CARNET · 2026.05.23 · 1 min read
Sudan: the deadliest civil war nobody watches
Field notebook. Two years of SAF versus RSF: Khartoum cut in two, Darfur ravaged, the UAE-Egypt axis structuring the ground.
More than 150,000 dead, 12 million displaced, famine declared in at least five states: Sudan is, in human losses and forced displacement, the heaviest conflict of the moment, ahead of Gaza and Ukraine. It is also the most invisible.
The ground has stabilized into two blocs. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), backed by Egypt and discreetly by Türkiye for drones, control the east, the Red Sea and part of Khartoum. Hemedti's Rapid Support Forces (RSF), backed by the United Arab Emirates via Chad and Libya, hold Darfur, Kordofan and half the capital. Neither camp can take the other ; neither camp wants to lay down arms.
Economically, gold funds the war. UAE-Chad-RSF flows transit Dubai ; the SAF leans on the diaspora and on Port Sudan's port rent. Talks in Geneva and Jeddah have produced, in two years, zero operational agreement.
Institute reading. Sudan is the African laboratory of proxy war between middle powers. It is here, more than in the Sahel, that the implicit rule plays out : can a Gulf actor fund a non-state belligerent at state scale without international consequence ? As long as the answer is yes, the model will replicate in Libya, in Somalia, and tomorrow elsewhere. French and European diplomacy, silent on this file, will pay the bill in forced migrations on the 2027-2028 horizon.