RSF vs. SAF: The 2023 War

The Power Struggle

In October 2021, the military — led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (head of the Sudanese Armed Forces, SAF) and General Hemeti (head of the RSF) — staged a coup that dissolved the civilian government. The two generals initially cooperated but soon became rivals as negotiations over integrating the RSF into the regular army stalled.

The Framework Agreement of December 2022, brokered by international actors, proposed integrating the RSF into the SAF over a 2-10 year timeline. Hemeti saw this as a threat to his autonomous power base, while Burhan's allies in the former Bashir regime resisted any deal that would empower Hemeti. On April 15, 2023, fighting erupted in Khartoum between the two forces, plunging Sudan into full-scale civil war.

The War's Character

The war quickly spread from Khartoum to Darfur, Kordofan, and other regions. Both sides have committed serious violations of international humanitarian law. The RSF has been accused of widespread sexual violence, ethnic targeting of non-Arab communities in Darfur, and systematic looting. The SAF has conducted airstrikes on civilian areas and used indiscriminate shelling.

The RSF drew heavily on fighters from Darfur's Arab militias — the same Janjaweed networks used during the 2003 genocide. In West Darfur, the RSF and allied Arab militias carried out what many observers have described as ethnic cleansing against the Masalit community, killing thousands and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee.

Further Reading and Application

Deepening your understanding of this topic involves connecting it to broader patterns in political science, international relations, history, and applied research. The most effective students don't treat lessons as standalone units — they actively look for connections to other topics they've studied and to current events they're following.

Active Learning Strategies

For any concept you encounter:

• Restate it in your own words: if you can't explain a concept simply to someone who has never encountered it, you don't yet understand it well enough.
• Find real-world examples: ground every abstract concept in at least two specific historical or contemporary cases.
• Identify the strongest counter-arguments: what would a careful critic say against this concept's usefulness or accuracy?
• Connect to other concepts: how does this concept relate to others you've encountered?
• Apply it to a new situation: take a current event you're following and analyze it through the lens of this concept.

Active engagement of this kind builds the analytical depth that competitive activities (MUN, debate, mock trial) and academic work (IB, AP, university-level analysis) require.

Common Pitfalls

Students often make several recurring mistakes when first engaging with new political and analytical concepts:

• Treating concepts as definitions to memorize rather than analytical tools to apply.
• Applying concepts mechanically without considering whether they actually fit the case.
• Failing to distinguish concepts that seem similar on the surface but operate differently in detail.
• Ignoring scholarly disagreement about how concepts should be understood and applied.
• Privileging recent sources over foundational ones that established the analytical framework.

Avoiding these pitfalls is part of developing the disciplined analytical thinking that political and diplomatic research rewards.

Continuing Your Study

Model Diplomat's broader curriculum connects this topic to related lessons in MUN preparation, debate skills, international relations theory, and historical research. Working through the related lessons builds the integrated understanding that single-topic study cannot produce alone. Your engagement with this material is one investment in the deeper analytical capacity that distinguishes effective practitioners from those who can only repeat what they've been told.