Pills and power: How drug trade fuels Sudan’s war

Sudan’s war, which erupted in April 2023 when fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), is often described through its humanitarian toll and the collapse of state authority. Less visible, but no less consequential, is the economic undercurrent that has flourished in the chaos. Among the most significant of these shadow economies is the expanding trade in narcotics. As state institutions faltered and territory fragmented under competing armed actors, Sudan increasingly became attractive terrain for illicit networks seeking weak oversight and porous borders.

The collapse of the Syrian drug economy after the fall of Bashar al‑Assad’s regime in December 2024 added a new dimension to this shift. For years, Syria had been the central hub of the regional Captagon industry, producing billions of pills during the country’s long civil war. When that infrastructure was disrupted, the networks behind production and trafficking began searching for new, fragile environments where operations could continue with minimal scrutiny. Sudan, already destabilized by war, quickly emerged as one of those spaces.

A report by the Sudanese Transparency and Policy Tracker (STPT) indicates that the capacity of producing Captagon – An addictive, amphetamine-type stimulant – in Sudan expanded dramatically in a short period. Facilities linked to the trade reportedly moved from producing around 7,200 pills per hour in June 2023 to an industrial-scale operation capable of turning out nearly 100,000 pills an hour by 2025. The shift suggests not only a surge in output but also the transformation of what had been a limited activity into a far more organized manufacturing network.

Even before the war, the RSF were involved in cross-border drug trafficking linking Sudan with Libya and Chad and extending to markets in the Gulf. These activities benefited from the political protection once provided by former Sudanese president Omar al‑Bashir. The RSF’s wide territorial presence across the country helped secure transport routes running through key border towns and cities, including Tine, Malha, El Geneina, and Mellit, before reaching the capital, Khartoum.

Moreover, another report published in October 2019 pointed to the involvement of senior RSF members in drug trafficking operations. Among those named were Captain Mohamed Juma Dagalo, known as “Junaid,” and Ahmed Adam Issa, a bodyguard to RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti. Prior to 2019, the locally grown cannabis, known as bango, was the most widespread drug in Sudan. In the early years of the conflict, however, methamphetamine began appearing more frequently, a shift that independent media attributed to the RSF’s expanding trafficking networks.

The scale of production has been matched by the growth of cultivation. In 2022, police in South Darfur estimated that around 20,000 acres of land in the Radom area were being used to grow bango, much of it concentrated along the borders with Chad and the Central African Republic. According to an official in Sudan’s anti-narcotics administration, these farms were financed by the RSF, which then smuggled the harvest across Sudan’s western borders and shared the profits with local farmers.

As the trafficking networks linked to the RSF expanded, the drug trade in Sudan reached a peak in 2025. That year recorded the largest seizures on record: more than four tons of methamphetamine were confiscated, along with millions of pills of tramadol and Captagon, in addition to tons of bango and shashmandi (Ethiopian cannabis). Authorities also documented nineteen cases linked to drug manufacturing between 2015 and 2025. Because these quantities far exceed domestic purchasing power, analysts believe Sudan has evolved beyond a consumer market into a growing transit hub and launching point for regional smuggling networks.

Much of this trafficking move through Sudan’s Red Sea corridor. According to the Global Organized Crime Index, smuggling operations increasingly rely on ports along the Red Sea, particularly as authorities have carried out repeated interceptions near Port Sudan.

Majdi Mofadal, Sudan’s permanent representative to the United Nations, has argued that three years of war have severely complicated the country’s efforts to combat narcotics trafficking. The collapse of security structures has deepened the link between armed rebellion and organized crime. In areas saturated with weapons and competing militias, trafficking networks operate with relative protection, making enforcement far more difficult and weakening the state’s ability to curb the expansion of this illegal trade.

Much of this trafficking moves through Sudan’s Red Sea corridor. According to the Global Organized Crime Index, smuggling operations increasingly rely on ports along the Red Sea, particularly as authorities have carried out repeated interceptions near Port Sudan. In January 2026, anti-smuggling units in the Red Sea state seized 176,000 Captagon pills, reinforcing the idea that Sudan has become part of a broader trafficking system rather than simply a domestic market.

