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GLOSSARY

Sudan: its peoples, its history, who is fighting and why

Updated 22 October 2026

The news from Sudan talks about "two generals", the RSF, Darfur and El Fasher, but rarely explains who the peoples involved are, where the war comes from and who profits from it. This profile gathers the essential background. We keep it updated: every change is logged at the bottom, with its date and source.

Land and peoples

The Nile crosses Sudan from south to north: at Khartoum the White Nile, which comes from Uganda, meets the Blue Nile, which comes from Ethiopia. Along the river and in the plain between the two Niles, the Gezira, lives the richest and best-represented part of the country. All around lie the peripheries: the desert in the north, the Red Sea hills in the east, the savannahs of Kordofan and Darfur in the west, the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile in the south. As in many African countries, the centre governs and the peripheries resist.

A warning about the numbers. Sudan has counted ethnic groups in only one census, that of 1956 (Human Rights Watch). The last general census, in 2008, still included the South but did not ask about ethnicity; the count was disputed and has never been repeated. Moreover, "Arab" in Sudan is not a biological category: it means someone who speaks Arabic as a first language and identifies with an Arab genealogy. A Fur who became a nomadic herder could be regarded as Baggara, that is, as an Arab (Library of Congress). That is why the figures below are of three kinds, always labelled:

• 1956 census: the shares at the time, which however also included the South, today South Sudan;
• 2008 census: the population of the states where a people lives, which is not the same as the people itself (Central Bureau of Statistics);
• estimate: assessments by independent organisations, such as Minority Rights Group.

The total population today is estimated at about 50 million (The National). All the peoples below are African; the distinction that matters in this war is between those who call themselves Arab and those who do not.

• Sudanese Arabs — the largest group. In 1956 they were 39% of all Sudan, South included (1956 census); in 1983 they were almost 55% of the northern provinces (Library of Congress). They are not a single bloc. The river tribes, such as the Ja'aliyin, live along the Nile north of Khartoum: this is the world from which much of the elite that has governed since independence comes, because the political system has always favoured the Arab and Muslim groups around the capital (Freedom House). The Baggara ("cattle people") and the Abbala ("camel people") are herders of Kordofan and Darfur: among them the Rizeigat, Hemedti's tribe, and the Misseriya. It was from these herders that the government recruited the Janjaweed militias in the 2000s.
• Fur — the largest people of Darfur, which bears their name: "Dar Fur" means "land of the Fur". No reliable estimate. They are settled farmers around the Jebel Marra massif, Muslim but not Arabised, and until 1916 they had an independent sultanate (Library of Congress). In 2008 about 7.5 million people lived in the five states of Darfur (2008 census), and according to the EU asylum agency non-Arab groups make up between two thirds and three quarters of the region's population (EUAA).
• Zaghawa — no reliable estimate. Semi-nomadic herders of northern Darfur, they live on both sides of the border with Chad, where many hold important positions in the army (Library of Congress; Al Jazeera). The leaders of two of the main armed movements of Darfur, today allies of the army, are Zaghawa (see "Who's who").
• Masalit — about 350,000 speakers according to Ethnologue (2011), cited by Canada's refugee board (IRB Canada). Farmers of western Darfur, around El Geneina. In 2023 they were among the first targets of the RSF: according to a UN panel of experts, between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed in El Geneina (Justice Info).
• Beja — about 2-3 million (estimate, Minority Rights Group). They live in the east, between the Red Sea hills, Port Sudan and Kassala, and lived there before the Arabs arrived. They speak their own language, Bedawiye, and are Sufi Muslims. They are among the poorest people in the country (same source), even though Port Sudan, the main outlet to the sea, lies on their land.
• Nuba — about 3.7 million (estimate, Minority Rights Group, 2018); in 1956 they were 6% (1956 census). They are not a single people but more than fifty different communities living in the Nuba Mountains, in South Kordofan, and speaking different languages. They are Muslim, Christian or follow traditional religions. In 1992 the governor of Kordofan declared jihad against them (same source). Their armed movement, the SPLM-N, controls part of the mountains.
• Nubians — in 1956 they were 3% (1956 census). They live along the Nile in the far north and in southern Egypt, and descend from the ancient Nubian civilisations. In the 1960s Egypt's Aswan Dam flooded their land: between 35,000 and 50,000 were moved to Khashm al-Qirbah, in the east (Library of Congress).
• Peoples of West African origin (called "Fallata" in Sudan) — in 1990 they numbered almost a million, about 6.5% of the population, nearly 60% of them of Nigerian origin (same source). They are mostly Hausa and Fulani, who arrived at different times.
• Peoples of Blue Nile — no reliable estimate. In 2008, 832,112 people lived in Blue Nile state, on the border with Ethiopia and South Sudan (2008 census). It is a region of many small peoples, some of them Christian or following traditional religions, where the SPLM-N has been fighting since 2011.

