The War In Sudan Has Taken A Dark Turn

History of Everything Podcast

35,131 views Nov 19, 2025

In 2021, Sudan’s military, in coördination with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (R.S.F.), launched a coup. But the alliance between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the R.S.F., led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, quickly crumbled, and by April of 2023, the two sides were openly at war. For two and a half years, that conflict has become a humanitarian catastrophe, with an estimated death toll in the hundreds of thousands, and possibly as many as four hundred thousand. More than ten million have been internally and externally displaced.