PREVIEW
After this latest loss, the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces are now confined to Southern Khartoum
After capturing the bombed-out Republican Palace in Khartoum on the banks of the Blue Nile, General Abdel Fattah al Burhan’s Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) is celebrating a symbolic triumph. The cratered presidential palace was the last bastion of the SAF’s rivals, the Rapid Support Forces, backed by the United Arab Emirates.
The RSF, led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo ‘Hemeti’, did not immediately acknowledge the loss after videos of SAF soldiers in the palace circulated on social media on 21 March. The UAE, which has received over US$10 billion worth of smuggled gold from Sudan since the devastating war started, is coming under pressure to reconsider its backing for Hemeti.
Despite serial evidence from UN investigators and satellite photographs documenting UAE arms deliveries to the RSF, the Abu Dhabi monarchy denies any military involvement in the conflict.
The SAF will now try to chase all the RSF fighters from their remaining strongholds to the south of the capital that they seized at the start of the civil war in April 2023.
Burhan’s forces have taken advantage of arms from Egypt, Russia and Iran to launch a prolonged offensive. The SAF hopes to take the last RSF strongholds around Khartoum and cut the logistical line, allowing supplies from the West via the Jebel Awliya road and bridge (AC Vol 66 No 4, The generals choose partition over peace).
Burhan’s latest victory won’t make ceasefire more likely – at least in the short-term. But it may boost the view that Burhan is now the main interlocutor – with the prospect of Hemeti’s ‘parallel government’ being reduced to an expansive rump in Darfur.
The RSF holds swathes of territory in the west and is focusing its efforts, using arms from UAE shipped via Chad and Uganda, to take over El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur (AC Vol 66 No 5, Hemeti struggles to launch in Nairobi, again).
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