Why is Sudan still at war?

0:02Yousra Elbagir:Sky News, the full story first.

0:08Coming up, a thousand days of war with how many more to follow. As the conflict in Sudan shows no sign of abating, we speak to our Africa correspondent who was born there.

0:21For most of us, returning to the family home is a time to be celebrated and savoured. But what if your country is in the midst of war?

0:28Yousra Elbagir:I've been waiting for this for two years. And it's not a celebration. It doesn't feel like a big homecoming.

0:37Yousra Elbagir:It feels like this was so unnecessary. So preventable. And now we're just going back to the ruins. That's Sky's Africa correspondent Yusra El-Bagir heading home to Khartoum in Sudan in April last year. We've just crossed into North Darfur, a place that's been virtually impenetrable to journalists over the last two years of war in Sudan. It's been ravaged by famine, ruthless armed conflict, and has been largely neglected by the world. At the time, the country had been at war for two years. And not only does the violence continue to this day, it's getting worse. The conflict's created arguably the worst humanitarian disaster the planet has ever seen.

1:21Yet our politicians hardly seem to mention it. So who exactly is fighting in Sudan? Who is supporting them? What effect has it had on the Sudanese people? And why does the rest of the world seeming to care so little? Yusra is back on The Daily. Yusra, take us back to basics if you can. Who exactly is this war between in Sudan?

1:41Yousra Elbagir:So the war is between the two largest armed factions in the country. That's the military, the Sudanese armed forces, and the paramilitary rapid support forces. And the two warring parties were security partners for decades. They were working together during the conflict in Darfur in the early 2000s. And the rapid support forces, the RSF, is born out of the Dzenjuit militias that were armed and empowered by the state to target communities in Darfur, where rebels had come out of and were trying to fight for control of the state or access to the state. So the military and the rapid support forces have worked together for a long time.

2:17Yousra Elbagir:And it's not just a kind of historic connection. It's a connection that goes right up until the first day of the war. They were in the capital together. The head of the army was the de facto head of state after the revolution that toppled 30-year dictator Omar al-Bashir. And the head of the rapid support forces was the de facto VP. So the two were working in unison to essentially take control of the country in this power vacuum. and the power struggle between them was becoming increasingly apparent. They both wanted to have full control of the country. The army wanted the paramilitary to come under its command and be absorbed into the armed forces.

2:53Yousra Elbagir:And the rapid support forces is just too lucrative of a militia for hire to come under the military's command. And so that simmering power struggle erupted into this long, protracted, violent war that we've seen over the last thousand days. So in essence, Yusra, this is a battle for control of Sudan, for a control of the government itself. Yeah, this is a battle for control of not just the state, but the resources of the state. It revolves around gold mines and uranium and all the mineral riches that Sudan has, but also around the Red Sea. We also know that one of the RSF's reported backers, the UAE, or its primary backer, does want control of the Red Sea.

3:35Yousra Elbagir:We've seen with the Houthis, it's a prime area of control. It is a lucrative trading route, and it also means you can have a military base there. And interestingly, Russia has managed to wield its influence and now has a Red Sea naval base in the works with the military in return for military support. So as we head towards a thousand days of this particular war, who's actually winning? So early on in 2025, we saw the military make gains and eventually reclaim the capital Khartoum in March. And then we saw the RSF pivot all its resources to tightening the siege of Al-Fashir, which is the regional capital of Darfur.

4:15Yousra Elbagir:Their strategy to pivot to Al-Fashir and then kind of strangle the region and move back into central Sudan after losing the capital in the heart of the country has worked. And they're definitely ahead at the moment. The RSF, after taking El Fashir, now has control of the Darfur region, a region the size of France, and it's moving to solidify control of the southwest of the country. And that would see Sudan in a Libya scenario, where the country is effectively torn into two, between military state control and RSF control. What effect has this conflict had on people of Sudan? I mean, there's one group that always suffers in war, and it's the civilian population.

4:52Yousra Elbagir:The scale of the humanitarian catastrophe is unfathomable. I mean, we look at statistics, and they are so vast and ungraspable, and they still don't capture the intensity and the severity of the war. So 12 million people displaced, but we've consistently met people who've been forced out of their homes again and again. They leave one area, they go somewhere safe, and they're forced out and sent somewhere else. And these cycles are worsening with time. So 30 million people in need of assistance. That's nearly 70 % of Sudan's population. And not just assistance in terms of tents, we're talking about intense spreading food insecurity, famine declared in Al-Fashir in areas in different parts of the country that are very difficult to access at the moment because of paramilitary control.

5:37But also there's intense donor fatigue.

5:41Yousra Elbagir:We're living in an era where USAID is no longer a functioning humanitarian body. We've also seen the UN funds for Sudan underfunded again increasingly every year. So the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe, the biggest in the world, is happening and escalating at a time where we're also seeing a drawdown in assistance and a dwindling of funding. So it would be fair, as of this moment, to describe Sudan as a failed state? Sudan has been a failed state since the revolution. There was never a transition or an election that meant that the state had then become a functionary for the people. But I think what we've seen is that The civilians have been carrying the state.

