What is happening in Sudan? Who is behind it?
Sudan is in its fourth year of a civil war that has become the world's worst humanitarian disaster, pitting the country's official military against a powerful paramilitary force, with outside nations quietly fueling both sides.
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The two sides
What began in April 2023 as a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has become the world's worst humanitarian disaster. The SAF is Sudan's regular army, navy, and air force, the country's internationally recognized military. The RSF is a separate armed force that grew out of the Janjaweed, a militia used by former dictator Omar al-Bashir to suppress uprisings in Darfur. The RSF evolved from the Janjaweed militia, an Arab-majority armed group funded by Bashir to suppress southern Sudanese rebels and fight in the Darfur War. The RSF's commander is known by the name Hemedti.
Their dispute over how, and whether, to fold the RSF into the regular army turned a political crisis into a civil war that has since fragmented into a technologically driven conflict of drones, sieges and shifting regional fronts.
Where things stand on the ground
The front lines have stabilised into a rough partition. The army, after recapturing Khartoum and the central belt through 2025, holds the centre and east, including the capital, the Red Sea hub of Port Sudan (seat of the internationally recognised government) and much of the Gezira and Blue Nile regions. The RSF consolidated the west after its bloodiest victory of the war: the capture of El Fasher on 26 October 2025, ending a two-year siege of the army's last stronghold in Darfur.
UN investigators concluded that the RSF's siege and capture of the city bore "the hallmarks of genocide", alongside documented war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The war's most dangerous point right now is El Obeid, the army-held capital of North Kordofan and the strategic hinge between central Sudan and Darfur. The RSF has sought to reimpose a blockade, and the UN has issued a "red alert" over what one official called a "functional siege": more than 83,000 displaced civilians have taken shelter in the city, and nearly 400,000 people in its vicinity face food shortages. Verified footage has placed RSF fighters within 40 kilometres of the city, and satellite imagery shows the military building a defensive earth berm around it.
Drone warfare now defines the conflict. According to the United Nations, more than 1,000 civilians were killed in drone strikes in the first five months of 2026 alone.
Who is behind it, beyond Sudan's borders
This war has not stayed inside Sudan's borders. A new report by the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan found that foreign recruitment and external support networks are fuelling the brutal conflict, calling for accountability. This action is strengthening the military capabilities of the warring parties and enabling increasingly sophisticated military operations with devastating consequences for civilians.
The United Arab Emirates is fueling the violence and stretching out the war by supplying weapons, mercenaries, and other resources to the RSF. The involvement of the Wagner Group and foreign military influence, notably from the UAE, has deepened the rivalry at the core of Sudan's crisis.
The human cost
A total of 8.6 million people have fled the war since it began in April 2023. Sudan is the world's largest hunger crisis. Famine has been declared in at least five places, including in Darfur and Nuba. Over 26.4 million people are trapped in a spiral of deteriorating food security, largely because of the fighting between the SAF and RSF.
More than 65% of the country's main hospitals are closed or destroyed. Children continue to bear the brunt of a war that is becoming increasingly deadly, with at least 330 children reported killed or injured in the first six months of 2026 alone.
International aid is only 40% funded for all of 2026, leaving millions of Sudanese facing hunger and disease. The world has largely looked away, which is the thing that makes this situation different from almost every other conflict getting attention right now.
Follow-ups
What natural resources are in Sundan?
Sudan is one of the most resource-rich countries in Africa, holding vast deposits of gold, oil, copper, iron ore, chromite, uranium, and rare earth minerals, as well as enormous stretches of fertile farmland fed by the Nile.
The big three: gold, oil, and farmland
Sudan's wealth is dominated by massive gold deposits, substantial crude oil reserves, and a global near-monopoly on gum arabic, the natural resin used in food, beverages, and pharmaceuticals.
When South Sudan split off, gold stepped in to fill the economic void. Sudan grew into the third-largest gold producer in Africa. Both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) profit from controlling mines and collecting taxes, with revenue from gold reaching an estimated $1.6 billion in 2024 alone.
Before South Sudan's secession, the petroleum industry accounted for nearly 60 percent of the Sudanese government's revenue. The ongoing conflict has devastated what remains of the oil sector, with production falling to roughly 21,000 barrels per day by late 2025 amid fears of a complete collapse.
The Blue Nile and White Nile rivers provide the water backbone for large-scale irrigation, supporting the Gezira Scheme, one of the world's largest irrigation projects. Sudan also holds approximately 80 million feddans, roughly 33.6 million hectares, of unused arable land, among the most extensive in Africa.
What else is underground
About 75 percent of Sudan's mineral resources remain unexplored, with deposits of copper, iron ore, chromite, zinc, base metals, uranium, and various rare earth elements largely untouched. Uranium and other rare elements are found in Butana, the Red Sea hills, West and South Kordofan, and Darfur. Chromite, a mineral used to make stainless steel, is extracted from the Ingessana Hills.
Why the resources make the war worse
This is the part that connects directly to what we covered earlier about the SAF and RSF. Since the war began, control over gold mines and trade routes has become a critical source of funding for both sides. Britain's Foreign Office has stated that Sudan's gold industry serves as the primary engine of its war economy, while billions of dollars' worth of gold are smuggled out annually through illicit channels to fund weapons and military operations.
Nearly all of that gold is sold via the United Arab Emirates, a country the SAF has accused of funding their enemy, the RSF. Sanctioned networks specifically exploit gold markets in Dubai and Hong Kong to move Sudanese gold into global supply chains.
Decades of conflict, mismanagement, and underinvestment have left much of Sudan's wealth untapped, or worse, fueling the very violence that prevents the country from realizing its potential.
The crises nobody is talking about deserve a room that is paying attention.
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