Geopolitical Briefing: Sudan – 27 September 2025

• RSF drone hits El-Fasher market (24 Sep): at least 15 killed, 12 wounded, days after the mosque massacre. (AP News)
  
• UNICEF compound shelled in El-Fasher (25 Sep): seven killed amid intensified bombardment of civilian nodes. (Sudan Tribune)
  
• Siege-driven starvation: 23 people (incl. children and five pregnant women) died of malnutrition in El-Fasher in the past month. (AP News)
  
• UN mechanisms escalate pressure this week: Fact-Finding Mission urges immediate protection and access as RSF maintains the siege. (ReliefWeb)
  
• UN reports RSF obstructing vital aid to El-Fasher (22–25 Sep), reinforcing a pattern of access denial. (Sudan Tribune)
  

The 24 September market strike confirms sustained RSF use of UAVs against dense civilian areas to accelerate capitulation of Sudan’s last SAF-held capital in Darfur. Strategically, this degrades the state’s Security Independence and Societal Sovereignty, while raising the reputational cost for any external enabler—squarely intersecting the assumption of UAE leverage via gold/logistics even as Abu Dhabi denies support. For Egypt, which backs the SAF and views Nile-corridor stability as paramount, the attack reinforces incentives to preserve a unified command in the west and resist any political “equivalence” with the RSF in mediation tracks. (AP News)

The 25 September shelling of the UNICEF compound illustrates a deliberate targeting pattern around humanitarian nodes. Such strikes harden international appetite for enforcement tools (sanctions designations; arms-flow interdictions) and test US–Saudi influence within the Quad blueprint to secure verifiable no-strike guarantees. Operationally, every hit on an aid facility compounds civilian attrition and further fragments Muslim Unity, as communities perceive impunity for attacks on protected sites. (Sudan Tribune)

Mortality data released yesterday—23 malnutrition deaths in a month inside El-Fasher—shows siege tactics converting into famine outcomes. This directly undercuts Societal Sovereignty and entrenches external dependency. Politically, it increases the price for patrons perceived to prolong the blockade (implicating alleged RSF lifelines) and pressures Cairo, Riyadh and Washington to transform statements into escorted corridors with observable throughput. It also spotlights the structural limits of any future settlement that does not restore state-level control over access. (AP News)

The UN Fact-Finding Mission’s call this week for immediate protective measures and access elevates El-Fasher from a humanitarian emergency to a potential mass-atrocity flashpoint. For our framework, the move marginally advances Independence from External Political Control only if it deters proxy resupply and coerces compliance with access norms; absent enforcement, it risks entrenching external arbitration without improving on-ground security. It simultaneously narrows room for any transition formula that legitimises siege-based governance. (ReliefWeb)

Finally, UN reporting of RSF aid obstruction between 22–25 September corroborates a consistent use of access denial as a warfighting method. This validates tighter monitoring of cross-border channels alleged to feed RSF capacity (relevant to UAE–RSF allegations), strengthens Egypt’s argument for state-centred control of corridors, and complicates Russia’s longer-term Red Sea basing calculus: a port is strategically brittle without a pacified, governable hinterland. Net effect this week: deterioration in Security Independence and Societal Sovereignty, with external leverage yet to translate into ground-level protection. (Sudan Tribune)