By Oliver Mizzi

 

LONDON, 06 August. - (ANA) - The Sudanese army's capture of a key road between El-Obeid and Omdurman has sparked claims from a top army official that the war will be over by the year's end, though analysts told The New Arab that the prediction lacks credibility.

 

Yasser al-Atta, chief of staff for the Sudanese Army, claimed in remarks made to recently defected fighters from the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and tribal fighters that the army sought to defeat the RSF by this December.

 

He added that the army is attempting to advance on all fronts across the country, in a strategy he linked to the recapture of Khartoum earlier in the war, according to the Sudan Tribune.

 

Analysts, however, have shrugged off his claims, noting that he previously stated at the beginning of the war in April 2023 that the army would defeat the RSF in two weeks.

 

Kholood Khair, a nonresident fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) and founder and director of Confluence Advisory, a think-and-do-tank founded in Khartoum, told The New Arab that Atta has overestimated the army and underestimated the RSF before, with recent claims coming from the celebrations of recent victories.

 

She noted that the RSF has enough economic weight and regional support to survive longer than the end of the year, despite the internal constraints of the group.

 

"No armed group in Sudan, no matter how small or weak, has ever disappeared, never mind one that's more multi-billion dollar cartel than it is armed group," she said.

 

"The SAF and RSF are fighting a war of succession to inherit Bashir's state; it's a war neither can win," she added, noting that the fragmented war economy and regional spillover, and the reliance on allied militia, make a military resolution unlikely.

 

The war began off the back of a revolution against former dictator Omar al-Bashir at the tail end of 2018 into 2019, which established a power-sharing government between the military and a civilian government.

 

This was later usurped by a coup in 2021 led by the chief of the military, Abdul Fattah al-Burhan, who shared power with his deputy and head of the RSF, Muhammad Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

 

Their relationship broke down in April 2023 when war broke out between the two forces in Khartoum in April 2023, with fighting quickly spreading across the country.

 

 

 

 

Khair told The New Arab that the "SAF and RSF are simultaneously fighting another war, one against civilians and civic rule", arguing that the longer the conflict continues, the harder it becomes to sustain civic resistance, leaving whichever side prevails to inherit a Sudan with "diminished civic resistance".

 

This was echoed by Mohaned Elnour, a former Nonresident Fellow at TIMEP and Sudanese human rights lawyer, who told The New Arab that civilians have been sidelined in this war by both military parties and the international community.

 

Elnour warned of the risk of "mushrooming militias" fighting on both sides, many of them powerful, difficult to control and already under international sanctions. He cautioned that such groups could eventually turn on one another, noting that this was how the RSF itself first emerged.

 

"Unless genuine civilians are on the table, it will be another cake-sharing deal to award war criminals and warlords," Elnour said.

 

"It's not an easy task for civilians to participate as neither the SAF nor the RSF and the militias behind them want this, as accountability and justice will be centred on civilians," he added.

 

"As both depend on external actors, the international community, which failed to stop these intervening actors, especially the UAE, must ensure the participation of civilians."  - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/06 August 2026 - - -