Since it broke out in 2023, the war in Sudan has brought destruction on an unprecedented scale, and it has spared nothing. State institutions and private property, infrastructure, hospitals, universities, museums, banks, and agricultural laboratories have all been destroyed or looted. At every stage, one pattern has stood out: the deliberate targeting of the electricity sector, and of anything else that keeps life running.
As the army has regained the initiative and the balance has tipped in its favor, with the Rapid Support Forces in retreat, drones have entered the battle in force, exposing the war's growing external dimension. In recent days the attacks on power stations have returned with new intensity: sixteen stations hit in ten days, cutting power across wide areas amid warnings of a total blackout. This is more than a question of power cuts. It is a paralysis that threatens every sector of life. Electricity drives agricultural and industrial production, and keeps hospitals, communications networks, and banking services running. Destroying the energy system undermines the foundations of daily life and pushes the country toward an economic and service collapse whose consequences would be hard to contain.
After the repeated attacks, Sudan announced that more than 180 drones had struck the country this year, launched from Ethiopian territory. Early this week the government filed complaints with the UN Security Council and the African Union's Peace and Security Council, accusing Ethiopia of aggression and of complicity in attacks launched from its soil. These accusations move the war beyond an internal confrontation into a regional one, and they call for an international investigation.
Outside intervention in the war can no longer be ignored, and its escalating pace raises serious questions about its aims. Plans to weaken and partition Sudan are nothing new. Since South Sudan's secession in 2011, warnings have grown of further attempts to break the country apart, driven by struggles for influence over its food, water, and mineral resources, and by the reshaping of the regional balance of power.
The war so far can be read in three stages. The first was an attempt to seize the state through a lightning coup at the outset. The Rapid Support Forces attacked the residence of Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, chairman of the Sovereignty Council and commander of the army, to arrest or kill him, while simultaneously attacking the army's General Command and other units in the capital, seizing the radio and television headquarters, and besieging ground and air bases. The plan failed. The presidential guard repelled the attack on the residence, and the armed forces recovered their footing despite the shock of surprise and the RSF's numerical superiority in the capital at the start of the war.
The second stage was an attempt to take the country by force, spreading from Khartoum to the central states and expanding into Kordofan and Darfur. But the army gradually retook the capital and Gezira state, forcing the RSF to fall back to its strongholds in Kordofan, Darfur, and Blue Nile.
The third stage, the present one, runs in my view along two tracks. The first is the creation of a parallel entity and a de facto partition on the Libyan model: the declaration of the Tasees government; the establishment of local administrations, a police force, and nominal institutions; an attempt to extend control across western Sudan; an alliance with Abdelaziz al-Hilu and his SPLM-North forces in the Nuba Mountains; and a corridor through Blue Nile to the Ethiopian border.
That track has stalled. Internationally and regionally, there has been a refusal to recognize any parallel entity; influential regional powers have stood with Sudan against any threat to its sovereignty and territorial integrity; and the army has moved to retake Kordofan and Blue Nile ahead of an expected advance on Darfur. And so the second track has emerged, in a more dangerous form: turning Sudan into a failed state by draining its capacities, destroying its infrastructure, crippling basic services, and plunging society into chaos. The escalating drone attacks on power stations and vital facilities belong to this context, as part of a war on the foundations of the state.
The growing threat has led Egypt to hint at activating its joint defense agreement with Sudan, to support it and to ensure that no red line is crossed on its territorial unity, its sovereignty, or the integrity of its institutions. Saudi Arabia, too, has affirmed its rejection of any parallel entity in Sudan and its firm support for the country's unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, and for preserving its state institutions.
In the face of all this, the great wager remains on the Sudanese themselves, and on their capacity to protect their country from the schemes against it. What is reassuring is that, talking to people, you find them aware of the dangers and conspiracies threatening the country. That explains their patience with the mounting suffering the war has caused, and their conviction that they will get past this turning point, perhaps the most dangerous in Sudan's history since independence. The challenge is no longer only to end the war, but to keep it from becoming a gateway to undermining the state and destroying the foundations of its survival.
