Top House Dem abruptly reverses push to pause arms sale to Israel

For over 500 days, the world watched as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) methodically strangled the last major army garrison in Darfur through siege, starvation, and indiscriminate bombardment. Now, with the RSF’s declaration of control over the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) Sixth Infantry Division headquarters in El Fasher, that strategy has reached its grim conclusion.

The capture of the historic city is a significant military victory for the RSF and its leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, though it is victory that has left at least 1,500 civilians dead, including 100 patients in one hospital. It is one that formalizes the de facto partition of the country, with the RSF consolidating its control over all of Darfur, and governing from its newly established parallel government in Nyala, South Darfur.

The SAF-led state meanwhile, clings to the riverine center and the east from Port Sudan.

The Trump administration’s own envoy has now publicly voiced this fear, with the president’s senior adviser for Africa Massad Boulos warning against a "de facto situation on the ground similar to what we’ve witnessed in Libya.”

The fall of El Fasher came just a day after meetings of the so‑called “Quad,” a diplomatic forum which has brought together the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates in Washington. As those meetings were underway, indirect talks were convened in the U.S. capital between a Sudanese government delegation led by Sudan’s foreign minister, and an RSF delegation headed by Algoney Dagalo, the sanctioned paramilitary’s procurement chief and younger brother of its leader.

The Quad’s joint statement on September 12, which paved the way for these developments by proposing a three-month truce and a political process, was hailed as a breakthrough. In reality, it was a paper-thin consensus among states actively fueling opposite sides of the conflict; it was dismissed from the outset by Sudan’s army chief.