What the fall of El-Fasher portends for the future of Sudan?

On 27 October 2025, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured El-Fasher, capital of North Darfur, in one of the critical turning points in Sudan’s recent history. After a nearly 550-day siege and more than 200 recorded attacks, the RSF overran the 6th Division base of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF; also known as al-Safwa), which was that army’s last significant outpost in Darfur. The loss of the city, catastrophic in human and symbolic terms, puts nearly all of western Sudan under RSF control and raises the spectre of a de facto partition between rival governments.

The El-Fasher siege is one of the longest urban sieges in recent history. Comparisons can be made with the Siege of Leningrad by Nazi Germany, which lasted 872 days. El-Fasher’s trial left the city devastated, and its civilian population shattered.

By April 2024, RSF forces had surrounded the city, cutting off supply routes and humanitarian corridors to over 900,000 inhabitants. The United Nations cautioned early on that an attack on the densely populated, famine-haunted area would have “devastating consequences.”

The city was subjected to continuous bombing for months. Hospitals were overwhelmed, markets and residential areas were repeatedly hit, and food supplies disappeared., according to the UN Human Rights Office, there were more than 700 civilian deaths during the siege by December 2024, and 90 per cent of homes had been damaged or looted. Both the RSF and SAF were accused of targeting civilians indiscriminately.

By August 2025, UNICEF was calling El-Fasher “the epicentre of child suffering,” with mass malnutrition, outbreaks of disease and collapsing hospitals. Hundreds more were killed in a last round of fighting in early October. Reports of a campaign of reprisals and looting followed later in the month when the RSF stormed the city.

The RSF took Al Fasher at an enormous cost, sacrificing experienced commanders and hundreds of fighters. The capture of El-Fasher was a significant setback for the Sudanese army, which had all but relinquished control over Darfur. But both SAF and RSF have traded roles multiple times since the start of Sudan’s civil war. The defeat bolsters the “Peace and Unity Government” (also known as the Ta’sis Government), a rival authority backed by the RSF that is challenging for recognition against the SAF-led government in Port Sudan.

The Emergence of a Parallel Government

Founded in Nyala, South Darfur, the Peace and Unity Self-declared Government provides a new political front for rebels as Sudan struggles through a bitterly contested period of its own history. Launched early in 2025 with a Founding Charter signed in Nairobi, the project aims to establish a secular, democratic, decentralised state — the first of its kind in Sudan’s history. The interim constitution lists eight federal regions and places Nyala as the capital of this prospective new entity.

In July 2025, a leadership was declared: Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti) as President of the Council, Abdelaziz al-Hilu (SPLM–N Kauda) as Vice President and Mohammed Hassan alTa’aishi (formerly a member of the Sovereignty Council) as Prime Minister.

Introducing other political allies such as Fadlallah Burma Nasser (Umma Party), Ibrahim al-Mirghani (Democratic Unionist Party – Original), Dr Al-Hadi Idris Yahya, a former university lecturer in Kenya and Chairman of Sudan Liberation Movement/Army - Transitional Council, Suleiman Sandal Haggar (Justice and Equality Movement – Sudan), Osama Saeed(Beja Congress) and Mabrouk Mubarak Salim(Free Lions Party).

The self-declared government is widely assumed to enjoy military, financial and political support from the United Arab Emirates, which has backed the RSF throughout the war. On its side, SAF is supported by Egypt, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Despite containing the aforementioned patchwork of parties and personnel, the legitimacy of Ta’sis is still contested: it has no international recognition, a financial system and governing capabilities beyond the RSF-controlled areas. Without a national settlement and credible humanitarian access, the Nyala administration risks becoming a temporary, divided authority rather than a genuine parallel government.

A Country Without Safe Ground

The fall of Fasher is a chilling reminder that there is now absolutely nowhere safe left in Sudan. Both the RSF and SAF are hitting airports, fuel depots and logistics centres throughout the country. RSF drones have bombed Khartoum and Port Sudan, and Hemedti has vowed to strike any airport “cooperating with” the army, raising fears of regional escalation.

