In 2019, a popular uprising in Sudan ended 30 years of Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist military dictatorship. Protesting masses brought down the regime and imposed a return to civilian rule. While a political settlement was being negotiated at the national level, local communities experimented with self-governance. But the armed forces seized power again, fell out among themselves, and plunged the country into war – producing one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent years.

What has become of the revolutionary impulse amid all this mayhem? What are the prospects for a return to civilian rule?

Despite the ongoing fighting, Sudanese civilians are starting to return home, pushed by dire conditions inside Sudanese displacement camps or driven back by hostility in neighbouring countries. Egyptian authorities have been expelling Sudanese refugees with or without papers.

Entrepreneur and women’s empowerment activist Randa Hamid describes a typical returnee’s experience: arriving at Port Sudan, the country’s only operational international airport, driving to a largely empty Khartoum, reduced to rubble and stripped of infrastructure, finding home and workplace thoroughly looted, and encountering local officials more interested in self-enrichment than in reconstruction. Sad, but safer than it has been the past years.

Since the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) reconquered Khartoum in March 2025, a degree of stability has returned to parts of the country. The SAF now controls central, northern and eastern Sudan while the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) hold the west; the south remains contested.

The SAF’s main political ally is the Muslim Brotherhood, whose networks provide fighting forces and governance experience to the military. Civilian positions are filled by old-regime figures: the corrupt oligarchy that provoked the revolution is reclaiming power uncontested.

Anniversary celebrations of the uprising last December were followed by the arrest of their organisers – while pro-democracy activists are hunted down by the SAF.

Current prospects for peace are bleak. The SAF is seeking total victory over the RSF rather than a negotiated settlement, presaging many more months or years of conflict. Any eventual deal between them would probably amount to Sudan’s division. Given the fragmented nature of both forces and ongoing contests over areas such as South Kordofan and Blue Nile, even that would be unstable.

From resistance to emergency response

The Sudanese resistance........

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