Sudan’s War and the Fate of the Revolution
A Crown Conversation with Nada Ali and Anna Reumert
Organized and edited by Ramyar D. Rossoukh, Associate Director for Research
March 26, 2026
Sudan’s war is one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises, with a February 2026 UN report finding that atrocities in El Fasher bear the “hallmarks of genocide.” Yet the conflict is often reduced to a power struggle between rival militaries—the Sudan Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces—obscuring its deeper political dimensions. In this Crown Conversation, originally recorded on January 22, 2026, and later updated for publication, we spoke with Sudan experts Nada Ali, assistant professor in the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and Anna Reumert, the Crown Center’s Neubauer Junior Research Fellow, about Sudan’s war: whether it is best understood as counterrevolutionary, how it relates to the unfinished demands of Sudan’s 2018–19 uprising, and how an incomplete democratic transition morphed into an extractive war economy. Even amid escalating violence and broken ceasefires, Ali and Reumert emphasize that civilian networks—from Emergency Response Rooms to women’s cooperatives to diaspora organizing—are keeping people alive while sustaining the possibility of a future civilian government.
How should we understand the war in Sudan? What distinguishes this conflict from earlier wars in the country, and how did it come to take its current form?
Nada Ali: The war erupted in mid-April of 2023. Sudan has experienced conflict for decades, starting before its independence in 1956. But this war is different: It began in the center of the country—in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. It is also a war over economic and political resources between former allies: the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti). The RSF is a paramilitary force that emerged from the Janjaweed militias that the former government of Omar al-Bashir, later overthrown in the 2018–19 uprising, established to suppress armed resistance in Darfur in 2003 and 2004.
The war has had a devastating impact on nearly every Sudanese. There have been thousands of deaths across the country, and more than 14 million people have been displaced. Around 10 million are internally displaced; roughly 4 million had to leave the country. (These are UN statistics and are likely conservative.) In a country of just over 46 million, this represents a large proportion of the population. A key feature of this war is the widespread use of sexual and gender-based violence, especially against women and younger children.
The war has resulted in a devastating humanitarian crisis. And it has also destroyed much of the country’s limited infrastructure, because it is also taking place in urban centers. This has disrupted essential services such as health care and education. While some services have resumed, the impact has been deeply damaging.
Anna Reumert: In many ways, the conflict is a transnational resource war over Sudan’s minerals and gold, as well as its livestock and labor power. It is a highly extractive war. If we look at trade routes out of Sudan, we can see that trade in gold and livestock has increased since the war began, underscoring how the old rule of following the money applies in this case.
Many view this conflict as a counterrevolutionary war, and I agree with that view. The 2018–19 mass uprising, also known as the “December Revolution,” succeeded in overthrowing the thirty-year authoritarian regime of Omar al-Bashir, but the transition to a civilian government was then stalled by the persistence of military rule. In October 2021, a military coup led by al-Burhan removed Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok’s civilian-led government and derailed the transition. The coup did not push people back into their homes; instead, large numbers continued to mobilize and protest in the streets. Civilian, nonviolent mobilization remained strong.
At the same time, an escalating power struggle between the SAF and the RSF intensified toward the end of 2022, particularly around plans to reform the RSF and reintegrate it into the army. This was a central part of the transitional plan, but the two sides failed to reach agreement. Their overlapping military and economic ambitions ultimately escalated into open war in April 2023.
Although the war—and especially the fact that it began in Khartoum—came as a surprise to many, those closely following Sudan could see the escalation unfolding. When I last visited Sudan in January 2023, there was already a clear vacuum of power and authority, along with a growing RSF presence in the city.
Ali: I agree. The war is fundamentally a power struggle between the SAF and the RSF, shaped in part by unresolved disputes over security sector reform. Power does not operate in a vacuum; it is often rooted in economic and social structures. In some ways, this is also a war over Sudan’s resources. Both sides have regional alliances: This shapes the conflict’s dynamics, but it can also contribute to its resolution.
The eruption of the war itself did not come as a surprise to me. The former regime led by Omar al-Bashir and its allies was never going to allow the forces unleashed in the run-up to the 2018 uprising to transition to civilian rule. During the uprising, I remember watching a televised speech by al-Bashir from Khartoum’s Green Square, later renamed Freedom Square. While formally addressing his supporters, he was clearly also sending a message to protesters, especially young people and women. He invited them to look around Khartoum and see how Syrians—people whose country, in al-Bashir’s words, Sudanese once traveled to for education, health care, and tourism—were now displaced in Khartoum. By invoking the Syrian experience, he was suggesting that Sudan, too, could descend into war if the uprising continued. The message was unmistakable.
Before turning to the legacy of the 2018–19 uprising, where does the war stand today? Where is fighting concentrated, and how is control divided on the ground?
