12/22/2025

 

Samuel Clifford

 

However, this article will start with the conditions Sudan found itself around the time of European colonialism and right before its independence. Remember that this article simply provides an overview of the conflicts. It is not meant to be a comprehensive analysis of the prior events. Sudan entered independence on January 1, 1956, breaking from the British-Egyptian administration that had governed the territory for decades. Ismail al‑Azhari of the National Unionist Party became the country’s first prime minister that same day, but his government quickly lost its footing. After a vote of censure in the Constituent Assembly, al‑Azhari fell from power, and Abdallah Khalil of the Umma Party formed a new government on July 7, 1956. The political landscape remained fragmented, and the legislative elections of early 1958 reflected that division as the Umma Party secured 63 of 173 seats in the House of Representatives, while the National Unionist Party won 45.

 

At the moment of independence, Sudan emerged as a vast and deeply diverse state. The state was roughly one‑third the size of the contiguous United States and home to some 600 ethnic groups and more than 400 languages. That diversity was not new, as it had been shaped and reinforced by the joint British‑Egyptian administration’s policy of governing the north and south separately from 1930 to 1953. The result was a country entering self‑rule without a shared administrative history or a unified national identity.

 

Religious and cultural divides ran along the same lines. The north was, and remains, predominantly Muslim, while the southern regions were largely Christian and animist. The differences were not simply demographic. They carried significant political weight. Separate colonial governance had hardened regional distinctions, and the new state inherited those fractures without a clear mechanism for reconciling them.

 

The 1956 constitution left two foundational questions unresolved:

 

1. Will Sudan be a secular or Islamist state?

 

2. How should power be distributed in a federal system?

 

The Arab‑led government in Khartoum ultimately backed away from earlier promises to southern leaders to establish meaningful federal autonomy. That reversal triggered a mutiny among southern army officers, marking the beginning of Sudan’s first north‑south civil war and setting the pattern for decades of conflict rooted in unaddressed political and regional divides.

 

First Civil War (1955-1972)

 

The First Sudanese Civil War, which stretched from 1955 to 1972, emerged out of deep structural fractures that predated independence. As stated above, Susan entered statehood on January 1, 1956 as a vast, diverse country that was home to hundreds of ethnic groups and languages. Yet this diverse people was governed by a political elite centered in the Arabic‑speaking, predominantly Muslim north. Southern communities, largely Christian or animist, had long been administered separately under British rule, a policy that reinforced regional distinctions and left the new state without a shared political foundation. When southern demands for federalism were sidelined after independence, tensions escalated quickly. A mutiny by southern soldiers in 1955 marked the opening phase of the conflict, and by the 1960s, the southern insurgency, known as the Anya Nya, had become an organized, sustained rebellion seeking meaningful autonomy.

 

As the war intensified, the political landscape in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, grew increasingly unstable. Prime Minister Abdallah Khalil was overthrown in a military coup on November 17, 1958, bringing Lt. General Ibrahim Abboud to power. His regime suspended the constitution, dissolved parliament, and banned political parties, consolidating authority under the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. The Abboud government faced repeated uprisings in the forms of student protests, worker demonstrations, and ethnic mobilization. This resulted in dozens of deaths across 1960–1964. Mounting unrest forced Abboud’s resignation in late 1964, ushering in a turbulent civilian period marked by factionalism, constitutional crises, and shifting coalitions. Elections in 1965 and 1968 produced unstable governments, while political violence, mass demonstrations, and disputes over banning the Communist Party further eroded the state’s capacity to address the southern conflict.

 

Meanwhile, the war in the south continued to evolve. By 1969, the Anya Nya controlled most of southern Sudan, operating as a de facto military force across the region. In 1971, the movement consolidated under the Southern Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM), which would later form the foundation of the modern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). The conflict had already taken a devastating human toll between 500,000 and 1 million deaths that was driven by displacement, famine, and sustained fighting between government forces and southern insurgents.

