Smoke Over the Nile: Sudan’s Invisible War and the Foreign Hands That Tighten It
When I arrived in Khartoum — the city where the Blue and White Nile meet and where the dust always seems to taste faintly of iron — the skyline was broken by more than just unfinished apartments and telephone wires. Thin columns of smoke rose from neighbourhoods that had once been full of children’s cries and the smells of fresh bread. Street vendors who used to sell steamy cups of black tea spoke in whispers. A doctor at a makeshift clinic told me, “You get used to the sound of distant booming. You don’t get used to the silence after the ambulances stop coming.”
This is Sudan in the third year of a conflict that began between two men who once stood shoulder to shoulder.
The Two Generals, One Country Torn
General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Daglo — known to many as Hemedti — were once partners in a military transition that followed the 2019 ouster of Omar al-Bashir. In October 2021 they formalized power in a coup, and by April 2023 their partnership had cracked into open warfare. The fighting has killed tens of thousands, forced nearly 12 million people from their homes, and pushed Sudan into a humanitarian abyss that reverberates across the Sahel and Red Sea coasts.
Today, the army nominally governs from Port Sudan on the Red Sea, with a new prime minister, Kamil Idris, installed in May 2025. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), whose lineage traces back to the Janjaweed militias — horse and camel-mounted fighters accused of atrocities in Darfur two decades ago — have carved out their own administration in Nyala and now control much of western Sudan.
Lines on the Map, Threads from Afar
What started as a power struggle between two military leaders has become a patchwork of battle lines fed by accusations of foreign meddling. Each side accuses the other of importing weapons, mercenaries, and the technical means to strike from afar. The United Nations has repeatedly urged nations to “refrain from external interference,” but the calls have had the brittle ring of a plea thrown into a storm.
Who is accused of what?
- Egypt: Cairo treats General Burhan as Sudan’s legitimate authority and has hosted him. Khartoum’s RSF has accused Egypt of providing direct military support — a claim Egypt denies.
- United Arab Emirates: The army accuses Abu Dhabi of supplying the RSF with drones and even mercenaries. The UAE has denied interference despite UN and open-source reports suggesting otherwise.
- Libya and Khalifa Haftar: Forces aligned with eastern Libyan strongman Haftar are accused of backing RSF offensives; Haftar denies these charges.
- Chad: The army claims that Chad has been a conduit for supplies to the RSF — a charge that has splintered local politics in N’Djamena, which denies the allegations.
- Turkey: Ankara has shown support for the army and, according to several outlets, supplied drones used against the RSF.
- Iran: Diplomatic ties with Khartoum were restored in October 2023; the RSF has accused Iran of arming Burhan’s forces.
- Russia: Long-standing military ties under the Bashir era and recent cooperation agreements keep Moscow in the background, with past talk of a Red Sea base that reverberates across regional security calculations.
- Kenya: Weapons reportedly labelled “Made in Kenya” were found in RSF caches — an accusation Nairobi says is misleading. Kenya also hosted the RSF’s political wing at a founding meeting.
Voices from the Ground
“They fire at night,” said Mariam, a mother of four from Omdurman who now sleeps in a neighbour’s garage. “Not because our streets are military, but because they want the sky.” Her voice is weary, but precise. The fear she describes is not only for bullets but for the fragile infrastructure that pushes water into taps and keeps hospital lights on.
A humanitarian worker who has worked in Darfur and Khartoum for years told me, “The war used to be about farms and oil; now it’s about the drones and the supply chains. Whoever gets the advanced technology decides the tempo.” This worker asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons.
From Cairo, an analyst close to Egyptian policy said bluntly, “Egypt sees stability in Sudan as a matter of national security — Burhan is their guarantor.” In contrast, a diplomat in Abu Dhabi told me, “The UAE has strategic interests in the Red Sea, but we do not operate mercenaries in Sudan.” Both statements were made with the careful cadence of those who balance public posture with private posture.
Humanitarian Numbers and the Slow Burn
The scale of the crisis is not abstract. UN agencies and independent monitors estimate nearly 12 million people displaced within and outside the country. Hospitals are broken, wheat imports are threatened, and the Red Sea — a choke point for global shipping — hums with a new volatility as external powers maneuver for influence.
“This isn’t just a civil war,” said Professor Fatima El-Sayed, a political scientist who studies the Horn of Africa. “It’s a geopolitical contest remade by drones, deep pockets, and proxy logistics. When external actors arm, fund, and diplomatically prostrate themselves to local militias, they make the violence last longer, and they make it deadlier.”
What’s at Stake Beyond Sudan’s Borders?
The war in Sudan ripples beyond Khartoum’s burnt markets. It touches migration routes to Europe, destabilises neighbouring Chad and Libya, and threatens shipping lanes that feed the world. In the context of a resurgent great-power jockeying in Africa, Sudan is a mirror for wider competition: access to ports on the Red Sea, influence in the Horn of Africa, and the shadow economy of commodity trafficking.
Are we watching the future of interstate conflict — fought with outsourced fighters, remotely piloted aircraft, and deniable supply chains? Or is Sudan a tragic outlier, where local ambition meets reckless international appetite? The answer matters not only to policymakers but to the millions whose daily reality is fear, hunger, and the impossible task of rebuilding lives between intermittent truces.
Where to from Here?
There are no easy answers. The UN’s calls for restraint ring hollow without enforceable mechanisms. Local ceasefires can hold for days, sometimes weeks, but the underlying rivalry — a collision of two military machines and their patrons — endures. If anything, the international community’s failure to coordinate a clear, consistent response has been an accelerant.
“We need a regional compact,” said an African Union negotiator. “Not speeches. Not press releases. A real plan that ties reconstruction funding to disarmament and reconciles security needs with civilian governance.” Whether such a compact will emerge, or be powerful enough to tie the hands of external actors, is uncertain.
For now, the streets of Sudan wait. Markets will reopen. People will plant their small plots again. But the scars of this war — the bodies, the uprooted communities, the fractured trust — will take a long time to stitch together. And every time a foreign weapon arrives, every convoy that crosses a dusty border, the possibility of peace slips a little further away.
How willing is the world to defend the idea that borders should not be battlefields for others’ ambitions? And how long can ordinary people — those who knead bread, tend camels, teach children their letters — keep living under the shadow of foreign strings pulled far away?
