Cairo, Egypt - On 26 July, Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) lost control over a major highway linking the strategic city of El-Obeid to the wider capital of Khartoum.
The national army, known as the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), captured the road to secure a vital supply line to its fighters in El-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan.
The city sits at a crossroads between SAF-controlled northern and eastern Sudan and RSF-held territory to the south and west, making it a logistics hub for military operations.
For weeks, the RSF targeted El-Obeid with drones, striking vital provisions such as generators, fuel, and water tankers. Despite the attacks, the RSF has struggled to hold ground in the sprawling region.
Shortly after losing control over the 350km highway, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo vowed to fight on until his forces reached Khartoum, which is currently under SAF control.
Analysts say that Hemedti’s statement reflects his desperation to halt the SAF's advances.
“Since losing control of villages around the highway, the RSF has called on all tribes in Darfur to mobilise and enlist,” Mohamed al-Fatih Yousif, a journalist from Darfur who recently visited the region, told The New Arab.
“Many of the new recruits are being trained in South Darfur and in Libya,” he added.
Since the SAF and the RSF plunged Sudan into a civil war in April 2023, they have fought each other to a near stalemate.
In recent weeks, SAF-aligned forces have attacked the RSF on three fronts - in southeastern, central, and western Sudan.
The attacks have inflicted a series of strategic blows against the RSF, pushing the group to launch a major recruitment drive and reactivate vital supply lines, say analysts.
On Wednesday, the RSF reportedly targeted El-Obeid and other Sudanese cities with drone attacks in response to the losses.
“The local tribal authorities have answered the RSF’s call. They are sending many young men to fight, including children,” Yousif told The New Arab.
Tribal allies
Most RSF fighters come from nomadic or pastoralist Arab tribes in the sprawling regions of Darfur and Kordofan.
Like tribes across Sudan, they are governed by native administrations – a hierarchical, British-imposed system from the 1920s. The British created these to bestow individual chiefs with significant power, making them easier to co-opt.
More than a century later, many tribal chiefs are backing the RSF in exchange for money and power. Others fear that their communities could be ethnically targeted if SAF recaptures the region.
Throughout the war, the SAF has labelled young men and women originally from Darfur as RSF “cooperators” or “spies” to justify detaining, torturing, and sometimes executing them.
“Many tribes believe that they don’t have a choice. They believe that they have to enlist their young men into the RSF in exchange for security,” Yousif explained to The New Arab.
At the same time, the RSF poses an existential threat to Arab and sedentary farming “non-Arab” communities that oppose them, say analysts. Back in February, the RSF raided the town of Misterai, the primary base of the Mahamid clan of the Rizeigat Arab tribe - the same ethnic group that the RSF’s own leaders hail from.
The RSF was trying to assassinate Musa Hilal, a rival tribal sheikh who eventually escaped to SAF-controlled areas. Weeks later, the intra-tribal rivalry prompted several RSF commanders from the Mahamid tribe to switch sides. They were lured with promises of amnesty, money, and power.
The UN and human rights groups also accuse the RSF of committing genocidal violence against non-Arab communities in West Darfur and in North Darfur’s capital of El-Fasher.
During the offensive to capture both areas, the RSF gunned down young men in their homes and as they were fleeing into Chad and through RSF checkpoints. The RSF also systematically abducted women and girls and subjected them to sexual violence.
Still, some non-Arab tribes such as the Fur have agreed to back the RSF out of fear that they could suffer a similar fate, according to Noon al-Baramaki, a journalist who survived the atrocities in el-Fasher.
The Fur have reportedly mobilised four battalions of young fighters to enlist with the RSF.
“It’s practically a forced recruitment campaign,” Al-Baramki, a journalist who survived the atrocities in North Darfur, told The New Arab. “[Non-Arab] tribes know that the communities who resisted joining the RSF were subjected to genocide and ethnic cleansing.”
UAE support
The RSF relies entirely on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to fuel its war against SAF, according to numerous reports published by the UN, human rights groups, and media outlets.
Some of the support includes shipments of Chinese-made drones and artillery.
The UAE has also used shell companies to hire former Colombian mercenaries to train RSF fighters in Sudan.
“There is a sort of stubbornness on the side of the UAE that is very, very clear. They are not going to stop [backing the RSF],” Jalel Harchaoui, a political scientist closely observing the UAE’s role in Libya and across North and East Africa, told The New Arab.
Weapons, fuel, and mercenaries often cross into RSF-held territory from neighbouring Chad, South Sudan, and Libya. In exchange, the UAE receives billions of dollars’ worth of illicit gold and preserves its massive strategic influence across the Sahel.
Over the last several weeks, Harchaoui said that the UAE has gradually reactivated a direct supply line from the Libyan town of Kufra into North Darfur.
Libya’s eastern authorities closed that route when Egypt and Turkey began bombing convoys heading directly into Sudan from Kufra in November 2025. The bombing started shortly after the RSF committed mass atrocities during its capture of El-Fasher.
Harchaoui now says that there has been a noticeable increase in the number of cargo planes and hangars stationed in the town since July. He also suspects that the UAE is planning to build air defences to protect convoys traversing this critical route.
“Turkey and Egypt conduct airstrikes very easily, which means that route is really dangerous,” Harchaoui told The New Arab.
“But the UAE is preparing to absorb a percentage of loss - in terms of fighters and munitions - to keep the route open. For the UAE, this is just the cost of doing business.”
Mat Nashed is an award-nominated journalist who has covered the MENA region since the Arab Spring
Follow him on X: @matnashed
Edited by Charlie Hoyle