Religion: according to the government, about 91% of the population is Muslim, almost all Sunni and with a strong Sufi tradition; Christians live mainly in the cities, in the Nuba Mountains and in Blue Nile; less than 1% follow traditional religions (US State Department, 2019).

Resources: gold, oil, fertile land and Nile water, livestock, the Red Sea coast. Sudan is Africa's third-largest gold producer (Al Jazeera). With the independence of the South in 2011 it lost about three quarters of its oil output (The New Humanitarian), and gold became its main export: in 2024 it accounted for almost half of recorded exports (Steptoe).

A short history

Before colonisation. Along the Nile arose one of the oldest kingdoms in Africa, Kush. In the 8th century BC its kings conquered Egypt and ruled it for almost a century, as the 25th dynasty of pharaohs. In the 6th century AD the three kingdoms of Nubia became Christian, and remained so for almost a thousand years. In 1504 the Muslim Funj sultanate was founded on the Blue Nile, with Sennar as its capital (Embassy of Sudan in the Netherlands); in the 17th century, in the west, the Fur founded the sultanate of Darfur (Macquarie University).

The Turco-Egyptian conquest (1821-1885). In 1821 the army of Muhammad Ali, the pasha of Ottoman Egypt, invaded the country. The stated aim was to seize "the gold and slaves" needed to build the Egyptian state (Fanack). Heavy taxes and repression provoked continual revolts (same source). In 1874 Darfur too was annexed (Macquarie, cited above).

The Mahdi (1881-1898). In 1881 a preacher, Muhammad Ahmad, proclaimed himself the Mahdi, the redeemer awaited in Islam, and led the revolt against Turco-Egyptian rule. In 1885 his forces took Khartoum and killed the British general Gordon. His state lasted thirteen years: on 2 September 1898, at Omdurman, Kitchener's Anglo-Egyptian army destroyed it (National Army Museum).

The Anglo-Egyptian condominium (1899-1955). Formally Sudan was governed jointly by Britain and Egypt; in practice the British were in charge (Fanack). Darfur became independent again under Sultan Ali Dinar and was conquered only in 1916 (Macquarie, cited above). Three colonial choices still weigh today:

• A developed centre, neglected peripheries. The British invested along the Nile: Port Sudan in 1906, the great Gezira cotton scheme from 1911, the Sennar dam in 1925 (Fanack, cited above). Darfur, Kordofan, the east and the South were left almost without schools and roads.
• Two Sudans. From 1922 the "Closed District Ordinances" barred northern Sudanese from entering and trading in the South (Fanack, cited above); from 1930 the "Southern Policy" prepared the South for a separate future, with Christian missionaries in place of the Arab administration (Library of Congress).
• Power to those on the river. With independence, power stayed with the Arab and Muslim groups around Khartoum, whom the political system has always favoured at the expense of Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile (Freedom House).

Independence and the wars with the South (1955-2005). In August 1955, five months before independence, southern soldiers mutinied: the first civil war began. Independence came on 1 January 1956. Two years later, in 1958, General Abboud seized power; in 1964 a popular uprising drove him out; in 1969 Colonel Nimeiri staged a new coup. In 1972 the Addis Ababa agreement gave the South autonomy and ended the first war. In 1983 Nimeiri scrapped it and imposed sharia on the whole country, with the "September laws": the second civil war began, led in the South by John Garang and his SPLA (Refworld). It would last until 2005 and kill about two million people (CFR).

