On 8 June, drone strikes hit a funeral procession in the Sudanese city of Al-Obeid in North Kordofan, killing four people and injuring several others.
The strikes, attributed to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) by Emergency Lawyers, a Sudanese pro-democracy legal and human-rights monitoring network, targeted a city that has remained under Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) control throughout the conflict that erupted between the SAF and the RSF in April 2023.
Al-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, occupies a strategic position linking central Sudan with Darfur and has served as an important military and logistical hub for the SAF.
According to Emergency Lawyers and international media outlets, the strikes were part of a series of drone attacks that have occurred recently in which multiple civilian casualties have been reported across North Kordofan.
They underscored a broader escalation in the war. According to findings released by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), armed drones have become a major driver of civilian casualties in Sudan, accounting for a substantial share of documented civilian fatalities in 2026.
Data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) have also recorded sharp increases in both drone attacks and drone-related fatalities.
UN experts, alongside multiple international and Sudanese human-rights organisations, have warned that patterns of ethnically targeted violence in Darfur may constitute war crimes and in some assessments may meet the threshold of crimes against humanity. Some governments, including that of the United States, have accused the RSF and allied militias of genocide-related acts in Darfur.
However, diplomatic efforts to end the war, including African Union (AU) and Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) consultations held in Addis Ababa throughout 2024 and 2025, continue to face obstacles on the ground.
Sudan is of significant geopolitical importance as it sits at the crossroads of the Red Sea, the Sahel, and the Horn of Africa regions, making it a key corridor for trade, migration, and regional security dynamics.
The SAF and the RSF both hold entrenched political positions. The SAF leadership under General Abdel-Fattah Al-Burhan has repeatedly taken a maximalist position, with the Sudan Tribune reporting on 12 June that Al-Burhan has pledged to recapture all territories and eliminate the RSF, which currently holds parts of Darfur, Western Kordofan, and other enclaves.
The RSF, which evolved from the earlier Janjaweed militias and was formally institutionalised in 2013, developed an increasingly autonomous command structure before the outbreak of the full-scale war. It contests the legitimacy of what it describes as the military-dominated post-independence state of Sudan.
Writing in the US journal Foreign Affairs in January, Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation, argued that the war reflects the collapse of Sudan’s political order into competing armed governance systems rather than a conventional civil war with clear frontlines.
The conflict erupted in 2023 between the SAF, led by Al-Burhan, and the RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, during a stalled transition to civilian rule following the 2019 overthrow of former president Omar Al-Bashir. Tensions escalated over plans to integrate the RSF into the regular armed forces.
Previous initiatives to bring about an end to the war have included the Jeddah Process (2023-) led by Saudi Arabia and the United States, which has sought humanitarian ceasefires and civilian protection agreements, AU and IGAD-led consultations during 2023-2025, and the Paris International Humanitarian Conference for Sudan and its Neighbours in April 2024, which mobilised international donor commitments for humanitarian relief.
Among the most significant regional diplomatic mechanisms has been the Sudan Quad group, comprising Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the United States. In 2025, the group intensified consultations aimed at securing a ceasefire, facilitating humanitarian access, and supporting negotiations towards a civilian-led transition in Sudan.
But despite broad agreement among the participating states regarding the need to preserve Sudan’s territorial integrity and prevent regional destabilisation, diplomatic progress has been undermined by developments on the battlefield. The Paris conference in 2024 mobilised substantial humanitarian pledges, but implementation has been constrained by insecurity and access restrictions.
Military escalation on the ground has continued, targeting civilians, infrastructure, and humanitarian supply routes.
According to UN agencies, more than 13 million people have been displaced across Sudan and into neighbouring countries during the war, while several international assessments suggest that the death toll is likely to be far higher than officially recorded figures, potentially exceeding 150,000.
Analysts warn that a prolonged military stalemate, competing administrative structures, and the continued disruption of transport and economic links between regions could gradually transform temporary wartime divisions into more permanent political realities, threatening Sudan’s territorial integrity and complicating the reconstruction of state institutions.
The SAF currently controls most of northern, eastern, and central Sudan, including Port Sudan, while the RSF holds most of Darfur, along with parts of West and North Kordofan and other contested areas. These territorial patterns have raised concerns that Sudan could drift towards de facto partition.
The ramifications of the war in Sudan also extend beyond the country’s borders.
Egypt remains heavily involved in Sudan due to security concerns along its southern frontier, refugee flows, and Nile water security considerations. It continues to support the SAF politically and diplomatically, recognising it as the principal institution of the Sudanese state and advocating for Sudan’s territorial integrity.
Turkey and Iran have maintained a limited diplomatic engagement in Sudan, while broader regional competition, particularly among the Gulf states, continues to shape the strategic environment surrounding the conflict.
The Gulf states have strategic interests in Sudan, driven in part by concerns related to security and influence in the Red Sea region.
There are concerns that the continuation of the conflict could destabilise the wider Red Sea and Horn of Africa region, generate additional refugee flows, and create opportunities for armed groups operating across porous border areas.
The continuing instability across Sudan also intersects with existing tensions elsewhere in the Horn of Africa region, including strains in relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea that are particularly linked to post-Tigray regional realignments and competition over Red Sea access and influence.
While these tensions predate the Sudan war, the simultaneous weakening of state authority across parts of the region has heightened concerns regarding the emergence of overlapping crises capable of stretching the diplomatic and security capacities of neighbouring governments.
Analysts increasingly describe the Sudan conflict as no longer being solely a domestic struggle between the SAF and RSF but one that deeply intertwines with regional rivalries, cross-border security concerns, and competing geopolitical interests stretching from the Sahel to the Red Sea region.
However, the main challenge facing any peace initiative is how to address the war’s greatest casualty beyond the battlefield: Sudanese civil society.
The erosion of this has emerged as one of the most consequential outcomes of the conflict. There is growing recognition among Sudanese, regional, and international actors that civilians, while bearing the greatest humanitarian burden of the war in the form of displacement, famine, and documented atrocities, have had little influence over either the conflict or its prospective resolution.
Notwithstanding the involvement of numerous regional actors and the intertwining of their interests with the conflict, ongoing diplomatic efforts continue to aim for a solution emerging from within Sudanese civil society and ultimately enabling a civilian-led transition.
But as the war enters its fourth year, the widening gap between diplomatic ambitions and realities on the battlefield continues to raise questions about whether Sudan’s territorial unity, let alone a possible democratic transition, can be preserved without far more concerted international efforts and the cessation of hostilities on the ground.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 18 June, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
Short link: