by the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations Directorate-General (DG ECHO) of 7 October 2025, almost 2 million people had been displaced from North Darfur alone since the start of the conflict, a figure representing approximately 20% of the total number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan.
El Fasher and its surroundings have become the focus of this displacement. Continuous clashes and attacks targeting civilians have forced the population to seek refuge in outlying towns such as Tawila, Melit and Kutum. Data from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) reveal that the number of IDPs in Tawila has skyrocketed from 238,000 in March 2025 to 576,000 in September 2025.
This more than twofold increase in the number of displaced persons in a few months is not a collateral result of the fighting, but the outcome of a deliberate strategy. By overwhelming the capacity of reception points such as Tawila with massive flows of people, the RSF has used humanitarian suffocation as a tactic of war. This has caused the civilian population to be trapped in completely unsafe areas or forced to flee after borders, reducing the population that the SAF must protect and simplifying the objective of the final offensive, not to mention contributing to the ethnic cleansing of the region, something we also experienced in 2005.
Fasher was humanitarianly unviable even before it fell into the hands of the RSF. The OCHA report in October detailed that 78% of households in the city did not have access to medical services, and more than half did not have safe access to water. There is talk of a deterioration in basic services; however, this situation is not very different from what we found in 2005, and it is not as if it had improved significantly in the last twenty years. But the truth is that with even minimal pressure, as has happened, the city was indefensible from a humanitarian perspective, facilitating the final assault and the indiscriminate hunting of innocent civilians.
The attack that led to the fall of the city took place around 23 October. With the capture of El Fasher, the paramilitaries have consolidated their control over the entire Darfur region.
The most devastating aspect of the violence unleashed by the RSF has been the direct attack on medical infrastructure and the execution of vulnerable people. The execution of sick and wounded patients at Al-Saudi Maternity Hospital and other makeshift medical centres has been documented. The World Health Organisation (WHO) humanitarian operations manager, Teresa Zakaria, reported that on 28 October alone, more than 460 patients and their relatives were killed in El Fasher, and numerous images bear witness to this.
This execution of patients after the capture of the city goes beyond opportunistic war crimes; it is part of a deliberate tactic to ensure the total destruction of the healthcare infrastructure and eliminate any survivors or witnesses, guaranteeing the total displacement of the population and eliminating any possibility of community recovery. The testimonies of those displaced who managed to flee to Tawila have described a scene of terror, including ethnic and political executions, where all kinds of victims have been killed, including women and children. The images that have been disseminated of the RSF's actions cannot be described in a calm manner. They are some of the harshest we have ever seen. The estimated number of civilians killed or wounded is calculated by some sources to be in the hundreds. However, it is impossible to know the full extent of the horror in El Fasher, and these numbers are likely to be an underestimate.
The victory in El Fasher was the climax of a campaign to gain territory that began after the breakdown of the peace agreement in Khartoum. By taking the last major capital in Darfur, the RSF has achieved a military victory with profound political ramifications.
Consequences
The consolidation of control over Darfur has two immediate strategic consequences that alter the course of the Sudanese war.
First, the victory allows the RSF to free up and redirect forces to the other major front in the war: Kordofan, a region divided into three states stretching from the centre to the south that is vital because it serves as a base of operations from which the RSF can once again threaten central Sudan, including Khartoum.
This move demonstrates a high level of coordinated strategic planning, where the Darfur region, once secured, can be used as a springboard for the next phase of expansion to the east.
Secondly, the victory reinforces the RSF's political project. Territorial control over all of Darfur reinforces the legitimacy of the ‘Government’ that General Dagalo announced in August in the areas under his control. This action suggests that the RSF is seeking to evolve from a contending paramilitary force to seeking the territorial legitimacy of a de facto state entity in the west. While the SAF has established its main base in Port Sudan and the south-eastern states bordering Ethiopia, the RSF's consolidation of Darfur brings about a clear territorial division. This significantly increases the risk of a bipolar partition of Sudan, a scenario in which the fall of El Fasher becomes not the end of a battle, but the beginning of a process of balkanisation.
A process in which the territory controlled by the RSF, which we must not forget is supported by some Persian Gulf countries, making them complicit in what is happening, will continue the same ethnic cleansing that began in 2005. Darfur, with all its poverty, its vast, almost desert-like expanses, and its wadis, remains a key region for the stability of the area, with Chad being the first to be affected. The dominoes are too unstable, and we have been ignoring what is happening there for more than twenty years. This momentary attention is just that, something temporary. As we write these lines, attention to this conflict has already diminished to the point of being almost symbolic. We will return to worrying about other issues, and when we finally understand what is happening there and how it affects us, it will be too late. Perhaps it already is.