Sudan dissidents undermine common defiance over postponement in power exchange
Sudan Dissidents Undermine Common Regime: The 7‑Year Tragedy from Revolutionary Hope to Cannibalistic Civil War
Let's be honest: if you had told a Sudanese protester in April 2019—standing triumphantly outside the military headquarters in Khartoum, chanting "freedom, peace, and justice," having just ousted a dictator of three decades—that within seven years their country would be carved into fiefdoms by two cannibalistic paramilitary factions, that 14 million of their compatriots would be displaced, and that the world would largely shrug and look away, they might have punched you. And then, with the grim wisdom that comes from living under authoritarian rule, they might have sighed and said, "Actually, that tracks." Back in May 2019, when this article was first published, Sudan was a place of dizzying, intoxicating hope. The regime of Omar al‑Bashir, the Islamist strongman who had ruled since 1989, had been toppled by a months‑long popular uprising. The streets were filled with young people who believed they could build something new. And the military, which had removed Bashir in a coup d'état to save itself, was pretending to negotiate a transition to civilian rule. It was, as we now know with the brutal clarity of hindsight, a mirage. The generals were never going to hand over power. The protest movement was never going to be allowed to succeed. And the two men at the helm of the military apparatus—General Abdel Fattah al‑Burhan and his deputy, the Janjaweed militia leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known universally as "Hemeti"—were already sharpening the knives they would eventually plunge into each other. This is the story of how Sudan went from the cusp of democracy to the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe in the space of a single presidential term. Grab a cup of something strong—you'll need it—and let's wade into the wreckage.
Back in 2019, the narrative was simple and intoxicating. A brutal dictator had been brought low not by foreign bombs but by the sheer, stubborn courage of ordinary people. The "Forces of Freedom and Change"—a coalition of professional associations, neighborhood resistance committees, and political parties—had organized months of sit‑ins and marches. Bashir was gone. The Transitional Military Council (TMC) that replaced him, led by Burhan and Hemeti, promised to hand over power to a civilian government. "We are not the enemy," the generals said, with the same sincerity a crocodile offers a wildebeest at a watering hole. And for a few precious weeks, Sudan dared to dream. Then came June 3, 2019. In the predawn hours, Hemeti's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—the same Janjaweed thugs who had terrorized Darfur for years—stormed the protest camp outside the military headquarters. They fired live ammunition into crowds of sleeping demonstrators. They beat, raped, and killed. The official death toll remains disputed—the government says 85, activists say well over 100—but the message was unmistakable: the revolution was over. The generals were in charge, and they would tolerate no dissent. The August 2019 power‑sharing agreement that created a "hybrid" civilian‑military Sovereignty Council was merely window dressing on a corpse. The dream of a democratic Sudan died on June 3, 2019. The country just didn't know it yet.
"On 3 June, the security forces, notably the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), brutally dispersed the massive sit‑in in Khartoum with live ammunition and teargas, killing more than 100 people and injuring at least 700 others."
The 2019 Mirage: How the Generals Hijacked a Revolution
The 2019 uprising was a masterpiece of people power. It began in December 2018 with protests over the skyrocketing price of bread—a reminder that even dictatorships are vulnerable to the stomach—and quickly swelled into a nationwide movement demanding the ouster of Omar al‑Bashir. The regime responded with tear gas, live ammunition, and mass arrests, but the protesters kept coming. On April 11, 2019, the military finally stepped in, arresting Bashir and announcing the formation of a Transitional Military Council (TMC) to run the country. The move was less a surrender to the protest movement and more a palace coup designed to preserve the regime's core structures. The man tapped to lead the TMC was General Abdel Fattah al‑Burhan, a career army officer with deep ties to Bashir's security apparatus and a long history of commanding forces in Darfur and Yemen. His deputy was Hemeti, the head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group that had grown out of the Janjaweed militias accused of genocide in Darfur. These were not reformers. These were the men who had done Bashir's dirty work for years. And they had no intention of handing power to civilians.
