By Abbas al-Zein* – The Cradle
The fall of El-Fasher signals the end of Sudan’s centralized governance and the rise of a militarized political economy fueled by gold, regional corridors, and foreign interests.
The fall of El-Fasher, capital of North Darfur, to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) marks a decisive rupture in Sudan’s war, which erupted in April 2023. No longer a conventional power struggle between Sovereignty Council head Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), the conflict has morphed into a complex battle over geography, economy, social structures, and regional influence.
El-Fasher had served for more than a century as the symbolic and administrative hub of the Sudanese state in Darfur. The RSF’s seizure of the city represents the collapse of Khartoum’s last stronghold in the region and the onset of what might be termed “forced decentralization” or a fragmentation of authority in which parallel power centers emerge, outside the bounds of the central state.
Located at a natural gateway to desert trade and smuggling routes stretching into Libya, Chad, and Niger, El-Fasher links Darfur to West Africa more than it does to Khartoum or Port Sudan. These corridors, once commercial routes, are now lifelines for the RSF’s war economy – supplying arms, smuggled goods, fighters, and fuel.
An April 2025 report, ‘Darfur’s Long-Distance Trade: Impact of War and RSF Trade Embargo,’ highlights how trans-Darfur routes are now economic arteries feeding the RSF’s military ambitions. As the group chokes off rival access and monopolizes trade, the borderlands once treated as Sudan’s periphery have become a vital geopolitical nexus, where gold smuggling, militia power, and foreign deals converge.
The end of Khartoum’s rule and the rise of militarized governance
With the RSF entrenched in Darfur and the army clinging to Sudan’s eastern and central regions, the country has effectively fractured. Two rival authorities now govern in parallel: the Sudanese army as the nominal custodian of state legitimacy, and the RSF as a self-declared power ruling through arms and commerce.
This bifurcation also reflects a deep structural reality, namely the state’s historical absence in Sudan’s western regions. Khartoum long treated Darfur as a resource extraction zone, devoid of investment in infrastructure or public services. That model has now collapsed.
The RSF’s victory in El-Fasher symbolically ends Sudan’s post-independence model of centralized governance. However, this division in Sudan is definitely not new. In 2011, the south broke away to form an independent state after decades of civil war and marginalization. What is unfolding now in Darfur echoes that earlier rupture – not through formal secession, but through the creation of parallel political economies that operate entirely outside Khartoum’s authority.
Researcher Osman Ali Osman al-Makki notes that as peripheral communities gain resource control, they spawn alternative forms of local authority that “often challenge the state’s ability to manage natural resources effectively.”
Decades of structural marginalization have left Darfur vulnerable to this transformation. In his 2022 study, ‘The Conflict in Darfur, Sudan: Background and Overview,’ Alex de Waal points out that:
“Not only was Darfur the poorest region of northern Sudan, but the leading economic strategists in the government made it clear that the official strategy was to focus on the central axis between Dongola (northern), Sennar (Blue Nile), and al-Obaid (Kordofan), the so-called ‘Hamdi Triangle.’”
Nevertheless, the effects of the recent and ongoing war have transcended the boundaries of the battlefield and politics, striking society itself at its core. The war economy – based on gold, smuggling, weapons, and domination of corridors – has changed the shape of daily life in Darfur, shifting the balance of power within villages and tribes.
Tribal elders no longer arbitrate disputes, as militias have imposed themselves as a new authority, backed by money and weapons. As this social order has disintegrated, massacres have become part of the logic of the conflict itself – not an accidental consequence or a cause. This is because the goal is no longer just military control, but rather the dismantling of old social structures and the imposition of a new type of loyalties and the imposition of force.
A June 2025 study by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation titled ‘The Rapid Support Forces and Sudan’s War of Visions’ argues that the Sudanese conflict has outgrown its ethnic roots: “the identity-based conflict in Sudan is not merely ethnic, it is transactional, shaped by broken social contracts around resource access, political dignity, and institutional neglect.”
A crisis of Arabism and the transformation of tribal power
The Darfur war has also become a battlefield for Sudan’s contested Arab identity. Arab tribes like the Rizeigat – particularly Hemedti’s Mahameed clan – are now caught between a central state that historically monopolized Arab identity and marginalized Arabs of the periphery; and non-Arab communities such as the Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit, who view these militias as tools of repression and suffered at the hands of the Janjaweed (from which the RSF traces its origins) during the Darfur War at the turn of the millennium.
This has fractured the very idea of Arabism in Sudan. No longer a unifying cultural identity, it now functions as a dividing line – between the Arabs of power and those of the margins.
Since 2023, the RSF’s expansion has weaponized Arab identity in two ways: as a tribal mobilization tool and as a political ideology that challenges the Nile Valley’s monopoly on statehood. Yet this too is evolving. The RSF increasingly operates as a militarized economic actor untethered from tribal loyalty. It draws strength from its control of trade corridors, gold fields, and smuggling networks.
In this way, tribal affiliation has shifted from a social framework in the hands of the authority to a political project that wants to become the authority.
