Misery upon misery

On May 31, Kamil Idris was sworn in as prime minister of Sudan. He looked the part of an elected leader in a black three-piece suit adorned with a Sudanese flag lapel pin. A former United Nations official, Idris is a respected figure in his own right. But far more power lies in the hands of the man in uniform who stood directly across from him during the ceremony, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). It was Burhan who installed Idris—not a popular vote.

“The power that really matters is the Sudanese Armed Forces. So a lot of the government stuff is almost theater, in a sense,” said Joshua Meservey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Sudan is a country riven by war. It is experiencing the same level of violence as it did 20 years ago when fighting in the Darfur region garnered global attention. Since the current war broke out in April 2023, more than 150,000 people have died, and more than 11 million people have been displaced internally in what is now the world’s largest displacement crisis. Aid groups have also documented accounts of abuse, torture, rape, and ethnically motivated killings.

The current conflict is playing out between leaders of the powerful Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group and the official state military (SAF). RSF Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo formerly served as Burhan’s deputy. After the 2019 ouster of Sudan’s longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir, the two generals led a coup in 2021. But disagreements over how to integrate the RSF into the military and who would wield control spiraled into violence.

“This is a concept different than a typical civil war, where you have two sides of a population, or two sets of interests out there,” said Joseph Siegle, director of research at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. “In this case, you have two sets of ­military actors, but they don’t have any support from the general population.”

The conflict has a strong racial component. The RSF, which is rooted in Arab tribal militias, has carried out targeted, systematic attacks against black Africans in Darfur. The SAF is a more racially mixed force, with enlisted ranks increasingly including non-Arab members.

Smoke rises from explosions after RSF drone attacks on Port Sudan. Stringer / Anadolu via Getty Images

In late May, the SAF declared the greater Khartoum area, including the capital city, completely free of RSF militants, a victory that followed weeks of destruction. The RSF launched a series of drone strikes on Port Sudan in retaliation for its losses in Khartoum. The attacks ­targeted the city’s electricity and gas storage facilities and also struck densely populated ­residential areas, displacing more people.

In April, the RSF also targeted Zamzam, the country’s largest displacement camp in North Darfur, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee. At least 400 people were murdered during days of violence in the camp and also in the neighboring city, Um Kadadah.

“They fired highly explosive shells that burned down homes and some children inside these straw huts,” Saboura Abakar, a mother of four, told the Sudan Tribune. “The soldiers were repeating abusive phrases towards the camp residents.”

Many of the camp’s residents had fled from Janjaweed militias in the early 2000s and again in 2023, when the current conflict began. Those still at the camp say the RSF has now turned it into a military barracks. Mohamed Khamis Doda, a camp spokesman, told the Sudan Tribune that the rebels use them as human shields and abuse the women.

The level of sexual assaults being perpetrated, particularly in Darfur, is horrific. The Hudson Institute’s Meservey says it has become a fact of war. Both sides are guilty, he notes. But he calls the RSF worse, saying its militants “have profound contempt for black Africans. They see them as subhuman in real ways. And so that makes it much easier to perpetrate this type of violence.”

In a report published May 28, Doctors Without Borders reported treating 659 survivors of sexual violence in South Darfur between January 2024 and March 2025.

The attacks and displacement have left many without food. More than 24 million face acute hunger, according to the United Nations. Meanwhile, health agencies warn the country is “on the brink” of a public health crisis as cholera, measles, and other ailments spread.

Some media reports suggest the Trump administration’s drastic reduction in foreign aid and the dissolution of USAID have left the Sudanese people without crucial lifelines. But Meservey said it’s difficult to evaluate those claims.

“The aid agencies will say people are dying because of this, but then administration officials will say most of the life-saving aid has continued.” But because Washington is a major donor of humanitarian aid during these types of conflicts, Meservey said he suspects the USAID shutdown has had some effect.

On June 4, the Trump administration announced a travel ban on 12 countries, including Sudan. Meservey thinks this will have little impact because it was already very difficult for Sudanese to travel to America due to the war-torn conditions of their country. “The U.S. doesn’t even have a consulate presence there anymore,” he said.

Meservey believes the SAF and RSF have reached a “strategic stalemate.” But they continue fighting because they get support from outside actors.

“The [United Arab Emirates] and to some extent the Russians have been ­supporting the RSF, and then you have Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Qatar to some extent helping the SAF,” said Joseph Siegle of National Defense University. He believes the involvement of these other countries has “supercharged” the conflict even though “there isn’t popular support for either side.”

Meservey believes the only hope for peace is for a third party to convince the outside actors to stop supporting both the RSF and SAF. That third party could be America, but the Trump administration is dealing with many foreign policy challenges. Meservey thinks it is too early to tell if Trump will make Sudan a priority.

In 2003, during Sudan’s earlier crisis, reports from advocacy groups like the International Crisis Group and Amnesty International helped draw attention to the conflict. In September 2004, then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell declared the conflict a genocide during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Now, Sudan has mostly slipped out of the headlines and the minds of decision-makers in Washington.

In January, former Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed that Dagalo, the RSF leader, is guilty of genocide. The United States imposed sanctions on him and his immediate family members.

In May, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce announced new sanctions on the Sudanese government over accusations that it deployed chemical weapons last year. On June 3, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau met with ambassadors from several countries including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia to discuss the crisis in Sudan.

Meservey believes these are promising signs, but far more is needed. “As far as a really concerted diplomatic strategic push, that hasn’t happened yet.”