Issue No. 74

A Pyrrhic and Symbolic Victory in Sudan

On the night of 26 January 1885, thousands of assembled Sudanese Mahdist forces broke through the defences of the Egyptian garrison in Khartoum, ending a 10-month siege on the capital. The trigger of the Mahdist assault was an advancing British military expedition intended to relieve their besieged Egyptian counterparts, with London having subjugated Cairo in 1882. They arrived two days too late to the capital, however, and subsequently withdrew from the country, ending the Turco-Egyptian rule over Sudan. Subsequently, the fall of Khartoum to the Mahdists, an Islamic political movement, ushered in the 13-year period known as the 'Sudanese Mahdiyya' until its overthrow by Anglo-Egyptian forces in 1898.

But until April 2023, Khartoum went largely untouched by the destructive and prolonged periods of conflict in Sudan's peripheries. It acted as a commercial capital, overseen by an Arab Riverain elite, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century, that plundered and centralised the country's natural wealth. The notion of 'sovereignty' in any Weberian sense of the state model and centred on the capital does not exist in Sudan– rather, the state is predicated on mercenary-driven frontier capitalism with a propensity for immense humanitarian catastrophes. For most of its history, and for most Sudanese, Khartoum has been the location from which the ruling elite– whether it was Gaafar Nimeiry (1969-1985) or Omar al-Bashir (1989-2019)- attempted to impose often extremely violent rule.

The sparing of Khartoum from Sudan's peripheral violence was upended at the outbreak of the current and most destructive civil war that erupted in April 2023. Indeed, the RSF's plunder of the capital was in many ways a coming home to roost for the al-Bashir elite, who wielded the former Janjaweed as a brutal counter-insurgent force against Darfuris two decades prior. In the early days of the war, the highly mobile and battle-hardened paramilitaries seized much of central Khartoum and symbolic locations, including the Republican Palace and key ministries. For most of the first 18 months of the war, the RSF pressed their advantage and captured other major cities, such as Wad Madani.

In recent months, though, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have steadily recaptured territory, with several reasons lying behind this reversal of military momentum. On the RSF side, the inability to hold Khartoum partially lies in their failure to consolidate their hold over North Darfur. The Zaghawa resurgence and the resistance of other groups in central Sudan stretched the paramilitaries across a broad swathe of territory. Compounding this has been the struggles to sustain their lengthy and complex supply lines through Chad and Libya, while the UAE has reportedly simultaneously diminished its scale of support for the paramilitaries. Defections of senior RSF personnel such as Abu Aqla Keikal to the army have not helped either, precipitating significant losses in central Sudan at the start of the year. The army, meanwhile, has sourced fresh armaments, military aircraft and drones from several countries, including Türkiye, China, Russia, and Iran, alongside the mass mobilisation of Islamist and ethnic militias.  

Then, on 21 March 2025, the SAF retook the Republican Palace in Khartoum, killing the remaining RSF fighters stationed there, despite their leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo 'Hemedti's', insistence that they would remain. The capture of the Palace is undoubtedly a major symbolic victory and one widely celebrated by the army and its supporters. Yet the Palace and much of the city lie in ruins, with the probable eventual recapture of Khartoum marking a Pyrrhic victory. Alongside the mass plunder by the paramilitaries, the sustained SAF bombardment of RSF-held civilian areas has reduced much of the capital to rubble, rendering its position as the economic heart of the country untenable for the time being. The army now faces the largest reconstruction project in the world, likely only surpassed by Gaza.

However, reconstruction is unlikely to be the priority of the SAF. In 1898, the fall of Khartoum marked the end of Egyptian rule over Sudan, but 126 years later, the recapturing of symbolic parts of the city will not spell the end of the conflict. Unlike the fall of Damascus earlier this year, Saigon in 1975, or even the fall of Constantinople in 1453, where the capture of a capital concluded a conflict, it is abundantly clear that fighting is set to continue– and likely for some time– in Sudan. Other current examples in the Horn of Africa point to contexts where wars or insurgencies persist beyond the seizure of capital, such as Mogadishu or Juba. 

With many of the domestic and international drivers of Sudan's war remaining unchanged, the fall of Khartoum is more likely to bring about only a new phase of the conflict. The principal external backers of the rival generals in the Gulf, and beyond, remain far apart in their analysis of the conflict and still appear to consider it a zero-sum game. Within Sudan, the SAF's unwieldy coalition, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who has declared Khartoum "free" of the RSF, continues to make unrealistic demands to begin any non-existent peace process. Instead, the army is looking to establish a new 'transitional civilian' government within the capital and is amending Sudan's constitution to remove any reference to their paramilitary foes. The chasm between SAF and RSF ideologies is widening, as Islamist factions within the army, which despise the Sahelian paramilitaries, seek to consolidate their doctrinal hold. The RSF, meanwhile, has pledged to recapture the territory it has lost and has given no indication that it is ready for any serious peace talks. Many consider its declaration of a parallel government in Nairobi last month as an attempt to claw back some legitimacy it has failed to achieve on the battlefield. The principal belligerents' continued insistence that there is only a military solution to the conflict makes the prospect of a lasting ceasefire unlikely in the near future.

But with the recapture of the Republican Palace, is there any suggestion that the SAF intends to break the historic mould of Khartoum governance? All indicators suggest that this is unlikely, with perceived RSF collaborators being shot and the mass bombardment of Darfur continuing. Still, the army has pledged to return civilians to their homes in Khartoum, restore some services, and facilitate humanitarian aid delivery. Ramping up humanitarian assistance should help divert the capital's impending famine. But more broadly, having seized the momentum, it appears likely that the SAF will consolidate their grip and mistakenly prepare for an attempt to take Darfur. That would only inflict fresh suffering in a country where over 30 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance-- the largest number ever recorded. Moreover, there are several reasons that the SAF would likely struggle to capture Darfur and launch a full ground invasion, not least the need to clear eastern Sudan and southern Khartoum of RSF fighters. The SAF would be better advised and placed to sue for peace from its current position and not repeat its recent bloody history in Darfur.

Still, one element to highlight is that the recapture of Khartoum will consolidate the army's claim as the recognised and legitimate sovereign authority over Sudan. There have been some signs of this already, with a number of countries welcoming the SAF recapture of the Republican Palace. More telling about which side has been imbued with more 'legitimacy' was the international community's response to the RSF's Nairobi government declaration last month, with many warning against any consolidation of a de facto Libya-style split in the country. However, with the RSF advancing in parts of North Darfur and El Fashir remaining under siege, the 'Libyan scenario' of two parallel governments within one country is already taking shape. To avoid this, the international community must take advantage of the window offered by the symbolic and strategic victory of the SAF in Khartoum to put renewed pressure on the belligerents-- and their backers-- to come to the table.

The Horn Edition Team