Sudan’s Army Close to Retaking its Own Capital From Rebels
Offensive reverses months of setbacks for military government while rebel discipline shows signs of fraying
After a lightning offensive, Sudan’s military is close to regaining control of the country’s capital, Khartoum, for the first time since a rebel general plunged the East African nation into civil war nearly two years ago.
Government troops have seized multiple neighborhoods in the ruins of central Khartoum in recent days and cornered rebels of the Rapid Support Forces in their most significant remaining stronghold, the Republican Palace, the presidential residence.
At its core, the war is a power struggle between the country’s de facto president, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and his former No. 2, RSF commander Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, that has left tens of thousands dead, and over 12 million displaced from their homes, according to the United Nations.
“We are ready to remove the militias from every corner of Sudan,” Burhan, dressed in fatigues, told cheering soldiers after retaking the military headquarters late last month.
The U.S. in January accused Dagalo of genocide because his mostly Arab paramilitary force has killed thousands of Black Sudanese in the country’s western Darfur region. It was the second alleged genocide committed by the RSF, whose precursor, the Janjaweed militias, killed some 200,000 Black Sudanese in the early 2000s.
The U.S. also accused Burhan of war crimes, mostly because his warplanes have bombed civilian populations.
The RSF seized control of most of the capital soon after the war started in April 2023, setting up checkpoints on streets and posting hundreds of snipers on rooftops in a city largely reduced to rubble by the fighting.
The Sudanese army struggled to regain its footing.
In recent weeks, however, the army has recaptured the country’s second-largest city, Wad Madani, and taken a string of towns close to the South Sudan border.
Last month, government forces retook the country’s largest oil refinery, located north of Khartoum, and broke a siege of the army’s main Khartoum base.
“The RSF has seen their supply lines stretched thin after two years of war,” said Cameron Hudson, a former State Department official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. “They are struggling with desertions and [with] Sudan’s military that is for the first time at its full strength.”
Analysts say the army’s resurgence has been powered by new weapons from Iran, an influx of recruits and the backing of volunteer militias.
Last week, Doctors Without Borders, the French medical charity, said it was contending with a mass influx of wounded in Khartoum and Darfur. Some 58 people were killed and more than 150 others injured after the RSF shelled a busy market in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman, according to the Sudanese health ministry.
“The violence continues to ruin lives, making it harder for people to access healthcare and putting healthcare workers at risk,” said Ozan Agbas, the Doctors Without Borders emergency manager.
The battle for control of the Republican Palace could prove decisive for the RSF, whose discipline has begun to show signs of fraying. Losing the palace and adjacent neighborhoods south of the Blue Nile would further disrupt the rebels’ ability to receive supplies from western Sudan, their home base.
RSF commander Dagalo, widely known by his nickname, Hemedti, hasn’t appeared in public for months, raising speculation about his whereabouts. His elder brother, Abdul Rahim Hamdan Dagalo, the rebel group’s deputy commander, has assumed command.
His absence has demoralized his fighters, hundreds of whom have retreated from the capital toward their homes in Darfur, according to Sudanese officials and activists.
“Most RSF fighters feel Hemedti has abandoned them,” a former RSF fighter living in exile in Uganda told The Wall Street Journal.
An RSF spokesman said Saturday that reports of the army’s victories were exaggerated. “The RSF still controls most of the capital Khartoum,” he said.
Should the RSF lose more ground in the city, some analysts expect the fighting to move to Darfur, raising the risk of further violence aimed at the region’s Black population.
The war’s shifting fortunes are also likely to ripple through the region, where other governments have used the conflict to advance their own interests in Sudan, which is situated along key Red Sea trade routes.
For instance, the United Arab Emirates armed the rebels as recently as 2023, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
An Emirati official denied the Gulf state is taking sides in the conflict. “We continue to urgently call for an immediate cease-fire and a peaceful resolution to this man-made conflict,” the official said. “In this regard, the U.A.E. has already made absolutely clear that it is not providing any support or supplies to either of two belligerent warring parties in Sudan.”
For its part, the Sudanese military has acknowledged receiving drones from Iran. The army’s “increasing reliance on Iran for weapons and financing presents the danger of Sudan becoming another Iranian proxy,” said Donald E. Booth, a former U.S. envoy to Sudan now with the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank.