Sudan’s RSF falters amid blunders, supply shortfalls

Sudan’s RSF falters amid blunders, supply shortfalls

PORT SUDAN – Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are losing ground to the army due to strategic blunders, internal rifts and dwindling supplies, analysts say.
The regular army has made major gains, seeming to reverse the tide of a nearly two-year conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted more than 12 million.
Last month, the army surged through central Sudan, reclaiming the Al-Jazira state capital of Wad Madani before setting its sights on Khartoum.
Within two weeks, it shattered RSF sieges on key Khartoum military bases, including the General Command headquarters.

It overran the Al-Jaili oil refinery, the country’s biggest, just north of the capital.
Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies’ Africa programme, said “the RSF outperformed at the start of the war because it was more prepared”. Its weaknesses were now showing.
After nearly two years of fighting, the RSF’s supplies have dwindled, and its recruitment efforts have faltered.
Many of its members lack formal military training, making them increasingly vulnerable in prolonged combat, Hudson said.

The army, which “was caught off-guard” at the start of the war, has “had time to rebuild, recruit and rearm”, he added.
A former general in the Sudanese military said the army has broadened its fighter base, mobilising volunteers, allied militias and other branches of the security apparatus.
One “critical” addition to the army’s operations has been reinstating the Special Operations Forces, part of state intelligence, the former general told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The special forces, who are trained in urban warfare, according to the former general, have helped reverse what Rift Valley Institute fellow Eric Reeves called the army’s “cowardly willingness to engage only in ‘stand-off tactics’, namely artillery and aircraft strikes”, particularly in the capital.
The RSF meanwhile has overstretched its resources and exposed vulnerabilities in its military strategy, analysts say.
More than 1 200 kilometres (750 miles) separate RSF strongholds in Darfur – the vast western region nearly entirely under their control – from Khartoum, the fiercely-contested metropolis.
Darfur’s strong tribal networks have supplied troops to the RSF, while crucial support from abroad has funnelled through the region’s borders with Chad and Libya, experts and the United Nations have said.
But attempting to expand their control into central and eastern Sudan, the paramilitaries have “stretched themselves too thin”, said Reeves, a veteran Darfur expert.

The long road – increasingly contested by the army in areas such as North Kordofan – has made resupply missions “both difficult and dangerous”, said Hamid Khalafallah, a Britain-based Sudanese researcher.
“It has become very costly for the RSF to get supplies from Darfur to the centre and east,” he told AFP.
The United Arab Emirates has been accused of funding the RSF. 

There is currently no evidence that the paramilitaries have lost their vital lifeline.
Beyond logistics, analysts say internal rifts have added to the RSF’s troubles.
“Their ability to command their forces in a coherent and organised way across the country has been severely tested,” said Magnus Taylor, deputy director of the Horn of Africa project at the International Crisis Group.
In Wad Madani, the high-profile defection of an RSF commander in late 2024 has weakened the group’s hold.
The commander, Abu Aqla Kaykal – widely accused of atrocities against civilians – has since led troops on behalf of the army, a source in his Sudan Shield Forces militia revealed. 

Nampa/AFP