The protesters, understandably, were not convinced. They remained encamped outside the military headquarters in Khartoum, demanding that the TMC dissolve itself and hand over to a fully civilian transitional government. The generals stalled. They negotiated in bad faith. They made promises they never intended to keep. And then, on June 3, 2019, they ordered the RSF to clear the camp. The resulting massacre—more than 100 killed, hundreds wounded, and scores of women raped—was a turning point. The protest movement was shattered. The TMC, far from being held accountable, consolidated its power. The August 2019 power‑sharing agreement that established the Sovereignty Council, with Burhan as its chairman and Hamdok as prime minister, was a compromise that favored the military at every turn. Hamdok, a respected economist, was given the unenviable task of governing a country where the real power lay with the men who had just massacred his supporters. "Hamdok was a civilian with a British passport," one analysis noted, "and he was set up to fail." He tried to implement economic reforms, to negotiate with international lenders, to hold the military accountable for the massacre. It was a fool's errand. The generals tolerated him for as long as he was useful, and then, on October 25, 2021, they threw him in prison.
The 2021 Coup: Burhan Takes the Wheel, Hemeti Sharpens His Knives
The October 2021 coup was, in retrospect, inevitable. The power‑sharing arrangement had been designed to fail. Hamdok's government had been pushing for a full transition to civilian rule, which would have meant, among other things, integrating the RSF into the regular army and bringing Hemeti to heel. That was a red line for the RSF commander, who had built a parallel empire of gold mines, foreign mercenaries, and Gulf patron‑client relationships that made him one of the most powerful men in Sudan. Burhan, for his part, was under pressure from the Islamist remnants of Bashir's regime, who saw the civilian transition as an existential threat. On October 25, 2021, Burhan dissolved the Sovereignty Council and the transitional government, declared a state of emergency, and detained Hamdok and other civilian leaders. The coup was swift and, initially, largely bloodless. The streets erupted in protests, which the security forces met with lethal force—at least three people were killed in the first few days, and the crackdown intensified. The World Bank halted its operations in Sudan, freezing $2 billion in desperately needed financing. The international community condemned the coup but did little to reverse it. Burhan, for a moment, looked like he had won.
But the coup also set in motion the forces that would tear the country apart. By sidelining the civilians and consolidating power in the hands of the military, Burhan and Hemeti were left with only each other to fight over. The two men had been allies of convenience—united by their shared history in Darfur and Yemen, their mutual dependence on Gulf patrons, and their contempt for civilian rule. But they were also rivals, each commanding his own armed force and his own economic empire. Hemeti's RSF, fueled by gold revenues and equipped with advanced weaponry from the UAE, had grown into a formidable parallel army. Burhan's SAF, though larger, was bloated, factionalized, and increasingly reliant on Islamist militias. The dispute over integrating the RSF into the SAF—a key demand of the civilian transition—became a proxy for a much deeper power struggle. The RSF wanted a 10‑year timeline; the SAF wanted two. Behind the technical jargon lay a simple question: who would control Sudan's future? The answer came on April 15, 2023, when the two forces turned their guns on each other, and the country descended into hell.
"The RSF emerged out of the feared Janjaweed militia that had terrorized the Darfur region of Sudan. While the SAF and RSF previously worked together to forcibly remove longtime President Omar al‑Bashir from power in 2019, they later split amid a power struggle that turned deadly."
