Explainer: What is happening in Sudan?

What you need to know about the foreign-funded genocide the RSF is committing against Sudan’s ethnic minorities.

Satellite images from Sudan’s Darfur regions show clusters consistent with the appearance of human bodies on blood-stained earth

At the end of October, a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took hold of the Sudanese city of el-Fasher, killing more than 1,500 people over three days of ethnically targeted massacres. The scale of the violence was so horrific that the mass graves and blood-stained earth left behind are visible from space. Ninety thousand survivors have been displaced since fleeing the city.

The attack followed a 17-month siege on el-Fasher, which had been the last major urban centre outside of RSF control within Sudan’s Darfur region.

It is the latest in what the Sudan Doctors’ Network describes as a “deliberate and systematic campaign of killing and extermination” carried out by the RSF over the last two and a half years of civil war with the country’s official military, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).

The civil war is one of many endured by Sudanese civilians over decades of violent power struggles and war, funded and armed by foreign powers.

The state’s recent history is complex and cannot be explained in a single article, but for those looking to understand the basics of the situation, this will hopefully be a helpful start.

Genocide funded by foreign powers

The current situation in Sudan is dire. Best estimates suggest that more than 150,000 Sudanese have been killed since April 2023, while 12 million have been displaced. Aid groups warn that at least 375,000 are on the brink of starvation and more than 24 million are facing acute food insecurity. By scale, the north-east African country is facing the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

There have been widespread accounts of incomprehensible violence, including the rape and sexual assault of children as young as one, and in January 2025, the US determined that the RSF and its allies were carrying out a genocide against Darfur’s non-Arab communities.

It is widely accepted that the violence is largely funded by foreign powers with interests in accessing illicit gold from RSF-captured gold mines.

Decades of bloodshed

The tensions behind Sudan’s current civil war began in 2019 when the country’s then-president Omar al-Bashir was ousted in a military coup after a 30-year dictatorship. During his rule, he was accused of committing genocide against Sudan’s non-Arab, Muslim Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups in the western Darfur region, among other war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Al-Bashir had himself seized power in a coup in 1989, in the midst of a civil war between Sudan’s north, where the population is majority Arab and Muslim, and south, where the majority are black Africans who primarily practice Christian or animist religions. That conflict ended in 2011 when South Sudan was granted independence. However, the war in the Darfur region - where local rebels took up arms over alleged government discrimination - continued until 2020.

Outbreak of civil war

Since the 2019 coup, Sudanese army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has been the country’s de facto head of state.

While al-Burhan initially agreed to establish a joint military-civilian government, by 2021, he had staged a coup to overthrow it and take back total control, alongside his deputy, RSF leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

The pair later came into a power struggle over the future direction of the country, which eventually broke into violence in April 2023 after members of the RSF were redeployed around the country in a move the SAF perceived as a threat.

Within a matter of days, the RSF gained control of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, which it held until May 2025.

Who are the RSF?

The RSF originated from the notorious Janjaweed militia deployed by al-Bashir’s government during the war in the Darfur region in Sudan’s west. Over 17 years of violence in Darfur, the SAF and RSF worked together to violently suppress the uprising of rebel groups, massacring hundreds of thousands of non-Arab Sudanese civilians and displacing millions more.

The force was later restructured as a paramilitary organisation under the command of General Dagalo in 2013. In 2017 the RSF was integrated into the Sudanese Armed Forces by law, making it a nominally government-recognised paramilitary force. After the 2019 military coup, the group was included into the Transitional Military Council that was established to oversee the transfer of power to a joint military civilian council.

The RSF has been broadly characterised as an ideologically and economically driven Arab supremacist group. It is funded by the profits of captured gold mines, as well as thinly veiled financial and military support from state and corporate actors with interests in accessing the valuable mineral.

UAE involvement

The United Arab Emirates has been accused of financing and arming RSF forces, allegations the state denies, despite a vast body of credible evidence. Earlier this year, Sudan filed a case in the UN’s International Court of Justice, accusing the Gulf state of complicity in genocide. However, the ICJ refused to hear the case, claiming it lacked the jurisdiction to rule on the matter.

Meanwhile, evidence points to Iran supplying weapons to the SAF, though it also denies the allegations.

In denying its involvement in the conflict, the UAE has accused the SAF of “starvation tactics, indiscriminate bombardment of populated areas, and the reported use of chemical weapons” - claims the army has previously refuted.

International response

The international response to the conflict has been described as “woefully inadequate” by Amnesty International.

Multiple rounds of peace talks have been held in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, but have so far failed. In early November, the RSF said it would agree to a humanitarian ceasefire proposed by the US, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, but the Sudanese government has said it is wary of the deal given the RSF’s historical lack of respect for ceasefires. It has also raised concerns about the UAE’s involvement in the ceasefire talks.

At the G7 foreign ministers meeting in Canada last week, US Secretary of State Mark Rubio called for international action to cut off the supply of weapons to RSF. His comments fell short of publicly criticising the UAE, despite evidence that it is the paramilitary’s primary arms supplier.

Meanwhile, the violence and atrocities have continued to be committed against Sudanese civilians since the el-Fasher massacre, as the RSF pushes eastward from its stronghold in Darfur, leaving devastation in its wake.

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