PRIMARY campaign. The SAF-RSF civil war (April 2023-present): frontlines and territorial control, the El Fasher siege and fall (Oct 2025), the SAF recapture of Khartoum (Mar 2025) and the government's return (Jan 2026), the Kordofan offensive that is now the active front, drone warfare, ceasefire attempts, and the two principals (Abdel Fattah al-Burhan / SAF and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo 'Hemedti' / RSF). Multilingual EN + AR, with transliteration variants for every contested city.

The political and geopolitical layer. The internationally-recognized SAF government (Sovereignty Council, Burhan, PM Kamil Idris) vs. the RSF's parallel 'Government of Peace and Unity' (Tasis / Sudan Founding Alliance, Hemedti, deputy al-Hilu, PM al-Taishi) and the partition risk. Diplomacy: AU, IGAD, UN Security Council, the US-led Quad, Jeddah talks, sanctions, ICC. Foreign actors: UAE (RSF's main patron), Egypt / Iran / Russia (SAF-aligned), Chad (transit), Ethiopia, plus the gold economy financing the war.

The humanitarian catastrophe is the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis. Famine has been confirmed in El Fasher, Zamzam camp, and Kadugli. Around 21 million people are facing acute food insecurity. The crisis includes the El Fasher massacre in October 2025, described by researchers as the largest mass killing of the 21st century, along with ethnic violence against the Masalit, sexual violence, mass displacement, and the aid-operations layer involving WFP, UNHCR, UNICEF, OCHA, MSF, and ICRC. Monitoring should be sober, factual, and focused on an active atrocity.

Sudanese cultural and civic life has continued through the war and across the global diaspora. This includes music, art, food, Nubian heritage, and Sufism. It also includes the remarkable civil-society response, with Resistance Committees and Emergency Response Rooms running grassroots mutual aid and famine relief. The legacy of the 2018 to 2019 December Revolution and “Tasgut Bas” remains central. The global Sudanese diaspora in Egypt, the Gulf, the UK, and the US is organizing solidarity, fundraising, and remittances. Coverage should be bilingual, in English and Arabic.

The economic layer. Gold (58%+ of export value, and a key war-financing resource), gum arabic (Sudan produces 75-80% of the world's supply), sesame, livestock, agriculture. The currency collapse (Sudanese pound down 80%+, inflation 300%+, GDP contracted 40-50% since 2023). Telecoms (Zain, MTN, Sudatel) and recurring internet blackouts. Reconstruction conversation as SAF retakes territory. Key institutions: Central Bank of Sudan, Bank of Khartoum, SMRC.

The SAF-held east and north have served as the de facto seat of the recognized government for most of the war. Port Sudan, or Bur Sudan, on the Red Sea has functioned as the wartime capital, hosting the government, UN agencies, and the main aid corridor. It has also come under RSF drone attack. Key areas include Kassala and Gedaref in the east, along with Atbara, Dongola, Merowe, and Nubia in the north. These regions are relatively more stable, but they remain strategically central to aid logistics and reconstruction.

The capital region and central states. The Khartoum tri-city (Khartoum, Omdurman, Bahri/Khartoum North), recaptured by the SAF in March 2025 with the government returning January 2026 to a badly damaged city. Gezira state and Wad Madani. And the Kordofan region, which is now the war's active front, with near-daily drone strikes on El Obeid, Kadugli, and surrounding towns. Full transliteration-variant coverage.

The war’s epicenter of atrocity is under near-total RSF control. El Fasher, also spelled Al-Fashir, was besieged from May 2024 and fell in October 2025. It became the site of the massacre that researchers call the largest mass killing of the 21st century. Other key areas include Nyala, the RSF’s de facto Darfur capital, El Geneina, where the 2023 Masalit killings took place, Zalingei, and Ed Daein. The Zamzam famine camp is also central. Full transliteration-variant coverage is essential because Darfur place names fragment heavily across spellings and languages.

The regional spillover is the world’s largest displacement crisis pushing across every Sudanese border. Refugees are moving into Chad through the Adré crossing and the wider Darfur exodus, into Egypt, which hosts the largest Sudanese refugee population concentrated in Cairo and Aswan, into South Sudan through Renk with both returnees and refugees, and into Ethiopia and Libya. This cross-border dimension is what mainstream single-country listening misses: transit corridors, host-country tensions, the UAE-Chad RSF supply route, and diaspora-refugee linkages. Coverage should include English, Arabic, and French for Chad.