The 2023‑2026 Civil War: Two Generals, 150,000 Dead, and a Forgotten Nation
The war that began on April 15, 2023, was not a clash of ideologies. It was a bare‑knuckle brawl for power and plunder between two men who had never known any other way. The fighting started in Khartoum, where the RSF quickly seized control of the presidential palace, the international airport, and large swaths of the capital. Burhan, who had been holed up in the military headquarters, barely escaped with his life. The SAF, caught off guard by the RSF's speed and ferocity, spent the first months of the war on the back foot. The RSF, meanwhile, consolidated its grip on Darfur, where its Janjaweed roots gave it a natural base of support, and pushed into the strategic Gezira state, capturing the city of Wad Madani in December 2023. By early 2024, the tide had begun to turn. The SAF, bolstered by airstrikes and a more aggressive ground campaign, started reclaiming territory. By March 2025, it had largely retaken Khartoum, though the RSF still holds pockets of the capital and vast swaths of western and central Sudan. The war has become a grinding stalemate, a "war of attrition" in which neither side can deliver a knockout blow and both are content to let the civilian population bear the cost.
That cost has been staggering. The International Rescue Committee estimates that over 150,000 people have died, though the true toll—given the collapse of the healthcare system and the difficulty of counting the dead in a war zone—is almost certainly far higher. More than 14 million people have been displaced, making Sudan the world's largest displacement crisis. Approximately 34 million people—nearly two‑thirds of the population—require urgent humanitarian assistance. The economy has collapsed: industrial activity is down 90%, cultivated land has shrunk by 15%, and seven in 10 Sudanese now live in poverty. The UN estimates that Sudan will lose $18.8 billion in GDP by 2043 even if peace is achieved this year, illustrating how deeply the war has already reshaped the country's economic trajectory. And the human suffering is beyond comprehension. Famine conditions have been confirmed in multiple regions, including parts of Darfur and Kordofan. More than 4,300 children have been killed or maimed. Women and girls are being systematically targeted for sexual violence. And the international community, preoccupied with wars in the Middle East and Europe, has largely turned away. The UN's 2026 humanitarian appeal for Sudan is just 16% funded. "Sudan has become the world's forgotten crisis," one aid worker said. "We are watching a country die in slow motion, and no one seems to care."
The Cannibalization of a Nation: How the RSF and SAF Are Eating Sudan Alive
If the war itself is a horror, the way it is being fought is a descent into barbarism. Both the RSF and the SAF have systematically targeted civilians, using drones to strike markets, hospitals, and schools. In the first three months of 2026 alone, nearly 700 civilians were reportedly killed in drone strikes. The RSF, in particular, has been accused of genocide and other mass atrocity crimes, particularly during its 18‑month siege of El Fasher in North Darfur. When the city finally fell in October 2025, the RSF killed more than 6,000 people, repeatedly targeting non‑Arab ethnicities in what human rights groups say meets the legal definition of genocide. The SAF, for its part, has conducted indiscriminate airstrikes on RSF‑held areas, killing hundreds of civilians and destroying vital infrastructure. The country's health system has collapsed—fewer than 14% of health facilities in conflict areas are fully operational. Schools have been closed or damaged, disrupting the education of millions of children. And both sides have used starvation as a weapon of war, blockading cities and preventing humanitarian aid from reaching those in desperate need.
The economic logic of the war is equally grim. The RSF funds itself through control of gold mines in Darfur, exporting the precious metal directly to Dubai without paying a cent in taxes to the Sudanese state. This has given Hemeti a financial lifeline that makes him largely independent of international sanctions and able to sustain his war machine indefinitely. The SAF, meanwhile, relies on a combination of state revenues (what remains of them), support from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and the backing of Islamist business networks that date back to the Bashir era. Both sides have also recruited foreign mercenaries—the RSF has drawn fighters from Chad, Niger, and Libya, while the SAF has allegedly received support from Ukrainian special forces and Iranian drones. The war has become a regional proxy conflict, with the UAE backing the RSF and Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Iran tilting toward the SAF. "The conflict has long since outgrown the description of a clash between two generals," one analysis noted. "It has consumed Khartoum, torn through Darfur, and fractured the social fabric of a country that was already fragile." The cannibalization is nearly complete.
