There are later versions of this map available. To see them, view all Sudan articles on PolGeoNow.
PolGeoNow proudly presents the first edition of our new Sudan war map series, meticulously researched over many months. We believe these to be the most accurate Sudan control maps available anywhere.
This edition of the map depicts control in early October 2023, based on research conducted through January of 2024. A map of control in December 2023 has been released to our paid subscribers, and we intend to publish another free edition soon showing the current situation in 2024.
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Map by Evan Centanni and Djordje Djukic, starting from base map by Koen Adams of onestopmap.com. See article below for a detailed accounting of which groups are included in each territorial control category. To use this map in your own materials, please contact us to arrange permission.
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Timeline by Djordje Djukic and Evan Centanni
Unknown Territory: Sudan’s New Civil War
In
April 2023, a new civil war broke out in Sudan (officially “the
Sudan”)*, pitting the country’s official military, the Sudanese Armed
Forces (SAF), against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a powerful
government-affiliated paramilitary group. Sudan has fought more than one civil war before, but never in its traditional heartland along the River Nile. This new conflict is said to be the first in “at least a hundred years” where control of the capital city, Khartoum, is clearly in the balance.
Unlike previous wars, the new conflict is essentially a power struggle among members of Sudan’s majority cultural group, the “Arab” people - and yet, analysts say it’s still a continuation of the long-running clash between the country’s central core and outer regions.
The RSF’s leadership, and most of its fighters, come from the nomadic
Arab communities of Sudan’s Darfur region in the west, who were integrated into Arab culture later in history than the Nile elites, and until recently held little power in the national government. (See below for further discussion of these and other conflict dynamics.)
With at least 13,000 dead as of December 2024, the war is also one of the deadliest in the world today, on par with the Myanmar conflict and only far-surpassed in 2023 by the wars in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine. Many thousands of civilians are among the dead, with the United Nations documenting indiscriminate SAF airstrikes in major cities, while also describing an apparent campaign of genocide by the RSF and allies against non-Arab citizens of West Darfur state.
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