Furthermore, reports from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) suggest that drugs enter Sudan through two primary corridors. One runs across the country’s western borders with Chad and the Central African Republic, connecting to Sahelian transit hubs before reaching ports on the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. The second is part of a larger international network stretching from Afghanistan through Iran and the Gulf before reaching East and North Africa. Together these routes place Sudan at a strategic crossroads within a wider regional smuggling architecture.

International actors have also been drawn into the emerging networks. The New Lines Institute has cited statements from Syria’s Interior Ministry suggesting that figures linked to Assad’s former regime expanded drug operations into parts of Africa, exploiting Sudan’s war to establish new manufacturing and trafficking channels. According to the institute, precursor chemicals are being smuggled from Syria and Libya, while shipments of materials used in production have also arrived from India.

A former RSF officer told investigators that narcotics were transported from production areas north of Khartoum – territory controlled by the RSF until May 2025 – across the Butana plains toward the Red Sea. The shipments reportedly moved with the assistance of the Sudan Shield Forces, a militia that had once been aligned with the RSF before breaking away in October 2024. Sudan’s Interior Ministry has also accused the RSF of using forty-three islands in the Red Sea as staging points for maritime smuggling operations.

Inside Sudan, a web of militias, tribal groups, and criminal actors sustains the trade. Investigations indicate that the RSF have worked with the alleged African drug trafficker Moussa Mbilo to facilitate smuggling operations.

These developments have raised concerns in the Gulf, particularly as tighter monitoring along land borders pushes traffickers toward maritime routes. On January 19, 2026, anti-smuggling forces in Red Sea state seized roughly 486 kilograms of narcotics in what Sudan’s state news agency described as the largest such operation in the region in years. The significance lies not only in the quantity but also in the destination: stimulants such as Captagon remain among the most sought-after drugs among youth in several Gulf countries.

Policy analysts warn that Sudan’s emerging role could reshape regional trafficking patterns. A senior policy director at the FDD Action argues that Sudan is becoming an increasingly important hub for the production and smuggling of Captagon. Rather than eliminating the trade, the fall of Assad’s regime may simply have dispersed it, as networks attempt to compensate for the closure of laboratories in Syria by relocating elsewhere.

Inside Sudan, a web of militias, tribal groups, and criminal actors sustains the trade. Investigations indicate that the RSF have worked with the alleged African drug trafficker Moussa Mbilo to facilitate smuggling operations, in coordination with RSF commander Abdel Rahim Dagalo, who reportedly oversees bango plantations in Darfur. In territories controlled by the RSF, reports suggest that drug commerce is conducted openly, generating revenue that helps finance military operations and expand influence in a fragmented security landscape.

Armed tribal groups aligned with the RSF have also entered the trade. Among the most prominent is the Rizeigat tribe, whose networks help move drugs through conflict zones. The city of El-Daein in East Darfur, home to many members of the tribe, has become a key transit point for shipments traveling from production areas in South Darfur toward northern and eastern Sudan. These tribal networks play a central role in sustaining the illicit economy that has grown alongside the war.

Further evidence of the trade’s entanglement with armed groups appears in reports implicating senior figures in the Sudan Shield militia. One of them, Bashir Hamour, is said to be involved in a wider trafficking network, of both people and narcotics, extending from Ethiopia to Somalia. These reports where anchored when Sudanese armed forces entered the town of Al-Aylafoun, an area previously controlled by the militia, and discovered six barrels filled with drugs. Hamour is also believed to maintain close ties with Hemedti, underscoring the overlap between militia leadership and cross-border trafficking operations.

Taken together, these developments suggest that Sudan is no longer simply a battlefield defined by internal conflict. It is becoming a regional hub where the interests of militias, tribal actors, military elites, and transnational criminal networks intersect. The result is a war economy that binds armed conflict to the expansion of illicit markets. As long as security institutions remain fractured and production capacity continues to grow, dismantling these networks will be difficult without broader reforms capable of restoring state authority and severing the link between war and the shadow economy that now surrounds it.