Bashir (1989-2019). On 30 June 1989 General Omar al-Bashir seized power with the backing of Hassan al-Turabi's Islamists (Refworld, cited above). In the 1990s Sudan was put on the American list of state sponsors of terrorism, where it would stay for 27 years (Africanews). In 2000 a group of Darfuri intellectuals secretly circulated the "Black Book", which argued that the Nile elites held 95% of the country's power and wealth (Al Jazeera). In 2003 Darfur's armed movements, the SLA and JEM, rebelled. The government responded by arming the Janjaweed militias, recruited among Arab herders: burned villages, rapes, mass expulsions of Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit. The United States confirmed the destruction of 2,964 villages between 2003 and 2009 (IRB Canada). About 300,000 people died (CFR). In 2005 the Security Council referred Darfur to the International Criminal Court, which in 2009 sought Bashir's arrest and in 2010 added the charge of genocide against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa (ICC). Also in 2005, the peace agreement with the South provided for a referendum: in 2011 the South voted and became independent. In 2013 Bashir turned the Janjaweed into an official force, the Rapid Support Forces, under Hemedti's command and reporting directly to him (CFR, cited above; BBC, via allAfrica).

The revolution and the transition (2018-2021). In December 2018 protests broke out across the country. On 11 April 2019 the army and the RSF, together, deposed Bashir (HRW). On 3 June forces led by the RSF broke up the sit-in outside army headquarters in Khartoum: according to the doctors' union, 124 people were killed between 3 and 18 June (same source). In August soldiers and civilians signed a power-sharing agreement; the prime minister was the economist Abdalla Hamdok, Burhan chaired the Sovereignty Council and Hemedti was his deputy. In December 2020 the United States removed Sudan from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, after the country agreed to pay 335 million dollars to the victims of the 1998 attacks and to normalise relations with Israel (Africanews).

The coup and the war (since 2021). On 25 October 2021 Burhan and Hemedti, together, overthrew the civilian government. In December 2022 a framework agreement provided for a return to civilian rule, but set no date for integrating the RSF into the army. The two generals split over this point: on 15 April 2023 fighting broke out in Khartoum (CFR). The government fled to Port Sudan. The RSF occupied much of the capital and, in western Darfur, El Geneina. In March 2025 the army retook Khartoum; on 26 October 2025, after an eighteen-month siege, the RSF took El Fasher, the last big city in Darfur still held by the army. According to the UN, more than 6,000 people were killed in those days (People Daily, citing the ICC and the UN).

Two governments (2025-2026). In July 2025 the RSF and its allies announced a parallel government, de facto based in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur (Sudan War Monitor). On 11 January 2026 the army's government returned to Khartoum after almost three years in Port Sudan (Al Jazeera). In 2026 the army advanced in Kordofan: in February it broke the siege of Kadugli (Anadolu), in October it took al-Mazroub and moved on En Nahud (Al Jazeera). The RSF holds almost all of Darfur and strikes the army's cities with drones, as far as Blue Nile.

Who governs, and how

Today Sudan has two governments, and neither was elected. There have been no elections since Bashir's fall, and there is no parliament (Freedom House).

• The army's government, based in Khartoum, is the one that holds Sudan's seat at the UN (The National). At the top is the Sovereignty Council chaired by Burhan; since May 2025 the prime minister has been the jurist Kamil Idris (same source).
• The RSF government, called the government "of peace and unity", grew out of the Tasis ("foundation") alliance and is led by a fifteen-member presidential council chaired by Hemedti; the prime minister is Mohamed Hassan al-Ta'aishi (Sudan War Monitor).

Two independent institutes, in two different countries, reach the same conclusion:

• Freedom House (United States), 2026 report: 1 point out of 100, "not free". It lost a point compared with the previous year because of ethnically based killings and expulsions (Freedom House).
• V-Dem (Sweden), 2026 report: "closed autocracy", the category of regimes in which people do not vote for who governs them (V-Dem). What distinguishes an autocracy from a democracy is explained in our entry Autocracy.

