Sudan Conflict Trajectory and Political Settlement Dynamics: Military Momentum and Factional Realignment

Executive Summary

Sudan's Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have recovered significant territory since March 2025, including Khartoum and key Kordofan cities, but the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) retain consolidated control over Darfur and substantial parts of western Sudan, producing a geographic partition that makes negotiated settlement increasingly difficult to achieve on terms either side will accept. A wave of high-profile RSF commander defections since October 2024, including Maj. Gen. al-Nour al-Qubba in April 2026 and field commander Ali "Al-Savanna" Rizqallah in May 2026, is eroding RSF internal cohesion along tribal fault lines, particularly within the Mahariya clan. The conflict's military stalemate, documented by Al Jazeera and the African Union, translates directly into humanitarian catastrophe: the UN reports over 33.7 million Sudanese in need of aid, while aid access remains obstructed by both parties.

• Humanitarian organizations: Map contingency routes through Chad and Ethiopia now; the RSF's drone campaign against El-Obeid signals further logistical chokepoints.
• Risk officers with East Africa exposure: Model a 12-24 month extended impasse; peace dividends remain unlikely before mid-2027 at the earliest.
• Policy/government stakeholders: Defection momentum is the single most actionable lever; external actors should condition engagement on accountability frameworks that make defector amnesty credible but not unconditional.

The military picture is shifting in the SAF's favor at the margins, but the RSF's Darfur fortress means any settlement will require negotiating with a still-armed, territorially entrenched paramilitary, not a defeated one.

The Darfur Partition Problem And Settlement Feasibility

The SAF's recovery of Khartoum and its surrounding central belt since March 2025 is real but analytically misleading if treated as evidence of overall SAF dominance. Al Jazeera's April 2026 three-year review is explicit: the army's achievements are concentrated in the central arc, while the RSF has simultaneously consolidated a western stronghold. The RSF's capture of El-Fasher on October 26, 2025, after a two-year siege, completed its control of all Darfur state capitals. The Human Rights Watch 2026 World Report places this in context: the RSF now holds a contiguous western territory providing internal lines of communication, resource extraction capacity, and cross-border access to the Central African Republic and South Sudan.

This geographic outcome forecloses any settlement that requires the RSF to simply "withdraw." Operation Broken Silence's July 2026 territorial analysis shows SAF holding the center and east (Port Sudan, Khartoum, North Kordofan's El-Obeid) while RSF controls the vast western arc. The SAF, per its December 2025 ceasefire proposal as reported by the Security Council Report, demands full RSF withdrawal before any political process. The RSF has established a parallel governance structure, the "Tasis government," giving Hemedti's forces an institutional stake that they will not surrender without either defeat or a credible political guarantee, neither of which is currently on offer. The International Crisis Group's 2026 Sudan brief describes talks as addressing a war whose actual dynamics have already moved beyond any proposed framework's reach.

Coalition fracture point: External backers are not a unified bloc. The UAE has provided critical logistical support to the RSF, while Egypt and Saudi Arabia back the SAF. This foreign-power bifurcation constrains both the African Union and US-led mediation efforts by ensuring that each party has a reliable external patron, removing the financial pressure that historically motivates combatants to negotiate in earnest.

How Rsf Defections Reshape The Attrition Calculus

The defection wave starting in October 2024 with Abu Aqla Keikal and accelerating through April-May 2026 is significant because it targets the RSF's mid-to-senior command layer, not rank-and-file fighters. The Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper's May 2026 reporting on Al-Qubba is explicit: he was described by his own account as "the third man" in the RSF by military rank and departed with three full groups, including vehicles and equipment. The Africa Defense Forum's June 2026 analysis identifies the structural driver: RSF attacks on the Mahariya clan's pastoral territory in North Darfur in February 2026 alienated commanders who are themselves Mahariya, creating a loyalty contradiction that military careers cannot resolve.

ACLED's infighting analysis adds a second layer. The RSF-SPLM-N coalition, formed in February 2025 as the Sudan Families Alliance, is under internal stress from resource disputes and ethnic incompatibilities. In January 2026, RSF and SPLM-N forces clashed directly in South Kordofan. In May 2026, an intra-SPLM-N conflict erupted over RSF mining access to Atoro lands, forcing SPLM-N leadership to order its own fighters to disarm. These micro-fractures accumulate: the RSF's ability to maintain coordinated multi-front operations degrades with each defection and each allied-force dispute.