As alliances shift toward material interest rather than bloodlines, Darfur now resembles a patchwork of armed fiefdoms more than a tribal society. The collapse of traditional authority has paved the way for a new order where weapons, not elders, dictate the rules.
Regional power plays: Gold, corridors, and foreign footprints
Darfur’s transformation into a militarized economic hub has attracted regional and international actors seeking to exploit Sudan’s strategic corridors and resource wealth. The desert roads connecting Sudan to the Red Sea and West Africa have become arteries for arms, fighters, and smuggled gold – fueling a geopolitical contest in the heart of Africa.
The UAE, through Dubai-based companies, plays a central role in this shadow economy. It reportedly receives up to 90 percent of Sudan’s gold exports, largely through unregulated routes, and in exchange, provides the RSF with arms, logistics, and financing. According to a 2025 Chatham House study, this gold-for-influence model has made Sudanese gold a currency of regional power.
Through Abu Dhabi’s relationship with the RSF, it seeks to strengthen its regional influence as part of its plan to dominate ports in the West Asian region in general, the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea in particular, and to secure strategic resources such as gold and other minerals, reinforcing its position in the regional struggle for resources.
Cairo, meanwhile, views the RSF’s control of western Sudan as a threat to its southern security and the integrity of Nile water agreements. Egypt has thrown its support behind the Sudanese army, seeing the RSF’s rise as an existential risk to national cohesion and regional water politics. From this position, Cairo calibrates its political and military backing of the army against a broader imperative, preventing Sudan’s collapse from spilling chaos across its southern border.
Russia’s approach is pragmatic. Between 2020 and 2023, Moscow – via the Wagner Group – developed mining partnerships with the RSF. But after Wagner’s collapse, Russia pivoted toward official ties with Burhan’s government. In April 2024, a Port Sudan visit yielded mining concessions and a ruble-based arms deal, reinforcing Russia’s institutional foothold.
Moscow also seeks to keep the Port Sudan naval base agreement under negotiation with the Sudanese army, offering a presence in the Red Sea.
Turkiye has doubled down on its alliance with “strategic partner” Burhan, treating Sudan as a gateway to Red Sea influence and African markets. According to a report by the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) titled ‘Sudan in Turkey’s African Geopolitics: A Sotto Voce Experience in a Coveted Region,’ Ankara sees Sudan as a platform to increase economic and political presence across the continent by investing in strategic sectors such as agriculture and infrastructure.
Like other external forces, Turkiye is also seeking to strengthen its relations with Sudan to enhance its influence in the Red Sea and vital sea lanes, which contribute to achieving its geopolitical goals at the regional level.
Leaked 2025 documents provided to the Washington Post reveal Ankara’s Baykar firm delivered drones to the Sudanese army in late 2023, reportedly in exchange for access to gold mines and strategic ports.
Gold and corridors: The real engines of war
The Sudan war, publicly framed as a power struggle, is in essence a battle over resource control. For the RSF, gold mines in Darfur and Kordofan represent both autonomy and leverage – fuel for war and currency for alliances.
Smuggled through Libya, Chad, and Niger to markets like Dubai, the promise of Sudanese gold lies not only in exports but also as a tool of influence. Coupled with control over desert trade routes, the RSF now operates a cross-border economic network beyond the central state’s reach.
War is no longer just a struggle over Khartoum or state institutions, but a struggle over the land and resources themselves. Control of gold and other minerals, agricultural land, and cross-border trade routes means controlling the course and future of the state – internally but with external influence – as the cross-border economy has become the primary driver of conflict.
What comes next? Three scenarios for Sudan
Sudan’s war has entered a decisive phase, shaped by internal collapse and external exploitation. The RSF’s capture of El-Fasher and dominance over trade routes and mineral wealth does not merely reflect a change in military frontlines, but rather signals a de facto redistribution of power and wealth inside and outside the country. Three possible scenarios for Sudan’s future can be envisaged:
One possible outcome is a de facto partition, where Sudan fractures into rival zones controlled by the RSF and army, each managing its own resources, economy, and external ties. A unified Sudan survives in name only.
Another trajectory could involve escalated war. The RSF may push east to seize more resource-rich areas or even attempt a renewed assault on Khartoum. This risks drawing in more regional powers, intensifying the proxy war.
A third possibility is managed fragmentation. A regionally brokered arrangement may entrench the status quo, distributing power and resources between the warring factions without resolving the conflict.
In all scenarios, the drivers remain the same: gold, trade routes, and the regional contest for influence. Sudan’s future may no longer be decided in Khartoum, but in Darfur’s deserts, smuggling trails, and foreign capitals betting on the next dominant force in Africa’s fractured center.
*Abbas al-Zein, lebanese political writer at Al-Mayadeen Media Network, specializing in geopolitics and international security. His work also explores global energy resources, supply chains, and energy security dynamics.
Read also: https://www.juancole.com/2025/11/sudan-rubble-satellite.html