On 22 September 2026 the US State Department declared that neither the army nor the RSF, nor their leaders, represent legitimate governance: both rule "through force of arms alone" (The National). The Khartoum government rejected the statement.

Who's who

Where the conflict comes from

We use the four levels of our piece Are the world's wars "Muslim"?. Here almost all the fighters are Sunni Muslims: religion does not divide the sides.

The ground: a centre and its peripheries. Sudan was born of a conquest, the Turco-Egyptian one of 1821, and its borders are those set by Cairo and London. For two centuries the centre on the Nile took slaves, soldiers, gold and livestock from the peripheries, and gave little back. The British reinforced the imbalance, investing along the river and isolating the South. After independence the Arab elites of the Nile kept that model: this is the charge of the 2000 "Black Book". The wars of the South, Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile all start here.

This does not absolve the governments that followed. Colonialism left the imbalance; arming one part of the population against another was a choice made in Khartoum, by Nimeiri, by Bashir and by the generals who succeeded him.

The spark: two armies for one state. Bashir had created the RSF as a personal army, separate from the regular army and loyal to him. After his fall the two armies found themselves sharing the country's power and wealth. The December 2022 agreement asked for them to be merged, but without a date; neither general wanted to give up command. On 15 April 2023 the dispute became a war.

The banner: Arabs and non-Arabs. Neither side fights in the name of ethnicity. But in Darfur the war has followed the lines of the 2003 one. The RSF and allied militias have systematically attacked the Masalit, Fur and Zaghawa: for the UN fact-finding mission, in El Fasher this violence "was not random excesses of war" but a planned operation (UN Geneva). On the other side, the army has enlisted militias on tribal and Islamist lines, and civilians from Arab tribes are accused of siding with the RSF. Behind ethnicity there is also land: the herders' pastures and the farmers' fields, which drought has made ever scarcer (HRW).

The external multiplier: weapons, gold and ports. A war of this length cannot be fought without supplies. The next section documents who supplies the two sides, who buys the gold and who wants a port on the Red Sea.

Who profits

We document declared or verifiable interests, not motives. When an actor denies something, we say so.

The two generals and gold. Even before commanding the RSF, Hemedti took control of Jebel Amer, Darfur's largest artisanal gold mine. His family's company, al-Junaid, became the country's largest gold exporter (BBC, via allAfrica); the United States sanctioned it in June 2023 (Steptoe). In 2015 Hemedti also sold his men to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates to fight in Yemen (BBC, cited above). But gold also funds the army: in 2024 the Port Sudan government officially exported gold worth 1.97 billion dollars, almost half of all recorded exports, and according to the state mining company 80% of the gold leaves the country as contraband (Steptoe, cited above). In July 2026 the European Union banned the purchase of Sudanese gold, accusing both sides of financing the war this way; the United Kingdom sanctioned an RSF financier and three state mining companies (same source).

The United Arab Emirates. According to the UN fact-finding mission there are "reasonable grounds" to believe that a network with bases in the Emirates, Chad, Libya and Puntland supplied the RSF with weapons, drones, fuel and mercenaries. The Emirates deny any involvement (we wrote about it in "Sudan, war by remote"). Their documented interests:

• gold: in 2024 the Emirates imported 29 tonnes of gold directly from Sudan, up from 17 in 2023, according to UN data compiled by the NGO Swissaid (Swissaid). The Emirates buy the gold exported by the army's government, and the United States, the United Kingdom and the EU have sanctioned traders based in the Emirates for buying gold from RSF mines (Steptoe). The Emirati authorities said those companies were operating without an active licence (same source);
• the Red Sea: in 2022 two Emirati companies signed a 6-billion-dollar project for a port and an agricultural zone at Abu Amama, north of Port Sudan. In November 2024 the army's government cancelled it, accusing the Emirates of backing the RSF (The New Arab).

Egypt is the army's main regional backer: aircraft, ammunition and intelligence (CFR). It wants a friendly government to its south, on the Nile on which its water depends, while its dispute with Ethiopia over the great GERD dam remains open. According to press investigations, including one by the New York Times, Egypt has moved from support to direct intervention, with drones launched from a base in the Egyptian desert; Cairo denies it and says it has only trainers in Sudan (Horn Review).

