Sudan: Why Military Gains May Prolong the War Rather Than End It
اقرأ هذا التقييم بالعربية | Read in Arabic: https://www.kmtcentre.com/ar/post/السودان-لماذا-قد-يؤدي-تقدم-الجيش-إلى-إطالة-الحرب-بدل-إنهائها
Key Assessment
Sudan's war presents a strategic paradox. The Sudanese Armed Forces can recapture territory without necessarily restoring effective nationwide governance. The Rapid Support Forces can retain strongholds without turning armed control into durable political legitimacy. This assessment advances a testable hypothesis: the conflict is shifting from competition to control the state toward competition over the terms on which the state might be reconstructed. Reunifying authority may become harder than recapturing land.
What Has Changed?
The SAF's recovery of Khartoum and Al Jazirah, alongside the RSF's consolidation across much of Darfur following the fall of El Fasher in October 2025, changed the military geography. Kordofan has become a crucial arena linking western strongholds and the country's center. Control of the capital has proved insufficient to end the conflict. Battlefield gains can change the map without eliminating an opponent's ability to fight or disrupt governance.
The SAF's Dilemma
The SAF's historical connection with state institutions helps it claim continuity and national unity. But military victory cannot alone answer what political order would follow the war. The conflict emerged amid an unresolved relationship between the military, an autonomous paramilitary force and a stalled civilian transition. Ending dual armed command would not automatically establish civilian oversight. Wartime legitimacy could become a substitute for political accountability unless durable institutions follow.
The RSF's Dilemma
Territorial strongholds and resources preserve the RSF's bargaining position, but armed control does not automatically create public administration, reliable services or recognized authority. Accepting reunification of armed forces, however, would threaten its independent command and control over resources. Negotiated concessions can therefore appear existential to its leadership even as prospects of victory weaken. Local economic interests built around wartime rule may compound the difficulty of exit.
Contextual field photograph: displaced families in Tawila, June 2025; not an image of October 2026 events.
Why Kordofan Matters
Kordofan links the military and economic spaces controlled by the rival sides. Its importance lies in whether Sudan can reconnect or its division hardens. Expanding drone strikes introduce an additional contradiction: an actor may control a city without being able to protect it, while a force losing territory can still disrupt civilian services and commerce from afar. The separation of territorial control from actual security erodes the political value of battlefield gains.
The Destructive Conflict Loop
Fragmented coercive authority redistributes access to resources and transport routes. Armed networks and war economies adapt to military control. Displacement, institutional collapse and declining services weaken civilian actors capable of reconstructing national institutions. This raises the cost of any settlement that would reunify forces, revenues and administration. Consequences of war become conditions for its continuation. This does not mean everyone benefits: civilians bear catastrophic losses, while specific vested interests may find transition to peace costly.
Contextual field photograph: a child at a displacement camp, August 2025.
External Destabilizing Dynamics
Foreign support can sustain combatants despite military losses. It can also trap outside backers in cumulative commitments: the more costly an ally's defeat becomes, the greater the incentive to invest further. Yet regional powers may share an interest in preventing complete state collapse and spillover. The meaningful diplomatic test is not the number of meetings held, but verifiable restrictions on military support and credible guarantees for transition.
The Mediation Dilemma
A ceasefire is essential for civilian safety but insufficient if it simply freezes control lines and preserves war economies. Insisting on total victory could prolong attrition; distributing power only among armed organizations could reproduce the dual coercive structure that contributed to the war. Sustainable settlement requires rules integrating armed forces under accountable authority, restoring civilian institutions and public economic administration, and limiting foreign military involvement.
How Could This Hypothesis Be Disproved?
The thesis of mutually obstructed victory and settlement would weaken if one side suffered a sustained collapse in fighting capacity, external supply networks were decisively interrupted, binding civilian-led security arrangements emerged, or recovered regions established stable services and economic life. Shifting fronts alone, while recruitment, long-range strikes and resupply continue, would not prove that the conflict is approaching its end.
Three-Month Outlook
Protracted fighting and limited territorial changes, particularly around Kordofan, remain the qualitatively most plausible direction absent a major military or diplomatic rupture. A more dangerous possibility is the institutionalization of separate administrative and economic spaces, making reunification difficult even after major combat declines.
Final Strategic Judgment
The decisive question is no longer merely who will control the state. It is whether a unified and governable state will remain once the struggle to control it ends. Progress toward peace must be measured by civilian security and the recovery of public institutions, not simply the changing colors of a military map.
Field Photography and Sources
Displacement camp in Tawila, 23 June 2025, Ahmed 222222, CC0: https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d244be_6ce851a7d25441c6abb82afaaaf6594b~mv2.jpg . Child in a displacement camp, 2 August 2025, Ahmed 222222, CC0: https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d244be_4d5424b224094596ab34e5db024a9df8~mv2.jpg . Contextual photographs, not images from October 2026. Reporting references: Reuters, 24 September 2026; AP, 7 October 2026; KMT foundational paper, The Crisis of the International System and Its Impact on the Middle East (2020).
