Sudan’s military has long been the country’s pre-eminent power broker. The RSF has origins in the government-backed janjaweed militias that terrorized Sudan’s western region of Darfur during fighting there in the early 2000s, and is led by one-time camel trader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. The two sides agreed to a temporary pause in fighting on Sunday evening, though shooting continued to be heard in Khartoum. 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. Sudan is already among the world’s poorest nations, ranking 170th out of 189 countries on the UN Development Program’s human development index.

Source: The North Africa Journal April 16, 2023 16:51 UTC