The current month of Ramadan marks almost two years of fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, and their respective allies.

During Ramadan in April 2023, the commanders of the two forces fell out over how to integrate the RSF into the SAF.

The ensuing brutal war over who should control the country has plunged Sudan into the world's biggest humanitarian and displacement crisis.

Now, in addition to the dire humanitarian situation, hunger and famine, ongoing fighting and outbreaks of cholera, the war-battered country risks being split into two rival administrations.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces — which hold nearly all of Sudan's western Darfur region and parts of the south — recently signed a charter to establish a "Government of Peace and Unity" in areas under their control.

The United Nations Security Council has warned that "such a move would risk exacerbating the ongoing conflict in Sudan, fragmenting the country, and worsening an already dire humanitarian situation."

This week, the African Union, a continental body that comprises 55 African countries, also condemned "the announcement by the Rapid Support Forces and its affiliated political and social forces of the establishment of a parallel government in the Republic of Sudan, and warned that such action carries a huge risk of partitioning of the country."

The Sudanese Armed Forces,........

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