Gold, Gulf, and the Fall of El Fasher: RSF Redraws Sudan War Map
The fall of El Fasher was more than a lost battle; it became the defining moment when Sudan’s war began to reshape not only its map but also its identity. When the city went silent in late October 2025, the quiet that followed was not victory — it was exhaustion after eighteen months under siege.
El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur and the last major city held by the army, finally collapsed. Streets that once carried the footsteps of displaced families now lay under layers of ash. Hospitals turned into morgues, and smoke hung on the horizon like a curtain over a fading world.
Amid the devastation, something new began to take form: a skeletal new order linking Darfur’s ravaged valleys with the gleaming skylines of the Gulf. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), born from the embers of the Janjaweed, had transformed from local militias into a transnational enterprise.
The Rise of the RSF
What began in 2023 as a feud between two generals — Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan — evolved into the systematic unmaking of a state built on patronage, violence, and gold.
“In 2013, President Omar al-Bashir assembled a force to pacify Darfur, recruiting men from tribal militias notorious for atrocities.”
He paid them but denied them true authority, believing loyalty could be bought. Instead, he created a private army driven by its own ambitions. When the gold veins of Jebel Amer were uncovered, the destiny of the region changed irreversibly.
Author’s Summary
The fall of El Fasher exposes how a conflict born of greed and control reshaped Sudan, as the RSF’s rise turned chaos into a new geopolitical reality.