Sudan’s military, long the country’s pre-eminent power broker, propped up dictator Omar al-Bashir for three decades before ousting him in 2019. The RSF has origins in the government-backed janjaweed militias that terrorized Sudan’s western region of Darfur in the early 2000s. Chad, Egypt and South Sudan have all see a large influx of refugees. In June, Sudan expelled the top UN envoy, Volker Perthes, who’d been trying to arrange a return to civilian rule since 2021. A 2005 peace deal that ended a two-decade civil war led, six years later, to the partitioning of the country into Sudan and a newly formed South Sudan.

Source: The North Africa Journal August 17, 2023 09:53 UTC