Reumert: The RSF and SAF have divided Sudan into two, each declaring its own parallel government. The SAF-backed “Hope” government is based in Port Sudan, the main access point to the Red Sea as well as to northern Sudan. The RSF-backed Tasis “Foundation” government is headquartered in Nyala, with access to inland trade routes west and south, and to the country’s main gold mines. Neither of these governments has been recognized internationally, but they both rely on indirect support from transnational state actors. As the war economy matures, each party seems to be benefiting from continuing the war.
You both emphasized the centrality of the 2018–19 uprising and its demands for civilian rule and accountability. Three years into the war, what has become of that movement? Does it persist—and if so, in what forms?
Reumert: I recently came back from Kampala, where around 90,000 Sudanese refugees have been displaced, many of them from what were known as the resistance committees—the activist-led, civilian base of the 2018–19 uprising. Most are living in the city rather than in refugee camps in order to have more access to work, although it is extremely difficult to survive in Uganda’s job market. What you see there, however, is a great deal of solidarity, both among new refugees and in relation to the struggle inside Sudan.
One of the most important expressions of this is the Emergency Response Rooms, a volunteer-based mobilization that started right after the war erupted. These networks are the lungs of Sudan, as I see it. They operate at the neighborhood level—organizing door-to-door support, informal clinics, and community kitchens in places where people often cannot leave their areas because of checkpoints and insecurity. They provide life-saving medical aid, food, shelter, and protection from sexual violence as they try to guard people against the constant threats and attacks from both sides of the war. They also coordinate closely with refugees outside, who help raise funds and organize support.
As both the SAF and RSF have systematically blocked aid routes and restricted humanitarian access, Sudanese people have taken the lead in organizing relief efforts. Most do not see this work as humanitarian alone, but as a civilian political effort to continue what they had experienced during the revolution—a form of mutual aid that is also political mobilization. More recently, protests marking the anniversary of the uprising took place in and around Khartoum, which people I spoke to in Kampala said gave them hope that civilian mobilization inside the country continues despite the war.
Ali: I would add that the uprising itself did not begin in 2018. It intensified during that time, but resistance to the former regime started in 1989, right after the military coup that brought Omar al-Bashir to power. It took different forms. In the years leading up to the uprising, particularly after 2010–11, young people began organizing collectively to address different crises—floods, health, food insecurity—through initiatives such as al-nafir, a form of community mobilization and local solidarity to provide mutual aid. These practices continued during the 2018–2019 uprising. Mutual aid initiatives have also contributed to community-level survival since the eruption of conflict in 2023.
It is important to avoid generalization as to where the activists and others who took part in the uprising stand today. Some are still committed to its principles of freedom, peace, and justice: They call for an end to the war, and a transition that leads to elections and to civilian-led democratic governance. Others have become disillusioned, particularly in light of the alliances that emerged during the transitional period, when the leaders of both the SAF and the RSF were incorporated into the Transitional Sovereign Council. That arrangement was made to pacify these two actors, but unfortunately backfired: It strengthened both actors by expanding their access to resources, which in turn contributed to the brutality of the current conflict.
It’s also important not to associate mutual aid initiatives such as the Emergency Response Rooms—which have been widely celebrated and even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize—or the work of women’s cooperatives running community kitchens and support networks on the ground with organized political resistance. These are important mobilizations and they give me hope in many ways, but they tend to distance themselves from political organizing taking place in neighboring countries or in exile. I would not describe them as apolitical, but they are not always part of organized political resistance, even though their work is inherently political.
Reumert: Additionally, one of the threats to the continuation of a revolutionary spirit and effort is the co-optation and recruitment of former activists, something both sides have succeeded in doing to some extent. If we look at who controls different parts of Sudan, we can see that the RSF has been particularly successful, often through violence, in taking control of key agrarian regions. It controls much of Darfur and Kordofan and is now battling to control North Kordofan, where many marginalized seasonal workers and farmers depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. In these areas, people are often forced to work or trade with the RSF, and many—especially young men who might otherwise have migrated—have been recruited into the RSF. Many of them were part of the revolution or might have been aligned with its ideals. They have joined the RSF not necessarily for ideological reasons, but often driven by survival and the need to protect their families.
We have seen similar dynamics in Khartoum, where the SAF has also recruited some activists, again largely out of their survival needs. This is something we need to remember: Militarization is also a form of labor. Fighters are working, even as they risk their lives and often gain very little in return. As the war economy has matured, it has become increasingly difficult to survive without trading or otherwise operating within the structures of the war.
Ali: The situation is complex. There is research that documents recruitment by the RSF, as well as work that shows how Sudanese farmers, including in the regions you mentioned, have long organized through unions and collective structures that promote democracy, human rights, and social justice. So it’s important not to reduce farmers as a social group into supporters of the RSF.
