Decades of authoritarian rule—and the policies of Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist regime—help explain the roots of Sudan’s current conflict, argues CCAS alum Khalid Medani.
By Khalid Mustafa Medani
In the early 1990s, during my time as a student in the MA in Arab Studies program at CCAS, I published an article on the rise of political Islam in Sudan. Inspired by the late Professor Hanna Batatu’s seminal work on the Syrian Muslim Brethren, my article pushed against some of the central premises of modernization theory that were so popular at the time. I argued that the rise of Islamist politics in Sudan was due to structural factors rather than the more nebulous impacts of modernization and urbanization. The latter were often treated at the time as central factors behind rising social alienation and a search among Muslims for an “authentic” identity detached from the effects of Westernization. Scholarship on political Islam has greatly advanced in the three decades since, yet in the case of Sudan—where Islamism emerged in full force following Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist-backed coup in June 1989—the political and economic dynamics of this movement remain a powerful analytical lens for identifying the root causes of of the brutal war that broke out in 2023 and continues today.
While multiple factors have contributed to the conflict, the authoritarian policies of the al-Bashir regime—known as Tamkeen (or empowerment)—played a defining role. Tamkeen policies used four key strategies to fortify the state against insurgency and democratic uprisings: undermining the judiciary, purging and replacing the civil service with loyalists, monopolizing the economy, and expanding paramilitary militias. The latter, the expansion of paramilitaries, served a dual purpose: weakening the National Army to prevent coups from within while unleashing violence against civilians to suppress dissent across the country. In addition to these key strategies, Bashir’s regime relied on an arsenal of tactics and repressive laws to control the civilian population, including censorship, digital surveillance, torture and targeted killings.
Bashir’s military restructuring—undertaken in response to the Darfur insurgency and widespread popular protests—included transforming the Janjaweed proxy militia, which had fought in Darfur, into the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). His regime placed the new organization under the leadership of General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and institutionalized the RSF as an integral arm of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), creating an alliance that dramatically altered the structure of authoritarian rule and enabled the regime’s brutal campaign against civilians nationwide. Following the Sudanese revolution of 2018-19 (known as the People’s Revolution), which led to the ouster of Omar al-Bashir, continued protests pushed the SAF and RSF to consolidate their longstanding alliance. Then in a final bid to crush popular resistance, the two groups joined forces in 2021 to stage a coup against the People’s Revolution. Bashir’s successor, General Abdelfattah Burhan, further expanded the RSF’s presence in residential areas of greater Khartoum. This set the stage for the capital city to become the epicenter of violence when, in 2023, fighting between the two groups quickly escalated into war.
The Unravelling of an Autocratic Regime
If the designers of Tamkeen, led by the late Islamist leader Hassan Turabi, succeeded in building a formidable, if violent, autocratic regime, its unraveling stemmed from Sudan’s long history of war and deep economic crises. The secession of South Sudan in 2011 ended a decade of oil-fueled economic growth—as most of the oil production had occurred in the south—and marked a critical juncture in Sudanese history. The sharp decline in oil revenues, which had accounted for over 95% of export earnings, weakened the Bashir regime’s patronage networks and undercut the central pillar of the Islamists’ autocratic playbook: state control over the economy. As these economic foundations collapsed, so too did the institutions of the Tamkeen state and its legitimating Islamist ideology.
The post-oil economic crisis intensified social grievances and deepened inequalities between rural and urban populations, which in turn fueled both the RSF’s recruitment among disenfranchised rural youth and the mass protests that ultimately led to the revolution. What began as isolated protests in the rural periphery soon spread to Khartoum and urban areas across the country, culminating in a nationwide uprising that brought down Bashir’s regime—though many of the core institutions of authoritarian rule remained intact. The protests succeeded because of their broad geographic reach and the organizing strength of the Sudan Professional Association (SPA), which united youth activists, civil society groups, and opposition parties. Yet this unprecedented success also set the stage for a new critical juncture: the outbreak, in April 2023, of the most brutal war in Sudan’s history—a conflict driven not only by the attempt to “upgrade” authoritarianism, but to fully rebuild autocratic rule and the pillars of Tamkeen.
The Struggle to Rebuild Authoritarianism from War
By early 2023, the alliance between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces —forged during the Bashir era and reinforced after the 2018–19 revolution— was rapidly unraveling. Although mass protests had compelled the two to negotiate with civilian forces over a transition to democratic rule, tensions within the military coalition were mounting. The immediate spark of the conflict between the two groups was a dispute over security sector reform—specifically, plans to merge the RSF into the regular army, a move that would have weakened RSF leader General Dagalo’s power. After decades of intentional fragmentation of the security apparatus—a strategy led by the Islamist National Congress Party (NCP)—fulfilling the revolution’s demand for “one army, one people” (ja’shun wahid, sha’abun wahid) was bound to provoke conflict.
