Sudan is sliding towards civil war

Each morning since April 15th, residents of Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, have woken to the thunder of air strikes and the crackle of nearby gunfire. In just the first four days of fighting between the forces of two rival Sudanese generals, nearly 300 people have been killed (most of them civilians) and more than 2,600 injured. Armed men have been raiding and looting homes. “It’s like ‘Call of Duty’,” says a resident whose house was struck by a bullet. Food, water and medical supplies are starting to run out.

The warning signs of an impending crisis were not hard to read. For months tensions had been building between the two most powerful figures in Sudan’s military government: General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s de facto leader since a coup in 2019; and Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo (better known as Hemedti), a warlord. He is the leader of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary unit that grew out of the Janjaweed militias accused of genocidal acts of murder and rape in Darfur. Many warned of an impending clash between the RSF and the government’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) loyal to General Burhan.