The Failed Peace Efforts: Talks, Conferences, and the Sound of Nothing
If there is a more depressing subplot to the Sudan tragedy than the war itself, it is the international community's feckless response. Conference after conference has been held—in Jeddah, Geneva, London, Berlin—and each has produced statements, pledges, and precious little else. The US‑Saudi‑mediated talks in Jeddah have been ongoing for years, with periodic ceasefires that are violated within hours. The UN's personal envoy for Sudan, Pekka Haavisto, has shuttled between Khartoum and Nairobi, meeting with Burhan and Hemeti, but with no discernible progress. President Trump, in early 2026, proposed a peace plan calling for an immediate truce and a civilian‑led transition; Burhan rejected it outright. Hemeti, for his part, has occasionally signaled openness to a ceasefire, but his conditions—effectively, recognition of the RSF's territorial gains and a major role in any future government—are unacceptable to the SAF and its backers. The two sides are locked in a war of attrition, and neither sees any reason to stop.
Meanwhile, the civilians who started the 2019 revolution—the ones who dreamed of "freedom, peace, and justice"—have been sidelined, silenced, or slaughtered. The resistance committees that once organized the sit‑ins have been decimated. Activists have been arrested, disappeared, or forced into exile. The hope of a democratic Sudan has been buried under the rubble of Khartoum. "The inability or unwillingness of soldiers in the Sudan Armed Forces to protect civilians against murderous attacks by the RSF militia has ended activists' hopes for an alliance with younger officers and their troops," one report noted. The revolution has been betrayed, and the betrayers are now devouring each other. The question is no longer whether Sudan can be saved, but whether anything will be left when the fighting finally stops.
The 2026 Reality: A Country in Freefall, a World in Denial
As of April 2026, Sudan is a country in name only. The SAF controls much of the north and east, including Port Sudan, which has become the de facto seat of Burhan's internationally recognized government. The RSF controls most of Darfur, large parts of Kordofan, and pockets of Khartoum. The map is a chaotic patchwork of shifting front lines, with civilians caught in the middle. The humanitarian crisis is the worst in the world: more than 33 million people need assistance, 21 million face acute food insecurity, and famine is spreading. The economy is in ruins, with inflation rampant and the Sudanese pound essentially worthless. Basic services—water, electricity, healthcare—have collapsed. And the international community, distracted by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, has largely abandoned Sudan to its fate. The UN's humanitarian appeal is just 16% funded. The Berlin conference in April 2026 raised €1.3 billion in pledges—a fraction of what is needed, and even that may never materialize. "Sudan is the world's forgotten crisis," one UN official said. "We are watching a country die, and we are doing nothing."
There is no end in sight. The SAF and RSF are locked in a war that neither can win and neither is willing to lose. The civilian protest movement, which once held the power to shape Sudan's future, has been crushed. The country is being carved into fiefdoms, its people scattered across the region. The dream of a democratic Sudan, which burned so brightly in 2019, has been extinguished. And the world, which cheered the protesters from afar, has moved on. "Sudan is stuck in a cycle of repeated sexual violence and displacement," the UN's Denise Brown warned. "The eyes of the international community turn to Berlin, where donors and diplomats are scheduled to gather. The conference aims to revive faltering peace talks and mobilize much‑needed aid." But the pledges are never enough, the ceasefires never hold, and the war grinds on. When the original version of this article was published in 2019, Sudan was a place of hope. Seven years later, it is a place of unspeakable suffering. The dissidents undermined the common regime—and the common regime devoured itself. The people of Sudan deserved so much better. They still do. And the world's silence is a stain that will not easily wash off.
Key Takeaways: Sudan's Tragedy, 2019–2026
- 2019: A popular uprising topples Omar al‑Bashir after 30 years of rule. The military, led by Gen. Burhan and Hemeti, forms a Transitional Military Council. Protesters demand civilian rule; on June 3, the RSF massacres over 100 people at a Khartoum sit‑in.