Yet even though the merger dispute was what sparked the outbreak of war, its deeper causes are structural and can be traced all the way back to the authoritarian legacy of the Islamist regime of 1989. These structural factors include: the formal and illicit economies upon which the Islamist regime depended (as I detailed in my 1991 article while at CCAS); the deep socioeconomic divides between rural and urban populations; and the entrenchment of multiple militia groups, now numbering over fourteen, aligned with either the SAF’s Islamist cadres or the RSF’s mercenary forces. The economic stakes for both parties are immense and help explain their intransigence in ceasefire negotiations and their willingness to prolong the war. For the SAF, particularly elements influenced by Islamist stalwarts of the Bashir regime, the goal has been to protect the vast wealth amassed under Tamkeen policies. This wealth stems from the monopolization of formerly state-owned enterprises, the trade in key commodities, and the operation of the Military Industrial Corporation (MIC), established at the height of these policies in the 1990s. During the short-lived transition toward democratic rule following the 2018 People’s Revolution, a civilian taskforce had begun dismantling Bashir-era assets acquired through state predation and corruption—a central demand of the Revolution.* The initial success of these efforts convinced many Islamist elites that safeguarding their interests would require sabotaging the transition—even going to war against the civilian population if necessary.
Meanwhile, the RSF, under Dagalo’s leadership, is focused less on restoring the old state than on consolidating control over Sudan’s most lucrative economic sector: gold. Between 2012-2017, Sudan’s gold production increased by 141%, positioning the country as the twelfth largest producer globally. As of 2021, over 47% of Sudanese gold—valued at more than $4 billion—was smuggled illegally, much of it controlled by Dagalo and his family. This illicit trade has funded the RSF’s expansion to a force of roughly 40,000 fighters. Thus, while Islamist figures within the SAF seek to rebuild the institutions and economy of the Bashir-era authoritarian state, the RSF’s violence and brutality stem from Dagalo’s efforts to protect and expand his personal wealth, bolstered by support from regional actors with their own geostrategic and financial ambitions in Sudan.
Violence and State Building: A New Dynamic in the War
The severity and persistence of the violence stem from structural factors driving both sides to prolong the war. For the SAF, Islamist factions seek to regain political power and protect the wealth amassed during the Tamkeen era. For the RSF, Dagalo and his family aim to preserve their monopoly over Sudan’s lucrative gold trade. These motivations have shifted the conflict’s dynamics: now, rather than seeking outright military victory, both factions are engaged in rival state-building efforts in territories under their control. The SAF and RSF have declared de-facto—though not de-jure—parallel governments: the SAF in Khartoum, Central, North, and East Sudan; the RSF in the West. Each side has introduced new currencies to demarcate the economic boundaries of their “states” and have announced plans to exclude Sudanese residents in rival territories from citizenship rights and access to public goods.
The War Forward: The Enduring Legacy of Sudan’s Revolution
Despite decades of critique against orientalist and modernization theory biases, much analysis of Sudan’s war still falls back on outdated misconceptions—especially cultural essentialism and treating Sudanese institutions as “exceptions” to global patterns. Given the severity of the violence, such framing is somewhat understandable, particularly among non-regional specialists. Yet seeing Sudan as exceptional obscures the deeper historical and structural factors that align it with broader patterns of authoritarianism—though with consequences far more devastating for Sudanese society. Conventional analysis continues to privilege two overlapping narratives. The first frames the war as a center-periphery power struggle fueled by regional, racial, and ethnic grievances over decades of inequality. The second presents Sudan’s political crisis as a contest between Islamists and a secular elite for control of a predatory state. Critically, these two dominant narratives overlook Sudan’s specific authoritarian legacy.
Unlike earlier conflicts, today’s warring parties—the SAF and RSF—lack any significant constituency or legitimacy in civil society. They are waging war not against rival elites, but against a population that, through the 2018-19 revolution, overwhelmingly rejected military rule. That revolution, and the ongoing war, have reaffirmed that Sudan’s future lies with its vibrant civil society: professional associations, trade unions, women’s groups, and especially youth-led resistance committees. Despite devastation and displacement, Sudanese grassroots movements have shown significant capacity to collaborate across ethnic, gender, and social divides in pursuit of democratic objectives. In the absence of adequate international aid, youth-led emergency response teams have, for example, mobilized mutual aid across the country. These leaders enjoy strong support among a wide spectrum of society, even as the legitimacy of political elites wanes. Youth and women’s organizations, independent scholars, artists, and those in the diaspora are working in collaboration to strengthen civil society in ways that rebuild trust, resolve conflict, and build a sustainable peace.
Ultimately, understanding Sudan’s ongoing revolution and the current war requires focusing not on cultural or ideological divisions alone, but on structural factors—particularly the legacies of authoritarian institutions and the regional interventions that will continue shaping the conflict’s trajectory. Sudanese aspirations remain clear, echoing those of previous struggles—in 1967, 1985, and 2018—to achieve sustainable peace and a transition to a civilian democracy. ◆
Dr. Khalid Mustafa Medani, a graduate of the MAAS program, is an associate professor of political science and Islamic studies at McGill University, where he is also the director of the Institute of Islamic Studies and chair of the African Studies Program.
This article was published in the Fall 2024-Spring 2025 issue of the CCAS Newsmagazine.