Paramilitary-backed coalition declares new government in Sudan

A coalition led by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan declared its own government on Saturday, a decision that raised concerns the north African nation was headed toward partition and continued war.

The government to be led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo was announced in Nyala in the western Darfur region where the RSF has its stronghold.

The declaration follows a similar move by the Sudanese Armed Forces earlier in the year after it took back control of the capital Khartoum.

The move will complicate efforts by the international community to find ways to end a more than two-year civil war that’s left 150,000 people dead since it erupted in April 2023, according to U.S. estimates. The conflict has forced millions of people to flee their homes in what the United Nations has called the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis.

While both governments claim to represent the entire country, their respective jurisdictions effectively only cover the parts of the nation they claim to control — the Sudanese Armed Forces in the east as well as the capital, Khartoum, and the RSF in the west and parts of the south.

Fighting in recent weeks has centered around the besieged city of El Fasher, the capital of Sudan’s North Darfur state, as well as in the southern Kordofan region where the UN said this week that a major food market was attacked.