- August 2019: A power‑sharing deal creates a hybrid civilian‑military Sovereignty Council. Abdalla Hamdok becomes prime minister, but real power remains with the generals.
- October 2021: Burhan stages a coup, dissolving the government and detaining Hamdok. The World Bank freezes $2 billion in financing; protests are met with lethal force.
- April 15, 2023: Full‑scale civil war erupts between the SAF (Burhan) and the RSF (Hemeti). The conflict quickly spreads from Khartoum to Darfur, Kordofan, and Gezira, displacing millions.
- 2023–2026: The war becomes a brutal stalemate. The RSF controls most of Darfur and parts of Khartoum; the SAF controls the north and east. Both sides target civilians with drone strikes and starvation tactics.
- Humanitarian catastrophe: Over 150,000 dead (estimate), 14 million displaced, 34 million need aid, famine confirmed in multiple regions. The UN appeal is only 16% funded.
- Economic collapse: Industrial activity down 90%, poverty rate at 70%, GDP loss estimated at $18.8 billion by 2043 even with peace in 2026.
- Peace efforts have failed: Multiple ceasefires have been violated; Burhan rejected Trump's 2026 peace plan. The war is a grinding attrition with no end in sight.
- The 2019 revolution is dead. The protest movement has been crushed, its leaders exiled or killed. The country is being carved into fiefdoms by two cannibalistic warlords.
Sources & Further Reading
- Amnesty International (2019): "Sudan: year on since protests broke out, protesters' demands must be met" — June 3 massacre details, 100+ killed, 700+ injured.
- The Nation (2019): "Sudan opposition rejects military transition plan after crackdown" — 35 killed, doctors' toll, protest camp attack.
- CNN (2021): "The military has taken over in Sudan. Here's what happened" — Burhan coup, Hamdok detention, Sovereign Council dissolution.
- Reuters (2021): "World Bank halts Sudan operations in blow to coup leaders" — $2 billion frozen, Hamdok visited by Western envoys.
- The Conversation (2025): "Sudan's civil war: What military advances mean" — SAF‑RSF split, RSF origins in Janjaweed, integration dispute.
- Xinhua (2025): "Timeline: Key events of Sudan civil war" — April 15, 2023 outbreak, Jeddah talks, RSF gains, SAF counter‑offensive.
- Africa Confidential (2026): "Freedom under fire" — RSF‑NISS attacks, soldiers told to stay in barracks, schisms within junta.
- The Soufan Center (2026): "Sudan at Three Years: A War Overshadowed, A Crisis Unmanaged" — 150,000 death estimate, RSF El Fasher siege, famine.
- Daily Sabah (2026): "Mounting deaths, destruction drag Sudan civil war into 4th year" — 34 million need aid, 70% poverty rate, drone strikes.
- Al Jazeera (2026): "Erosion of a country's future: What has the war cost Sudan?" — $18.8 billion GDP loss, 14 million displaced, 40% power generation lost.
- DW (2026): "Sudan war fuels child hunger crisis" — 4,300 children killed/maimed, 13 million displaced, €1.3 billion pledged in Berlin.
- The New Arab (2026): "No peace in sight: When will Sudan's war end?" — Analysts' assessments, international leniency, lack of deterrent.
- UNICEF (2026): "Sudan's three‑year war deepens child and hunger crisis" — Child casualties, Darfur/Kordofan worst affected.
- Africa Confidential (2026): "Burhan under pressure after Hemeti backs US ceasefire plan" — SAF rejection, terrorist organization classification demand.
Note: This article draws on reporting from Amnesty International, The Nation, CNN, Reuters, The Conversation, Xinhua, Africa Confidential, The Soufan Center, Daily Sabah, Al Jazeera, DW, The New Arab, and UNICEF. All data and quotations are attributed to their original publications. For more geopolitical analysis and news, visit Top Economic News and Trendao.
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