6:20Yousra Elbagir:The volunteers, the community kitchens, the mutual aid efforts, the Nobel Peace Prize nominated emergency response rooms have been doing the work of the state. So a failed state in the sense of there's a complete collapse. There is martial law. There is nowhere for people to turn. But people have increasingly been turning to each other. And every time we go, it's despairing. And the level of suffering is so immense. But we also come away, our team, feeling inspired by the level of courage. Yusra, just tell me a little bit more then about the origins of this conflict. You yourself have been covering Sudan for the best part of a decade.

6:53And it strikes me from what you've been saying, that the problems this country is experiencing predate the thousand days of this war.

7:00Yousra Elbagir:I mean, I grew up in Sudan. I was at primary school when the conflict in Darfur had started. And the way that it was described was as this peripheral kind of malaise that it was, oh, it's, you know, there's always conflict in the corners of the country. And we were in a bubble in the capital. And there was a sense that it would never reach the capital. But of course, that's not how things work. Because the militias that were being empowered and emboldened in that conflict were eventually going to come and collect their juice. and they grew more powerful. And particularly under one Janjweet leader, Hamiddi, the head of the RSF, he sought international opportunities.

7:36Yousra Elbagir:He sought legitimacy. He positioned himself as a border force that worked with the EU, for example, in the Khartoum process from 2014 to manage illegal migration out of Sudan through Libya across into Europe. He sent his troops to Yemen to fight alongside the UAE-Saudi coalition during the Yemen war. And all of that gave him a sense of understanding of how to operate in a global world. He's not just a camel herder. He became sort of a mafia militia leader. And all of this was happening while the capital maintained this illusion of safety and peace, and this illusion that things wouldn't come to the streets of Khartoum.

8:17Yousra Elbagir:In 2016, I reported on austerity measures. And I think even though there was a lot of dissent and there were protests that were crushed very quickly by al-Bashir's regime. The austerity measures basically rallied the country around ending the military dictatorship. That revolution brought a lot of hope. There were calls for democracy and it did break through class divides, the gender divide, ethnic divisions. And it was a reintroduction of Sudan to the world, to a country that could fight for a different trajectory. That conflict was not an inevitable thing. But the power vacuum was really the opportunity that was exploited by the RSF and the military to not just clamp down, but to ensure that there would not be this kind of dissent again.

9:08Yousra Elbagir:And that process, seeing that process firsthand over the last 10 years, has given me a sense of how beneficial this war is to the military state and its functionaries turned enemies, and how much work it will take for that chokehold to be released. Does that then play in, Yusra, to the fact that this conflict has been going on for so long, that for some people, perhaps even people on both sides, that there is as much a financial interest in continuing this conflict as anything else? It's a combination because something that was very domestic 20 years ago has now become internationalized, right?

9:46Yousra Elbagir:The kind of foreign equipment that we're seeing in the battlefields in Sudan is unbelievable. I've had military weapons analysts tell me they believe that weapons are being battle tested in Sudan. Just explain what you mean by battle testing. That absolutely shocks me. People are developing weapons and then sending them to Sudan so that they can actually get tested in the field. So we've seen a couple of instances where a modified armored vehicle that was shown in a showroom in 2017, not modified, then disappeared off the market. Analysts haven't seen it in any sort of battlefields and pops up in Sudan in a modified version.

10:23Yousra Elbagir:And that drives suspicion that they are kind of reimagining certain equipment and putting it out into Sudan to check its functionality. Now that modified vehicle I told you about, Panthera T2. That is manufactured by a UAE-based company called Minerva Special Purpose Vehicles. And we asked the UAE's foreign ministry about it, and they actually responded to other claims and didn't respond to our questions about the Panthera T2. Another thing that's interesting is the time period between when weapons are manufactured and when we see them in Sudan. So weapons that are manufactured in October 2024 enter the battlefield in the same year.

11:03Yousra Elbagir:So that means that they're manufactured and they're immediately wheeled out into Sudan. And that weapons then manufactured in early November 2025 were then being deployed inside Sudan within weeks in the same year before the end of the year. So those kinds of patterns are very shocking to people who study these kinds of foreign military equipment and weaponry in conflict zones, because it shows a continuous supply line, one that doesn't have any sort of regulation that is constantly flowing. And it shows a almost urgency or a commercial interest in getting these weapons out there as soon as possible.

11:40So is Sudan then another one of these proxy wars where there are two sides battling out on the field, but they are being supported by other entities?

11:49Yousra Elbagir:Sudan definitely has a proxy war component. And I shy away from completely calling it a proxy war or calling it a civil war. But the way that foreign powers are fueling fighting on both sides is creating, I would say, a momentum that's very difficult to get a hold over. I think what's most shocking about the last 1 ,000 days is that there hasn't been a single pause in fighting. We haven't seen a single ceasefire. I kind of shudder to think about all the atrocities that we don't even know of, that we haven't even seen and been able to document because of how relentless and consistent the fighting has been and the kind of weaponry that we're seeing used.