Reumert: I’m glad you clarified that, because I agree. One thing the Emergency Response Rooms have also turned to—especially after U.S. aid cuts and the loss of international funding—is supporting local farmer cooperatives. What’s striking is that agriculture has shown a degree of resilience during the war, even though farmers are being targeted by SAF air strikes and RSF ground violence. In some areas, production has actually increased. This matters, because Sudan is a largely rural, agrarian country and farming is a necessity for survival.
At the same time, this doesn’t mean that farmers are outside the war economy. If you sell produce in a market or cross a checkpoint, you are forced to bargain with armed actors. That’s what I mean by having to deal with the war economy. Still, some farming cooperatives—especially women-led ones—have managed to retain a degree of control over their production under these conditions.
In recent months, several peace initiatives have emerged, including the Quad framework and the Nairobi declaration. How do you assess these efforts?
Ali: The Nairobi meeting and declaration were part of a broader set of political processes that emerged, at least in part, in response to the Quad’s joint statement issued in September 2025. The Quad—which consists of the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—affirmed several important principles: Sudan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity; the recognition that there is no viable military solution to the conflict; the need to facilitate humanitarian access; and the importance of ending external military support to the warring parties, as this prolongs the conflict.
In this context, in December 2025, Somoud—the civilian political coalition in exile led by former prime minister Abdalla Hamdok—used the Nairobi meeting and declaration to bring in additional actors, toward the goal of ending the war and restoring a civilian-led political process. Both the SAF and the RSF have established de facto governments with headquarters in Port Sudan (in Eastern Sudan) and Nyala (South Darfur), respectively. Of course, there are other forms of mobilization and organizing to end the war.
Reumert: What has been critiqued in many of these attempts—and what makes the Somoud alliance a kind of positive development by contrast—is the absence of civilian voices in peace negotiations. The Quad, for example, did not include civilian actors in the room. Yet the future of Sudan must be civilian-led. That was the demand of the revolution, and even if these civilian groups are not completely organized, they have the clearest vision for a nonviolent and demilitarized Sudan.
It’s true that the Quad framework in September gave some people hope for change, especially because of U.S. involvement. But right after the meeting that was held in Washington with all parties, ceasefire hopes collapsed amid RSF violence in El Fasher that many observers have described as genocidal. Since then, we’ve seen a lack of commitment to a ceasefire from both sides, as shown by direct violence as well as more passive forms of noncompliance.
Over the past six months, there has been a plethora of peace initiatives, both regional and transnational, including the Nairobi declaration. It reminds me of Syria around 2016, when peace became almost a career, both for politicians seeking legitimacy and for international organizations built around negotiations. I don’t want to sound overly pessimistic, but as I look across this landscape of almost weekly peace deals and broken ceasefires, it reminds me, in very unfortunate ways, of Syria constantly meeting in Geneva and finding no way to peace.
Is there anything on the ground that gives you cautious optimism about an end to the conflict or prospects for peace?
Reumert: One thing that gives me hope is that people have started to return, especially to Khartoum. Many did not find viable livelihoods as refugees in neighboring countries, but they are also returning because they would rather be in Sudan.
I know, for example, a medical doctor who was in Kampala with her family. She couldn’t find work and was selling Sudanese falafel on the street. She has now returned with her husband to Khartoum, where she is working again as a doctor in a hospital. The protests we saw in December commemorating the revolution were also enabled by the increasing numbers of people returning—there are simply more people in the capital now. For a long time, Khartoum had become something of a ghost town.
This return of a civilian base—people with skills and some resources—gives me cautious optimism. What it will lead to remains uncertain.
Ali: My optimism lies primarily in the roles that women and communities have played throughout this war—and even before it—in meeting people’s survival needs, drawing on direct, community-level knowledge of conditions on the ground. These grassroots efforts can develop into more strategic forms of mobilization along with visions for a better future in Sudan, as I argue elsewhere. Numerous women’s organizations are active in and outside Sudan, and have been documenting the impact of war on women or organizing cultural and social activities. There are also several cultural and arts initiatives, such as film making and other forms of cultural production.
At the same time, the situation remains extremely volatile. In October 2025, for example, El Fasher witnessed a massacre following months of siege. The impact of these atrocities on the local population is well documented. That is why, at the very least, any path forward would require the two warring parties to agree to a ceasefire. This would need to be followed by negotiations, along with a broader political process that is inclusive as well as attentive to gender equality and social justice, so that the future of governance in Sudan is shaped by a wider range of political actors. A ceasefire is unlikely to happen overnight, but it must remain a priority for all those concerned about Sudan.
Nada Ali is an assistant professor in the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Anna Reumert is the Neubauer Junior Research Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies.
For additional Crown Center publications on related themes, watch the recording of “The Arab Spring Fifteen Years On” and listen to the Counter/Argument podcast episode, “Sudan’s Conflict Is Not Just a Civil War.”
The opinions and findings expressed in this Conversation belong to the authors exclusively and do not reflect those of the Crown Center or Brandeis University.