The SAF, per the Washington Institute's analysis, is actively exploiting these divisions. Army chief al-Burhan's amnesty framework, cited by the Washington Institute in May 2026, uses Musa Hilal, Hemedti's historical Darfuri rival, as a mediator to negotiate with potential defectors. This is a deliberate sub-state coalition-building strategy, using ethnic brokerage to hollow out the RSF's officer corps. Africa Defense Forum warns, however, that a rapid RSF assault on El-Obeid remains a credible near-term threat, suggesting Hemedti may seek a dramatic battlefield statement before internal erosion accelerates further.

Humanitarian Access Under Dual Obstruction

Sudan's humanitarian crisis is the world's largest displacement crisis, per UN characterization. The Human Rights Watch 2026 World Report placed over 11.8 million people displaced by September 2025, including 7.4 million internally displaced and 4.2 million in neighboring countries. Concern Worldwide's 2026 tracker registers 33.7 million in need of humanitarian assistance. These numbers drive one of the conflict's most consequential cross-domain effects: the humanitarian emergency is not a byproduct of the war but is itself a strategic instrument being weaponized by both parties.

Defconlevel's 2026 conflict tracker, drawing on UN reporting, documents the dual-obstruction pattern precisely: the RSF has looted humanitarian warehouses and supplies, while the SAF has imposed bureaucratic restrictions on cross-border aid operations. The UK Foreign Office's joint statement with France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Norway in May 2026 cited "deliberate targeting" of aid workers around El-Obeid, confirming that obstruction is not incidental but intentional on the RSF side. The SAF's air campaign compounds civilian exposure: Human Rights Watch documented a SAF airstrike killing 41 at a mosque in West Kordofan in June 2025, and further strikes killing at least 23 civilians in July 2025.

The military pressure on El-Obeid translates directly into a humanitarian chokepoint. El-Obeid is North Kordofan's capital and a key logistics hub for aid flowing into Kordofan and Darfur. If the RSF assault documented by Britain and its European allies in May 2026 succeeds, humanitarian corridors into the center of Sudan contract sharply. The Security Council Report noted Dilling endured "famine-like conditions" during its two-year RSF siege, a preview of what El-Obeid faces. These geopolitical and military dynamics compound the existing humanitarian funding gap: Defconlevel reports international appeals have received a fraction of required resources.

The table below maps the core assumptions on which this assessment rests. Cells contain plain analytical prose; confidence annotation appears only in the Key Findings section above.

Counterarguments

1. The defection wave may plateau or reverse if the SAF fails to demonstrate accountability: The Africa Defense Forum notes that SAF domestic allies are publicly rejecting the "lenient attitude towards defecting RSF commanders." Sudan Shield Forces commander Abu Aqla Keikal, the first major defector from October 2024, was subsequently implicated in attacks on civilians in Tayba village per Human Rights Watch, killing at least 26 people. If defectors are seen to escape accountability, the SAF's normalization of defectors may fuel atrocity cycles rather than accelerate RSF dissolution, potentially chilling future defections from more moderate RSF commanders who fear being associated with those who have committed documented abuses.

2. The RSF's Darfur fortress may be more durable than the defection narrative suggests: Asharq Al-Awsat's own analysts note that "so far, there is no evidence that defections between the parties to the war can, on their own, change the course of the conflict or force a political settlement." The RSF controls cross-border economic corridors into the CAR, Libya, and South Sudan that generate independent revenue from gold mining and transit taxation. This economic self-sufficiency means that command defections do not necessarily translate into operational degradation if Hemedti can replace lost commanders with loyalists from outside the Mahariya network, or consolidate remaining forces around a smaller but more ideologically coherent core.

3. The peace process framework is structurally misaligned with the actual conflict geography: African Arguments' July 2026 analysis argues Sudan's peace process "is negotiating a war that no longer exists" because mediation frameworks assume a unitary conflict with two coherent parties, while the actual situation involves a multi-actor, multi-region confrontation where the SPLM-N, the Sudan Shield Forces, Musa Hilal's networks, and numerous other armed groups each have autonomous interests. A settlement that satisfies the SAF and RSF at the top level may be immediately undermined by these sub-state actors, producing a "peace on paper" scenario while fighting continues.

Indicators To Watch

The table below covers the observable signals that would most materially update this assessment over the next six-to-twelve months.

Near-term watch list: (1) RSF offensive decision on El-Obeid (September-October 2026), the single most consequential near-term military event, which would test SAF defensive depth and immediately collapse the main inland humanitarian corridor; (2) UN Panel of Experts on Sudan report (expected Q4 2026), which will update the assessment of UAE and other external supply chains to the RSF and provide the most authoritative public evidence base for sanctions pressure; (3) African Union Peace and Security Council Sudan session (Q4 2026), whose communique language on RSF accountability will signal whether the AU is moving toward coercive or facilitative diplomacy.

