Sudan Is Dividing Quietly: Is the War Creating Two States?

In Port Sudan, foreign diplomats presented credentials to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, while government ministries used the coastal hub as a wartime administrative base, maintaining passport services, civil administration, and other core functions of the state during the displacement of state institutions. Even as the army has recaptured parts of Khartoum and begun shifting core administrative functions back toward the capital, a starkly different authority governs the west. Far to the southwest in Nyala, South Darfur, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo and his Rapid Support Forces administer a rival authority, collecting local market fees, appointing civil administrators, enforcing security, and deriving revenue from informal gold trading networks. The separation is no longer merely military: the RSF-backed administration has begun building parallel financial institutions, including a central bank and currency system, while the SAF-backed state retains the established monetary apparatus. This stark contrast illustrates a profound structural shift. Sudan is developing a de facto territorial and administrative partition, without a formal division of sovereignty. While international bodies and foreign governments continue to recognize a single Sudanese state on paper, the territorial reality increasingly reflects two rival centers of authority, surrounded by contested zones and smaller armed administrations.

The military map of Sudan appears to be settling into a multi-tiered geographic divide rather than a simple binary partition. The Sudanese Armed Forces maintain control over most of northern, eastern, and central Sudan, including the central Nile corridor, Gezira, Sennar, and key urban centers. Armed with conventional military command structures, heavy artillery, and foreign-supplied air and drone capabilities, the regular army positions itself as the sole legitimate custodian of state authority. Conversely, the Rapid Support Forces exercise dominant control over most of Darfur alongside significant portions of West Kordofan, relying on high mobility, tribal recruitment networks, and cross-border logistics extending into Chad, Libya, and the Central African Republic. However, Sudan is not cleanly dividing into two monolithic blocks. Armed actors complicate the map: Abdelaziz al-Hilu’s SPLA-N, aligned with the RSF, controls large parts of the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan, while Abdel Wahid al-Nur’s Sudan Liberation Army remains outside both major coalitions and controls territory in Jebel Marra. Kordofan functions as a critical, highly active theater where El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan, and surrounding transit corridors are intensely contested. Neither major belligerent has so far demonstrated the ability to decisively defeat the other across Sudan’s vast geography, causing the conflict to evolve into a two-pole civil war surrounded by autonomous territories and contested spaces.

Beyond the battlefield, institutional fragmentation is embedding this multi-polar division into daily life. The SAF-backed authorities retain control of most formal state apparatuses, preserving the established state’s diplomatic representation and formal banking institutions. In areas under paramilitary control, the Rapid Support Forces have appointed senior officials covering civil administration and policing, relying on alternative communications networks as national telecommunications infrastructure fractured. This institutional bifurcation extends into the economy, where Port Sudan and Khartoum manage formal state imports while the western economic sphere relies on informal gold trading, livestock commerce, and localized fee extraction. At the same time, intense fighting, airstrikes, siege conditions, and the destruction of livelihoods have forced approximately fourteen million people from their homes since the war began. Population movements risk accelerating an ethno-regional sorting process, though local armed groups and shifting alliances prevent a clean binary division.

This internal fragmentation is reinforced by competing external actors seeking to secure strategic footholds in the Horn of Africa and along the Red Sea. Egypt has been a strong ally of the regular army, motivated by a desire to preserve state institutions and secure Nile water interests, while Saudi Arabia has supported the preservation of Sudanese state structures while playing a prominent diplomatic and mediatory role. Iranian and Turkish military assistance has strengthened the army’s drone and air capabilities, contributing to the SAF’s ability to conduct air-supported offensives and recover territory. Conversely, extensive documentation points to United Arab Emirates support for the paramilitary forces through logistical networks in Chad and eastern Libya, although Abu Dhabi denies arming the group. Russia has reached an agreement in principle with Sudan over a naval facility on the Red Sea while maintaining commercial ties to western gold networks. Meanwhile, South Sudan remains acutely vulnerable because its oil exports depend on pipeline and export infrastructure running through Sudanese territory affected by the war.

Analysts frequently compare Sudan’s trajectory to the dual-government system that emerged in Libya, where rival administrations governed separate territories with foreign backing. While Sudan shares Libya’s pattern of proxy competition and competing claims to national legitimacy, the comparison requires qualification. Libya retained more effective national financial institutions and oil-revenue mechanisms than Sudan has amid the current war, even though those Libyan institutions themselves became politically contested. In Sudan, the devastation of the main agricultural heartland in Gezira and widespread destruction of civic infrastructure have helped create catastrophic conditions: some 19.5 million people face acute food insecurity, while 14 areas remain at risk of famine under a reasonable worst-case scenario.

Looking ahead over the next one to three years, three main scenarios emerge for Sudan’s political future. The most plausible trajectory is a prolonged, fluid de facto partition in which a two-pole state structure emerges, surrounded by autonomous armed territories and contested corridors in Kordofan and Blue Nile. A secondary, higher-risk possibility is anarchic balkanization, where internal factionalism, warlordism, and local militia rivalries cause both primary coalitions to break down into smaller fiefdoms. The least likely scenario is a negotiated political arrangement that restores genuine national unity, as any power-sharing agreement would likely mask deep structural divisions rather than resolve them. Sudan may therefore be moving toward something more ambiguous than partition: not two internationally recognized states, but two competing centers of state authority embedded within a fragmented national territory. The consequences of this fragmentation extend far beyond Sudan’s borders. A paramilitary enclave in the west risks turning Darfur into an unregulated haven for illicit trade across the Sahel, while a fragile military state along the coast exposes the Red Sea to heightened proxy friction. Unless external patrons curb arms flows and Sudanese and international actors push toward an inclusive settlement, Sudan will remain quietly divided, permanently altering the geopolitical landscape of Northeast Africa.

For a breakdown of how foreign weapons networks and drone warfare are shaping the conflict, watch Sudan: How Drones and External Support Are Fueling the War. The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission and other UN bodies have documented how advanced weapons, drones, and external supply networks are sustaining the capabilities of the warring parties.

This video is relevant because it illustrates how foreign military supplies, advanced drone technology, and transnational recruitment networks directly perpetuate the territorial division and ongoing fighting across Sudan.