Is there any way out of Sudan’s nightmare?

For the past two and a half years, events in war-torn Sudan have been characterized by wild swings — not only between which side in the conflict has the upper hand, but between moments of tentative hope and outright despair. 

Could that be the case this week, as one of the war’s darkest moments was followed by at least a tiny step toward peace? 

The nadir was reached last week, when the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — the paramilitary group that controls much of the west of the country — finally seized the city of El Fasher, the Sudanese army’s last remaining stronghold in the Darfur region, after an 18 month siege aimed at starving out the city’s resistance. (The RSF is the descendant of the infamous Janjaweed militias accused of atrocities during the mid-2000s Darfur genocide.)

Local and international officials had been raising the alarm since last year of a likely massacre if El Fasher fell, and while information about what’s happening inside the city is still limited, there’s reason to believe the worst, including what appear to be piles of bodies and bloodstains on the ground visible from space. Reports from survivors, as well as grisly videos posted online, attest to widespread killings and mass rape.

Arjan Hehenkamp, the Darfur crisis leader for the the NGO International Rescue Committee who was recently on the ground in Tawila — the nearby city to which El Fasher residents have fled — told Vox this week that the most disturbing thing he saw was how few of the expected number of displaced people they’ve seen, and in particular, how few adult men. 

“The fact that they’re coming in such a small number is a story in and of itself,” Hehenkamp said. “It raises the question, ‘Where is the rest of the population of El Fasher?’”

Also this week, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the leading international authority on hunger crises, declared that a famine is taking place ins El Fasher, as well as in Kadguli, a city in Sudan’s central Kordofan region. That makes 2025 a rare year in which the IPC has declared a famine twice after declaring it for parts of Gaza in August.

At the same time, there was a small sign of political progress on Thursday when the RSF announced it would agree to a humanitarian ceasefire proposal from the US-led mediator group known as the Quad. The other side in the conflict, Sudan’s army, has not yet formally responded to the proposal but has treated it with skepticism. Many experts are unsure if the RSF actually plans to stop fighting, and indeed, there were drone strikes on the nation’s army-controlled capital after the announcement. 

But there are still at least a few promising signs that the war may be turning a corner. 

How we got here, briefly explained

The war in Sudan has killed more than 150,000 people and displaced more than 14 million, and it includes a dizzying number of armed groups, outside sponsors, and motivations. But here’s the simple version. 

The roots of the current conflict go back to 2019, when a protest movement rose up against Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s longtime dictator. Responding to mass unrest, Bashir’s top generals overthrew and arrested him. They initially promised a transition to civilian rule, but instead, took control themselves. Two leaders, the army’s Gens. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — the latter better known as “Hemedti,” leader of the paramilitary RSF — agreed to share power, but they quickly had a falling out. 

In 2023, the feud broke out into warfare in the capital Khartoum. The RSF initially seemed to have the upper hand, taking most of the capital and the surrounding region, but the army managed to retake control of Khartoum earlier this year. 

In recent months, the RSF has managed to fortify its positions and consolidate control in Western Sudan, which includes Darfur, though it still launches periodic deadly drone attacks well into the east. Both sides in the war have been accused of atrocities. 

The army is led by Sudan’s internationally recognized government and is backed by Egypt, Iran, and most of the Arab world. The main patron of the RSF, which is under an international arms embargo, is the United Arab Emirates. The UAE denies providing the RSF with money or weapons, but the connection has been widely documented, including by a recent leaked UN report.

A turning point? 

With the fall of El Fasher, the war has clearly entered a new phase, but what the phase will look like is still very much up in the air. 

El Fasher was the national army’s last major stronghold in Darfur, meaning that the RSF has now consolidated its control over much of western Sudan, as well as over key supply routes. Darfur’s importance for the RSF is both political — it’s Hemedti’s home region and the group’s traditional support base — and economic — it’s the site of many of the lucrative gold mines that provide the group with hard currency. 

Sudan is now effectively split between east and west. The war may have entered what’s known as a “hurting stalemate,” in which outright victory is impossible for both sides, but they continue inflicting bloodshed nonetheless. Over the summer, the RSF set up a parallel government in Darfur, which may indicate a desire to consolidate its rule over the areas it currently controls rather than trying to take over the whole country, even if they are still using drones to attack the capital. 

The international picture is also shifting, including the fact that the US is getting more involved. It would be an exaggeration to say US policy in Sudan has been effective in years past, but it was at least an active player in the region and could exert leverage. (Indeed, President George W. Bush was so engaged on issues involving Sudan and South Sudan that officials joked he could have been the State Department desk officer for the region.) Sudan has gradually slid down the list of US priorities over the past 15 years or so though, and it didn’t get much attention from the second Trump administration over its first few months. (It’s also true, in general, that this time around, the unfolding catastrophe in Darfur is getting far less international attention.)

But that may be changing. After announcing a peace deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in late June, Trump’s Africa envoy Massad Boulos (who is also Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law) said that Sudan was his next priority. This may be one issue in which the close ties — political and financial — between Boulos’s Trump in-laws and the wealthy monarchies of the Persian Gulf may be an advantage. It’s fair to ask why the administration hasn’t used some of this leverage and influence sooner, particularly with the UAE. Notably, while the US, at the very end of the Biden administration, sanctioned a number of Emirati companies for their role in financing the group, this did not stopped the billions of dollars in defense and technology deals between the two governments during Trump’s first year.

In September, the diplomatic grouping known as the Quad — the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE — announced a joint proposal for a peace process. The joint agreement itself was significant: Egypt and the UAE are backing opposing sides in the conflict, and squabbles between Arab powers have scuttled previous diplomatic efforts. The RSF was unlikely to agree to the deal as long as it was still fighting to take El Fasher, but that dynamic appears to have shifted. 

The UAE may also be finally starting to reconsider its backing for a militia widely accused of genocide. The massacre at El Fasher has drawn international attention to the UAE’s alleged role in the war and the profits it derives from the gold trade fueling the conflict. Last week, a senior Emirati diplomat said his government had made a mistake in backing the coup that took power in 2019, a rare admission of missteps in its Sudan policy. In recent years, the UAE has backed a proxy network of rebel and secessionist groups throughout the Middle East and North Africa in a bid to expand its regional influence, but in the case of its involvement in Sudan, the reputational cost may be starting to exceed the strategic benefit.  

None of this makes a resolution to the war in Sudan very likely, but freezing the current frontlines to allow badly needed humanitarian aid into conflict areas is at least a possibility.

Sudan is, in many ways an archetypal 21st century war: a hybrid civil war/international conflict defined partly by waning US influence and the growing role of “middle powers” like the UAE, featuring extensive use of foreign military contractors and drones, and a fraying of international norms around the use of force and protection of civilians. Unfortunately, despite a few recent reasons for optimism, it’s likely emblematic of 21st century wars like Ukraine and Gaza in yet another way: It’s phenomenally difficult to end.