May 15, 2025

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Sudan’s Brutal Civil War Threatens to Become a Proxy Conflict

AP Photo

As Sudan’s brutal civil war enters its third year, multiple attacks by both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) struck various locations across the country over the weekend, leaving over forty people dead, including many civilians.

On Saturday, an alleged RSF drone strike on a prison in el-Obeid – a strategic hub connecting Khartoum and Darfur – killed at least 19 people and injured at least 50 others. Another RSF air attack on Friday reportedly left at least 14 members of the same family dead in Darfur. On Sunday, at least nine civilians, including four children, were killed in RSF attacks in el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state and the last major city held by the SAF in Darfur. The SAF stated it killed six RSF members in a sweep of the city. These recent attacks add to the already devastating death toll in the conflict; although estimates vary widely, the former U.S. envoy for Sudan suggested as many as 150,000 people have been killed since the civil war began on April 15, 2023.

The weekend attacks followed six straight days of alleged RSF drone attacks on the SAF-led government’s wartime capital of Port Sudan. The attacks damaged several key facilities, including the country’s only international civilian airport, the largest working fuel depot, and the city’s main power station. The port city had been viewed as a safe haven from the conflict, hosting hundreds of thousands of displaced people since April 2023. Port Sudan also serves as a critical entry point for humanitarian aid into the country, with the United Nations calling it “a lifeline for humanitarian operations.” The drone strikes on the port, and the subsequent fires, could increase the already dire humanitarian need and “further complicate aid operations in the country,” according to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The humanitarian conditions in Sudan continue to deteriorate, with the declared famine leading to acute malnutrition, starvation, and severe, widespread food insecurity. The Trump administration’s freeze on U.S. foreign assistance has compounded the dire situation, as American-funded soup kitchens in Sudan had been some of the only lifelines for tens of thousands in Khartoum. An April report published by a consortium of humanitarian groups stated that the crisis in Sudan is the first time in the history of modern humanitarian response that a single country has reached over 30 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. This means that three in every five people living in Sudan are in need of aid. The country also has the highest number of internally displaced people, including 8.5 million since the start of the conflict, with over 3.7 million refugees and returnees in neighboring countries, such as Chad. Beyond the staggering humanitarian crisis, there have been reports of ethnic cleansing, torture, targeted killings, and sexual and gender-based violence used as a tactic of war – including mass rape – against women and girls, particularly in Darfur. A dossier of evidence compiled by a London-based team of lawyers was recently submitted to the Scotland Yard war crimes unit with staggering evidence of alleged war crimes committed by the RSF.

Refugees in neighboring countries also face grave dangers, including human trafficking in southern Libya, cholera outbreaks spreading along displacement routes in South Sudan and Ethiopia, and women and girls further exposed to sexual and gender-based violence in displacement camps.

Alongside the humanitarian toll and burgeoning spillover effects across the broader region, the war threatens to become – if it has not already reached – a proxy conflict. Although ostensibly a civil war between the SAF and the RSF, foreign actors have leveraged the war in Sudan to expand their regional influence, backing both factions to secure economic gains from the country’s mineral-rich resources along the Red Sea. The SAF has benefited from external support, with Egypt, Türkiye, Russia, and Iran providing advanced weaponry, including drones, and financial backing.

The RSF’s primary patron, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has supplied fuel and weapons, including advanced Chinese-made weaponry, according to a new report from Amnesty International. The guided bombs – Chinese GB50A and 155mm AH-5 howitzers – were manufactured by the Norinco Group, a Chinese state-owned defense company, and it is reportedly the first time the advanced weaponry has been used in an active conflict. The UAE has denied the accusations, rejecting the suggestion it supplies such weapons to any party in the conflict. However, the SAF-government announced earlier this month that it was severing all ties with the UAE due to its support of the RSF.

The conflict has become a battleground for foreign influence, with states exploiting the chaos to advance their material and geopolitical interests. Such factors may increase the likelihood of a protracted conflict and hinder any post-war recovery. The government’s dissolution of ties with UAE could lose the SAF tens of millions of dollars in gold revenue and access banking operations. Emiral Resources, a UAE-backed company, owns a majority of shares in the SAF-administered Kush mine, the largest in Sudan. The SAF is believed to sell tens of millions of dollars of gold to the UAE, according to Al Jazeera. Moreover, 97 percent of gold exports from SAF-controlled areas went to the UAE in 2023, according to the Central Bank of Sudan, and UAE banks own a majority share in the Bank of Khartoum, which services millions of displaced Sudanese civilians.

The increased use of drones on both sides of the conflict marks a significant escalation. Experts are concerned that proxy powers may potentially increase support to their chosen side, proliferating advanced weaponry in the conflict. The UAE’s provision of the Chinese-made weapons may lead backers of the SAF to double down in their own support of weapons. This scenario risks both a protracted war, more civilian deaths and suffering, and destabilization of the region more broadly.