 

The war finally ended with the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement, negotiated between the SSLM and the Government of Sudan. The accord granted the south substantial regional autonomy over internal affairs and created the Southern Region as a unified political entity. Crucially, it also promised the contested Abyei area the right to hold a referendum to determine whether it would join the south or remain in the north—a provision that would echo through later decades of Sudanese politics. Although the agreement brought a temporary halt to nearly seventeen years of conflict, it did not resolve the deeper political and structural tensions that had fueled the war. Instead, it created a fragile peace that would eventually collapse, setting the stage for Sudan’s second and even more destructive civil war.

 

Sudan’s Second Civil War (1983-2005)

 

The Second Sudanese Civil War, which lasted from 1983 to 2005, emerged directly from the collapse of the 1972 Addis Ababa settlement. The agreement had granted the south regional autonomy, but by the late 1970s President Gaafar Nimeiry began dismantling its core provisions. His attempt in 1978 to assert central control over newly discovered oil fields in the border regions, combined with growing political pressure from Islamist factions in Khartoum, set the stage for renewed conflict.  Southern army units mutinied, and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), led by John Garang, emerged as the primary rebel force.

 

The war quickly expanded beyond the south. Fighting spread into the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile region, areas with marginalized non‑Arab populations who also resisted Khartoum’s centralizing policies. Internal divisions also shaped the trajectory of the conflict. The SPLA fractured in the early 1990s, producing rival factions such as SPLA‑Nasir and SPLA‑United, which fought both the government and each other. These splits weakened the southern position and intensified civilian suffering. Yet the broader political landscape was shifting. The rise of Omar al‑Bashir’s Islamist government in 1989 hardened the north’s ideological stance, but it also isolated Khartoum internationally. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, sustained pressure from the United States, regional governments, and international organizations pushed both sides toward negotiation.

 

Peace efforts gained momentum in the early 2000s under the mediation of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). After years of intermittent talks, the Government of Sudan and the SPLA signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) on January 9, 2005. The CPA granted the south significant autonomy, established mechanisms for wealth‑sharing—especially oil revenues—and created joint security arrangements. Most importantly, it guaranteed the south the right to hold a referendum on independence after a six‑year interim period. The agreement formally ended the 22‑year civil war, though its implementation remained fragile and contested.

 

The referendum promised in the CPA was held in January 2011. Despite lingering disputes over borders, oil transit fees, and the status of Abyei, the vote proceeded with overwhelming southern support for secession. Nearly 99 percent of voters chose independence, reflecting decades of political marginalization, cultural repression, and wartime devastation. On July 9, 2011, the Republic of South Sudan became the world’s newest sovereign state, marking the final political outcome of a conflict that had shaped generations.

 

Sudan’s Current Conflict 

 

Sudan’s current civil war erupted on April 15, 2023, when heavy fighting broke out in the capital Khartoum between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). What began as a power struggle between two parts of the same security apparatus quickly turned into a nationwide conflict that has now lasted more than two and a half years, making it one of the deadliest and most destructive wars in the world today.

 

The roots of the war lie in the deeply militarized nature of Sudan’s political system and a broken transition after the fall of long-time ruler Omar al-Bashir in 2019. For years, the RSF—built out of the notorious Janjaweed militias responsible for atrocities in Darfur—operated as a semi-autonomous force alongside the regular army, answering directly to Bashir and then to its own commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemedti”).

 

The immediate trigger for the conflict was a breakdown in negotiations over security sector reform and power-sharing. Disagreements over the timeline and terms of integrating the RSF into the SAF hardened into a personal and institutional rivalry between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the SAF, and Hemedti, head of the RSF.

 

As the war spread, the SAF and RSF carved the country into competing zones of control. By late 2025, analysts estimate that the SAF controls roughly 60% of Sudan, including much of the capital area around Khartoum, the Red Sea port of Port Sudan, and most of the border with Egypt. This border with Egypt gives the army access to the sea, major administrative centers, and important pastoral and trade corridors. This territorial split has raised fears that the conflict could harden into a de facto partition of the country.