12:29Given the international dimension that we've just been discussing, given the humanitarian disaster that Sudan clearly is, why do you think it is, Yusra, that the rest of the world doesn't seem to care very much?

12:41Yousra Elbagir:I think that there's an inconvenience to addressing the war in Sudan. And that inconvenience comes in different ways. There's the fact that there are so many things happening in the world. I mean, as I speak to you now, the news cycle is absolutely nuts, as we both know. And the idea that a place like Sudan, black Muslims, that their fate kind of needs to be qualified, that we need to tell the world that this isn't something that was inevitable. So there's this kind of attention economy that I think we're competing with, especially when we have the war in Gaza and the war in Ukraine, things that are very geopolitically consequential.

13:16Yousra Elbagir:The second part in terms of inconvenience is the fact that the UAE is a key Western ally. And consistently, we have seen the UAE's Western allies, including the UK, mute their response to pressuring the UAE and holding the UAE accountable because of how lucrative and beneficial an ally the UAE is. And I met policymakers in Europe. One of the things that was very clear is that there is no impetus to hold the UAE to account when a lot of European countries right now are dealing with serious domestic economic issues that the UAE's financial weight can help alleviate. but they're also competing with the far right on issues like immigration.

13:57And they're not willing to take on a war like Sudan that doesn't just need lip service.

14:04Yousra Elbagir:It needs actual action and serious diplomatic mediation. It strikes me that it is only through the repeated trips that you and your colleagues take, the journalism that you've produced, and of course others, that has led to the level of public awareness such as it is about what is going on in Sudan. when you make those trips, when you speak to the ordinary Sudanese, what do they say about the war, the impact it's had on the country, the impact it's had on them? I think the civilians that we meet are often still processing the scale of the devastation that this war has wrought on the country and on their own communities and their neighbours and their friends and themselves.

14:44Yousra Elbagir:Because I think the reality is that not only is it ongoing, but it is escalating. And the people on the ground that we meet are so hyper aware and conscious of these twists and turns of how things are constantly worsening rather than improving, that there is a feeling of being forsaken that we consistently hear from people. Where is the international community? Why are they not wielding their influence? How come there haven't been airdrops, for example, in some famine zones? And then there's also just this, I can only explain it as exhaustion, Neil, of how much longer do we have to deal with this?

15:19Yousra Elbagir:And people that we met at the beginning of the war, and then you meet them, you kind of see them go through these different iterations and you see them lose faith and then regain faith as there are these pockets. But those pockets of improvement or hope are actually vanishing because the RSF is making massive, massive gains. And the military has proven time and time again that it is not putting the protection of civilians first and that they're using this war to redeem themselves after the revolution effectively denounced military rule. I know this is a deeply personal story for you. This is your homeland after all.

15:56I mean, were you in any way surprised that the conflict lasted a thousand days?

16:00Yousra Elbagir:I am definitely surprised in terms of the scale of this. I don't think anyone could have predicted how protracted, but also how intense this war would be. There was a feeling in the first few days that it would be kind of a bout of violence and that it would die down and there would be some sort of negotiated agreement because we have seen these two warring parties in partnership for so long. As that hope faded, what kind of worsened things is not only is there no political will for negotiation, there's almost this stubborn pride in the war that is a luxury from the top brass who are not impacted in the war in the same way that the civilians or even the foot soldiers are.

16:41Yousra Elbagir:So I think it's very likely this war could last another few years. It could also end this year. But I don't think anyone knows. And I've let go of any attachment to any outcome pretty early on because I think hoping that something of this scale can suddenly end is not a healthy approach. Well, given that then, Yusra, can you tell me just a little bit about the Sudan that you remember happily? The Sudan that you think of fondly rather than what is taking place on the ground right now? It's always the warmth and it's the generosity and it's the sense of coming together. When I would go home to Sudan on holidays from the UK, there was always this feeling of being cushioned, that you know that no matter what happens, your neighbor or someone down the road or someone from your extended family will be there.

17:28Yousra Elbagir:and that feeling hasn't gone away in the war. I think it's intensified because that is realistically how people are surviving. It's literally neighborhood to neighborhood. Community kitchens and all these initiatives are so grassroots and they're so linked to that spirit of community care and these networks that support each other during these moments that have never reached this intensity but I guess were preparation for something like this. But I think That Sudan definitely still exists. And when we have made our trips to Umdurman and Khartoum and the places that I grew up in, I can feel that it's there, that enduring light that everyone is holding on to.

18:07And it's so difficult because you're still up against everything.

18:12Yousra Elbagir:I mean, even making that food and sharing that food requires a lot of risk, requires a lot of resourcefulness. But even now, seeing the diaspora kind of come together to raise funds and constantly send money back is a part of that. The one thing, though, that we've lost that is very difficult to reconcile is a place where we can all come together safely, that we can spend Christmas in and have our weddings in and all these kind of moments where we need to come together. And that's the hardest thing about displacement at this scale is that the country is effectively scattered. Yusra, thanks very much indeed.

18:44Yousra Elbagir:Thank you. Thanks for listening. You can see the full report from Yusra and team on the channel or head to the website skynews.com. Bye for now. Thank you.