The year is 2027 and the Rapid Support Forces now control nearly all of Sudan. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF commander, is the “transitional” leader of the country.
Years of urban combat have gutted Sudan’s cities from west to east and from north to south. In the final year of the war, a great famine swept the land, killing tens of thousands. Fighting around Port Sudan, Wadi Halfa, and other border crossings prevented relief convoys from reaching starving people in the country’s interior.
Sudan’s population, which once topped 45 million, has plunged below 40 million after five million people fled to neighboring countries. Millions more fled within Sudan, taking refuge in crowded displaced camps that are stalked by hunger and disease.
By the year 2027, all the oil companies have withdrawn from the country and agricultural exports have all but ceased. Sudan is now one of the poorest countries in the world.
Dagalo attempts to govern through a puppet civilian government, but these officials are ineffectual because they lack real power, real political constituencies, and governmental experience. The state’s institutions have nearly all collapsed, and Dagalo’s attempts to revive them are largely unsuccessful.
However, a patchwork of secondary governmental arrangements exists, varying by region. In some areas, for example, community leaders operate local courts with the sanction of the RSF. In other areas, the RSF commanders themselves handle both civil and military affairs, acting as de facto governors.
Because of the economic collapse, there is no money for hospitals, police, schools, or teachers. Most children have been out of school for four or five years. The country no longer has an operating refinery, so fuel prices are sky-high. Public buses have largely stopped, and even the RSF have trouble getting enough fuel for their operations.
Dagalo, sanctioned and labeled a war criminal by the West, cannot travel internationally. His brother Abdelrahim, deputy commander of the RSF, is under indictment by the International Criminal Court. Other RSF commanders are under investigation by an African Union commission of inquiry or hybrid court, formed in the wake of a new genocide in Darfur—the Second Darfur Genocide.
The RSF’s erstwhile ally, the United Arab Emirates, cut ties after the relationship became too great a political liability. Russia, however, continues to trade with the RSF, buying gold and other minerals.
Relations with neighboring states are poor. Fighting between the RSF and other Darfur armed groups has spilled over into Chad. South Sudan, which was formerly bound to Sudan by shared economic interests—including use of Sudan’s oil pipelines and ports—no longer shares those interests. Cross-border fighting has erupted in several areas, including in the disputed Abyei territory, Upper Nile, and Bahr al-Ghazal.
The RSF, though triumphant, is now an exhausted and divided organization. Having swelled in size to more than 300,000 troops before the end of the war, the RSF is now unmanageably large and expensive to maintain, riven by internal quarrels over money and power. Local mutinies are common, and one or two significant breakaway factions have emerged, including one that has taken control of parts of South Darfur and the Central African Republic.
RSF suffered heavy casualties in the final two years of the war, 2025-2026, during vicious fighting in the final army-controlled cities of Atbara, Dongola, and Port Sudan. Thousands of former RSF fighters, maimed by the war, have demanded compensation and medical care, which Dagalo is unable or unwilling to provide. Crowds of war widows and orphans crowd the gates outside RSF’s offices and bases, begging.
Fighting persists in some parts of the country. In the west, rebel groups control parts of Darfur and launch cross-border raids on the RSF from Chad. In the south, the SPLM-North still control parts of the Nuba Mountains. In the east, Beja tribesman and remnants of the army are waging an insurgency in the Red Sea Hills. In the north, the border city of Wadi Halfa is under joint control of the Egyptian military and remnants of the Sudan Armed Forces.
Insurgents also carry out guerrilla attacks in the capital and other cities. These attacks are met by brutal mass reprisals, dividing public opinion about the resistance.
The Islamic State, which was largely nonexistent in Sudan prior to the war, has established cells in RSF-occupied cities. Having declared the RSF infidels, they carry out suicide attacks and assassinations.
Due to rampant insecurity, economic collapse, and the risk of terrorism, there are no international commercial flights into and out of Sudan. Sudan slides deeper and deeper into a state of isolation and collapse.
Khartoum, however, shows some signs of slight economic revival. Taxes and loot brought from the nation’s peripheries sustain the RSF’s garrisons and a lavish lifestyle for the RSF political and military elite. Many of Dagalo’s troops move their families to Khartoum and occupy the homes of the former middle class and the former political and business elites.
A new palace is built on the banks of the Nile.
Dagalo and his entourage are the ultimate power center in the country, reigning over a tattered yet far-flung empire of war. Although the nation’s institutions are destroyed, the RSF rely on patronage, kinship ties, and brute violence to exert their dominion.
This article envisioned a scenario in which the Rapid Support Forces achieved a military victory in Sudan after three more years of fighting. The scenario assumes that no peace agreement is ever reached. Although this scenario is unlikely—a divided nation is the more likely scenario—many RSF fighters and the RSF leadership seem to believe that a military victory is possible, dimming the chances of a negotiated solution.
In humanitarian terms, this scenario would be beyond disastrous. Sudan is already the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, less than a year into this war. If the war persists for another three years or more, the toll would be unimaginable.
Of note, a military victory by the Sudan Armed Forces is likewise only achievable at a catastrophic cost in both economic and human terms. Only a negotiated solution will spare the nation such a terrible fate.
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