Sudan's military has recaptured a critical highway connecting the capital, Khartoum, to El Obeid, a city of roughly half a million people in North Kordofan state that has been under siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Two military sources confirmed the development on Monday, saying the army pushed RSF fighters west, off the 400-kilometre Al-Sadarat road, following a days-long offensive. Although the route remains closed to civilian traffic, it opens a vital second supply corridor into El Obeid, allowing the army to move troops, weapons, food and other essentials more freely.
El Obeid sits at a strategic crossroads: its north-south axis leads to the capital, while its east-west corridor connects RSF strongholds in the Darfur region to army-controlled territory in the centre and east of the country. The RSF had been tightening its grip on the city for months, encircling it from the north, west and south, leaving only a single eastern supply route — which fighters were also attempting to cut off. The United Nations had warned in recent weeks that El Obeid faced a humanitarian catastrophe comparable to Al-Fasher, a city in North Darfur where RSF militants killed an estimated 6,000 people in just three days last year, with Amnesty International and UN human rights experts concluding the violence amounted to ethnic cleansing and bore signs of genocide. In what appears to be a response to the army's advance, the RSF launched drone strikes on El Obeid; no casualties have been reported so far. RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, told his fighters in a video message to show no restraint, declaring: "From today, I have handed the reins over to you."
The wider war, which erupted in April 2023 between the army and the RSF, has killed more than 200,000 people by aid workers' estimates and triggered what the UN describes as the world's largest hunger crisis. El Obeid's population has roughly doubled as displaced people have flooded in, while RSF attacks on infrastructure have deepened an already severe humanitarian emergency.
Beyond the battlefield, serious questions hang over the army's own coalition of allied militias. The Sudanese military has come to rely on three powerful armed groups: the Joint Forces, a coalition of former Darfuri rebel militias; the Sudan Shield Forces, which defected from the RSF; and the Baraa ibn Malek Brigade, described as an Iran-linked Islamist force. All three have expanded significantly since 2023, fielding their own artillery, anti-aircraft missiles and drones, and operate with considerable autonomy in army-controlled cities. Analysts and civilians alike draw uncomfortable parallels with the history of the RSF itself, which grew out of the Janjaweed militias armed by former president Omar al-Bashir in the 2000s before turning against the state. "We've seen this scenario over and over. It's the same old mistakes," one Sudanese writer told AFP. A diplomat in Sudan was more blunt: "They're all mercenaries looking out for their own interests. If they ever feel short-changed, they're out." The military advance on El Obeid may relieve immediate pressure on a city on the brink, but the deeper structural fragilities of Sudan's war — and the dangers that come with them — remain very much unresolved.