Saudi Arabia declares itself neutral and hosted the 2023 Jeddah talks, but backs the army's legitimacy (CFR). According to the African business press, a 1.5-billion-dollar contract for Pakistani weapons for the army, paid for by Riyadh, was linked to a deal on Sudanese gold with the Saudi refinery; Reuters reported that it was cancelled in April 2026 after protests from Western governments (Steptoe).

Turkey and Iran. Iran has supplied the army with Mohajer-6 drones (CFR). The UN mission recognised, in footage of army attacks, drones consistent with Turkish models, but did not attribute their supply to any state (we reported it in "Sudan, war by remote").

Russia has switched horses. From 2017 the company Meroe Gold, which according to the US Treasury was a front for the Wagner group, mined gold in Sudan; Wagner later forged ties with Hemedti (Al Jazeera). Today Moscow backs the army (CFR), and the interest is a port: a 2020 agreement provides for a Russian naval base in Port Sudan for 25 years, with up to four ships and 300 personnel. It has never been ratified, and in November 2025 the Russian ambassador said it was "halted" because of the war (Kyiv Post); according to the Wall Street Journal, in December the army offered it again in exchange for weapons (The New Arab). In November 2024 Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire (Al Jazeera).

The neighbours. Chad and the eastern Libya of General Haftar are named by the UN mission as hubs for supplies to the RSF; satellite imagery and press investigations link Ethiopian military facilities to the supply and training of the RSF (CFR). Kenya hosted in Nairobi, in February 2025, the signing of the parallel government's charter (same source).

The United States and Europe. They have sanctioned the leaders of both sides and their companies. The United States determined in January 2025 that the RSF had committed genocide, and in May 2025 that the army had used chemical weapons in 2024, a charge the government rejects (Justice Info). But the Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the main external backers of the two sides, are also strategic partners of Washington and of European countries, Italy included. And Europe's attention remains far smaller than for other wars, as we documented in "Why Ukraine and not Sudan".

The Islamists. Pushed out of power by the 2019 revolution, they are back on the front line fighting alongside the army (Asharq Al-Awsat). For civilian groups their presence is one of the reasons the army refuses to negotiate; the army replies that the militias are under its command.

Who intervenes from outside

• The "Quad" (United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Emirates). On 12 September 2025 it approved a roadmap: a three-month humanitarian truce, then a permanent ceasefire and a transition to civilian government (Sudan Tribune). As of 22 October 2026 the truce has never taken effect. According to Reuters, the United States denied Burhan a visa for the UN General Assembly after he rejected a 90-day truce (Sudan Tribune).
• The UN. Since 2004 the Security Council has banned the supply of weapons to Darfur (resolutions 1556 and 1591). On 12 September 2026 it renewed the embargo but kept it limited to Darfur, while the United States and the UN mission were asking for it to be extended to the whole country (allAfrica). The Secretary-General's personal envoy is the former Finnish foreign minister Pekka Haavisto, appointed in February 2026 (UN). On 5 October 2026 the Human Rights Council renewed the fact-finding mission for one year; the Sudanese government rejects it and refuses visas to its members (allAfrica, cited above).
• The host countries. Of the 4.3 million Sudanese refugees in the region, about 1.4 million are in Egypt; the others mainly in Chad and South Sudan (UN Geneva, citing UNHCR).

The human cost. No one knows how many have died. ACLED, an organisation that counts only documented killings in the fighting, has recorded at least 59,000 (AP, via AJC). Studies that also estimate unrecorded deaths give much higher numbers: for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in Khartoum state alone more than 61,000 people died of all causes in the first fourteen months of the war (LSHTM); for the Norwegian institute PRIO, deaths in 2025 may have reached 100,000 (PRIO). Internally displaced people number 8.8 million (UNHCR, on IOM data, May 2026), refugees abroad 4.3 million. In May, 19.5 million people, more than four in ten, were in acute food insecurity; on 19 October the IPC, the international system that measures hunger, warned that areas at risk of famine are growing in Darfur and Kordofan, also because of drought linked to El Niño (AP, via AJC).

