KhartoumDrone strikes now dominate Sudan’s 3-year civil war.
Egypt and Turkey supply drones to government forces and the UAE backs the rival Rapid Support Forces, an investigation found.
No state supplier has faced international sanction and ceasefire talks have not resumed since 2023.
Sources: New Lines Magazine
THE SAF–RSF SPLIT
Sudan's war is not government versus rebels in the classic sense. The Sudanese Armed Forces under Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces under Hemedti were partners in the 2019 coup that toppled Bashir and the 2021 coup that ended the civilian transition. They split in April 2023 over the timeline for folding the RSF into the regular army.
THE JANJAWEED LINEAGE
The RSF descends directly from the Janjaweed — the Arab tribal militias Khartoum armed in the early 2000s to crush the Darfur insurgency. Bashir formalized them as a paramilitary in 2013 to balance the regular army. The same fighters accused of genocide in Darfur two decades ago now command armored brigades and foreign drone fleets.
WHY DRONES, WHY NOW
Drones collapsed the cost of precision strike from millions of dollars to thousands. A Turkish Bayraktar TB2 sells for roughly $5M; a Chinese-design loitering munition costs a few thousand. For a war where neither side has air superiority, off-the-shelf drones replace the air force a poor state cannot afford.
THE PROXY MAP
Cairo backs the SAF because a hostile Khartoum threatens the Blue Nile; Ankara sells drones to whoever buys; Abu Dhabi backs the RSF because Hemedti's gold flows through Dubai refineries and his fighters served in Yemen alongside Emirati forces. No single bloc commands the conflict — each capital is hedging its own file.
THE GOLD CIRCUIT
Sudan is one of Africa's largest gold producers, and most of the output exits informally through Dubai. The RSF controls the Jebel Amer mines in Darfur; revenue funds the foreign weapons that prolong the war. Cutting the gold rail would do more than any UN resolution — but the Emirati refining hub absorbs the volume without questions.
THE FORGOTTEN SCALE
Sudan now hosts the world's largest displacement crisis — larger than Ukraine, Gaza, and Syria combined. Famine has been declared in parts of Darfur and Kordofan. The war receives a fraction of the diplomatic attention of conflicts a tenth its size, in part because no Western power has direct stakes and no single proxy can be pressured to fold.