With Darfur now effectively under total RSF control, the battle lines are hardening. The west belongs to the RSF; in the east and the north, including Port Sudan, Atbara, and the Nile corridor, the army still controls. Analysts caution that Sudan could slide into a Libya-style disintegration, with competing governments dug in across the country’s two halves.

Eastern Sudan, meanwhile, and especially Port Sudan and the Beja heartland, is getting ever dodgier. These marginalisations and the region’s strategic location are a ticking bomb – one drone attack or a political miscalculation could serve as a spark to set up unrest and choke humanitarian access via Sudan's only deep-water port.

Winners, Losers, and Shifting Alliances

The RSF’s rise to power has also reshaped Darfur’s internal politics. The veteran leaders Minni Minnawi and Jibril Ibrahim — both of the Zaghawa tribe, and pillars for years in Darfur’s armed movements — have become marginalised. Their connections with the SAF no longer represent on-the-ground power, and their ability to bargain has been reduced.

There have been allegations that the army’s command structure seems less than keen to prioritise Darfur over holding the east and access to the Red Sea. This adds to the burgeoning sense that northern and central elites, who’ve ruled Sudan since independence in 1956, may once again be willing “to let Darfur go,” as they did when they allowed South Sudan to secede in 2011.

Sudan’s future now hangs between three possible paths.

In one scenario, a cold partition takes hold. The front lines have frozen since the RSF’s win. Neither side advances deeply into the other’s heartland, while guarding logistics and foreign backing. Sudan is still broken — not officially, but in every practical sense — into western and eastern spheres of control.

A second scenario risks rolling escalation. If restraint breaks, the RSF could hit back at Khartoum or Port Sudan, hitting airports and key supply routes, while the SAF retaliates in Darfur and Kordofan. Air travel could halt, humanitarian operations collapse, and regional actors might be pulled further into the fight.

The final scenario imagines a controlled ceasefire, brokered by the U.S., Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE (the Quartet). Their proposed roadmap, been under discussion since September, envisions humanitarian corridors, monitored truces, restrictions on arms flows, and a transition to politics. Yet without a credible political framework, even this could prove a temporary pause in a war that has already carved Sudan into two uneasy halves.

The Quarter can guarantee unhindered humanitarian corridors in all areas held by the RSF and the SAF and confirm compliance through independent supervision. It could also freeze the airport war by imposing a no-strike regime on the most important airports and utilities — Port Sudan, Atbara, Dongola, El-Obeid, El-Fasher and Nyala — and having it verified by an independent monitor and enforced. It can disrupt arms shipments, tighten embargoes and monitor arms supplies, especially in eastern Libya and Gulf routes. It may also focus first on local truces — city-by-city compacts in El-Fasher, Nyala and El-Obeid— before a national ceasefire.

In addition, it can include Minnawi, Jibril, and other local power brokers in humanitarian and security coordination, with civilian oversight so that they don’t spoil the agreements. Also, there is an urgent need to set up a humanitarian Verification Cell — a joint UN–AU mission to track access, ceasefires and attacks on aid infrastructure.

The fall of El-Fasher is both a closing and an opening. It breaks the SAF’s grip on Darfur and marks a fresh era of dismemberment — one in which power, not politics, redraws Sudan’s map. But it could also be a spur to diplomacy, pressuring regional and international actors to reckon with the scale of the crisis and the need for coordinated action before it spirals out of control.

If the Quartet and its African partners seize this opportunity to secure humanitarian access and negotiate a credible truce, El-Fasher’s tragedy could still mark the beginning of a tortuous path to peace. If not, Sudan risks tumbling irrevocably into a permanent partition and chronic warfare — a country eating itself alive, where, as many Sudanese now declare in anger and bewilderment, “no place is safe.”