International law

The treaties. According to the humanitarian law database (Guide du droit humanitaire), Sudan:

• has been a party to the Genocide Convention since 2003;
• has been a party to the Geneva Conventions since 1957 and to both Additional Protocols since 2006: the second protects civilians in internal wars like this one;
• has been a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention since 1999 and to the Convention against Torture since 2021;
• signed the Rome Statute in 2000 but has not ratified it.

The RSF is an armed group, not a state, but it is bound by humanitarian law just like the army.

**The International Criminal Court.** Sudan is not a member, but in 2005 the Security Council referred to it the crimes committed in Darfur (resolution 1593). That is why the Court can judge Darfur but not Khartoum, Kordofan or Blue Nile. The arrest warrants for Bashir, issued in 2009 and 2010, have never been executed. On 6 October 2025 came the first conviction for Darfur, that of the former Janjaweed leader Ali Kushayb, and on 9 December the sentence: 20 years (ICC). On today's war, the prosecutor's office is investigating the massacres of El Geneina and El Fasher and says it has "concrete evidence" against the RSF leaders, but has not yet announced charges (People Daily). The Sudanese suspects are on our page ICC Fugitives.

Genocide. On 19 February 2026 the UN fact-finding mission concluded that in El Fasher the RSF committed at least three of the acts listed in the Genocide Convention against the Zaghawa and Fur: killings, serious bodily and mental harm, and conditions of life imposed to destroy the group (UN Geneva). It is a finding by a commission of inquiry, not a judgment; the same applies to the American determination of January 2025. The RSF denies large-scale killings. We wrote about it in our manifesto for Sudan.

**The case at the International Court of Justice.** In March 2025 Sudan accused the Emirates of complicity in the RSF's genocide (CFR). On 5 May 2025 the Court dismissed the case without examining the merits: when they joined the Convention, the Emirates excluded the Court's jurisdiction over disputes concerning them (a reservation to Article IX) (The East African). The decision says nothing about whether the accusations are well founded.

The responsibilities of others. International law does not concern only the two generals:

• common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions obliges all states to ensure respect for humanitarian law, and a state that knowingly helps another to violate it is responsible too. We explained this in "Sudan, war by remote";
• the UN embargo on Darfur binds all member states; whoever supplies weapons to the RSF in Darfur violates it;
• the Genocide Convention obliges states to prevent it, not only to punish it. In 2007, in the Bosnia v. Serbia judgment, the International Court of Justice held that every state must use "all means reasonably available", all the more so the greater its capacity to influence those committing it (Opinio Juris).

Timeline

Change log

• 22 October 2026: first version.

Sources: Human Rights Watch · Library of Congress · Central Bureau of Statistics · The National · Freedom House · EUAA · Al Jazeera · IRB Canada · Justice Info · Minority Rights Group · Minority Rights Group · US State Department, 2019 · Al Jazeera · The New Humanitarian · Steptoe · Embassy of Sudan in the Netherlands · Macquarie University · Fanack · National Army Museum · Fanack · Library of Congress · Refworld · CFR · Africanews · ICC · BBC, via allAfrica · HRW · People Daily, citing the ICC and the UN · Sudan War Monitor · Al Jazeera · Anadolu · Al Jazeera · V-Dem · Al Jazeera · The Sentry · CBC · Asharq Al-Awsat · The New Arab · Wikipedia · CSW · Sudan Tribune · Sudans Post · UN Geneva · HRW · Swissaid · Horn Review · Kyiv Post · The New Arab · Al Jazeera · Justice Info · Sudan Tribune · Sudan Tribune · allAfrica · UN · UN Geneva, citing UNHCR · AP, via AJC · LSHTM · PRIO · UNHCR, on IOM data, May 2026 · Guide du droit humanitaire · ICC · The East African · Opinio Juris

Related pieces: Sudan, war by remote: who supplies, who pilots, who should stop it · Sudan: the UN warns that an offensive on El-Obeid risks new international crimes · For Sudan — The Genocide the World Looks Away From · Why Ukraine and not Sudan

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