Decision Relevance

Scenario A (approximately 55%): Extended military stalemate with continued RSF territorial erosion at the margins, no formal settlement by end-2027. If you advise on Sudan aid policy or manage humanitarian program funding, plan budgets on a two-year extended emergency basis, not a post-conflict recovery assumption. The RSF's Darfur fortress and the SAF's rejection of partial-withdrawal frameworks make a 2027 settlement unlikely absent an external shock. If you are a risk officer assessing East Africa investment exposure, Sudan border instability will continue to affect Chad, South Sudan, Central African Republic, and Ethiopia, requiring elevated country-risk premiums and contingency routing for any commercial corridor that transects western Sudan.

Scenario B (approximately 30%): RSF internal fracture accelerates past a threshold where Hemedti loses operational coherence across Darfur, triggering a negotiated settlement on SAF-favorable terms. If you advise humanitarian organizations, pre-position contingency plans for a fast-moving post-conflict period that historically generates looting and secondary displacement even when fighting formally ends. The Keikal precedent, where his defection was followed by RSF massacres in Gezira, confirms that RSF units without command direction revert to predatory behavior. If you are a development finance institution or a government donor evaluating post-conflict reconstruction instruments, begin scoping Sudan engagement frameworks now so you can move quickly if the window opens, but build in atrocity-accountability conditionality from day one to avoid entrenching warlord economies.

Scenario C (approximately 15%): Renewed RSF conventional offensive, including capture of El-Obeid, reverses SAF momentum and forces the SAF toward a negotiated partition. If you operate aid logistics in Sudan or neighboring countries, establish alternative supply chains through Ethiopia and Red Sea corridors immediately; do not wait for El-Obeid to fall. If you are a policy stakeholder in a government with bilateral engagement with the SAF, begin pressure on al-Burhan now to accept partial ceasefire arrangements in Kordofan as a humanitarian measure, because a position of total rejection offers no off-ramp if SAF loses El-Obeid.

Expert Integration

Expert Consensus Assessment

Analysts across the International Crisis Group, African Arguments, the Washington Institute, and ACLED broadly agree that the military situation as of mid-2026 does not favor a near-term negotiated settlement, and that RSF defections, while significant, have not yet produced an operational turning point. There is consensus that the conflict has fragmented beyond the original SAF-RSF dyad.

Expert Disagreement Areas

• Whether defections signal structural RSF collapse or tactical adjustment: Al Majalla and the Washington Institute treat the defection wave as potentially marking "the beginning of a profound transformation," while Asharq Al-Awsat's own analysis cautions that "so far, there is no evidence that defections can, on their own, change the course of the conflict." ACLED's more granular tribal analysis supports a middle position: fracture is real but slow-moving.
• Whether the peace process is salvageable: African Arguments argues the frameworks are fundamentally misaligned with the conflict as it now exists; the International Crisis Group and the Sudan Tribune's reporting on US-led diplomatic efforts suggest mediation actors continue to believe a framework is reachable, a position the African Arguments analysis implicitly treats as wishful.

Systematic-Expert Alignment

Alignment: MIXED

This assessment aligns with expert consensus on the improbability of near-term settlement but diverges slightly on the weight of RSF defections as a strategic signal. This analysis rates defections as a lagging but meaningful indicator of tribal realignment, a position closer to ACLED's structural reading than to the Washington Institute's more optimistic "turning point" framing. The distinction matters: if defections are driven by ethnic grievance rather than strategic calculation, they will plateau when ethnic grievance is partially addressed, not continue to build.

• Verified information on RSF command structure below the senior general level is extremely limited; the actual scale of internal RSF defections, desertions, and loyalty shifts among mid-level and junior fighters is unknown and may be substantially larger or smaller than the high-profile cases that have entered public reporting.
• The UAE's actual supply relationship with the RSF, including whether it is direct, deniable, or channeled through intermediaries, has not been confirmed through open-source evidence at the level required to assess whether Western diplomatic pressure could credibly interrupt it; the UN Panel of Experts' forthcoming report would be the most reliable update.
• Territorial control assessments are based on open-source mapping by Operation Broken Silence (July 2026) and Al Jazeera (April 2026), which carry uncertainty ranges; front lines in Kordofan are actively contested and may have shifted materially since data collection.
• The demographic and economic impact data (33.7 million in need, sub-150,000 births projected) come from humanitarian tracker estimates rather than census-grade measurement; actual figures could differ, which would affect the assessment of SAF manpower sustainability.
• This assessment does not cover Blue Nile State in detail, where Security Council Report documented renewed clashes and SPLM-N activity in January 2026; that theater could escalate independently and introduce a third major front not addressed by current mediation frameworks.