 

The human cost has been immense. Since April 2023, more than 150,000 people have been killed and over 12 million displaced, making Sudan the largest and fastest displacement crisis ever recorded. The war has destroyed Sudan’s already fragile health system and social infrastructure. More than 70% of the country’s hospitals have been damaged or destroyed, leaving huge swaths of the population without access to basic medical care. Women and children face particularly severe risks. Humanitarian organizations report widespread sexual violence, including rape used as a weapon of war, as well as soaring rates of gender-based violence, trafficking, and exploitation as families lose livelihoods and social protections.

 

Both sides have been accused of grave violations of international law. The RSF and allied militias have been implicated in genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing, particularly in Darfur, where attacks have targeted specific ethnic groups such as the Masalit. 

 

The war is not purely domestic; it is sustained by extensive external support. Despite a long-standing UN arms embargo related to Darfur, recently manufactured weapons and equipment from countries such as China, Russia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates have been documented in the hands of both the SAF and RSF.

 

International reactions have mixed outrage, humanitarian response, and strategic calculation. The UN and humanitarian agencies repeatedly warn that Sudan is a “catastrophe of staggering scale and brutality” and urge a dramatic scale-up of funding and diplomatic engagement, but aid remains underfunded and access is often blocked by the parties.  The United States and other major powers are trying to shape the course of the conflict, albeit with limited success so far. In December 2025, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Vinny Spera told Congress that Washington views the Sudan war as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and has sanctioned more than forty individuals and entities linked to both the SAF and RSF, including UAE-based companies and Colombian actors accused of directly supporting atrocities.

 

For ordinary Sudanese people, the immediate concern is survival, not the geopolitical endgame. Famine, disease, and relentless violence are destroying livelihoods and social fabric on a historic scale, with famine already declared in parts of the country and more people living in famine conditions there than in the rest of the world combined. Ending the war, restoring humanitarian access, and rebuilding institutions will require sustained international attention and political will long after the headlines move on. But for now, the conflict in Sudan stands as a stark example of how a power struggle among elites can unravel an entire society in a matter of months—and how hard it is to put a country back together once that unraveling begins. 

 

Sources

 

“Republic of the Sudan (1956–Present).” Dynamic Analysis of Dispute Management (DADM) Project, University of Central Arkansas,

https://uca.edu/politicalscience/home/research-projects/dadm-project/sub-saharan-africa-region/70-republic-of-sudan-1956-present/. Accessed 18 Dec. 2025.

 

Zapata, Mollie. “Sudan: Independence through Civil Wars, 1956–2005.” Enough Project, 13 Dec. 2011, https://enoughproject.org/blog/sudan-brief-history-1956.  Accessed 22 Dec. 2025.

 

Welliver, T. K. “First Sudanese Civil War Erupts.” Research Starters: History, EBSCO, 2023,

https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/first-sudanese-civil-war-erupts.  Accessed 22 Dec. 2025.

 

“A Country Divided.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,

https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/sudan/a-country-divided.  Accessed 22 Dec. 2025.

 

Momodu, Samuel. “Second Sudanese Civil War (1983–2005).” BlackPast, 23 Dec. 2018,

https://blackpast.org/global-african-history/second-sudanese-civil-war-1983-2005/. Accessed 22 Dec. 2025.

 

Spera, Vinny. “Opening Statement on Sudan.” House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 11 Dec. 2025,

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA16/20251211/118745/HHRG-119-FA16-Wstate-SperaV-20251211.pdf.  Accessed 22 Dec. 2025.

 

“Sudan’s Civil War: A Visual Guide to the Brutal Conflict.” The Conversation, 18 Dec. 2025,

https://theconversation.com/sudans-civil-war-a-visual-guide-to-the-brutal-conflict-271429.  Accessed 22 Dec. 2025.

 

“Sudan Conflict.” UN News,

https://news.un.org/en/focus/sudan-conflict.  Accessed 22 Dec. 2025.

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