As US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's ten-day deadline for a humanitarian ceasefire in Sudan expired without agreement, residents of Kordofan report intensified fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces across the region's southern and western towns, with drone strikes now claiming dozens of civilian lives daily.
The deadline passed on 1 February with no ceasefire. In the days that followed, both warring parties escalated drone warfare targeting populated areas, markets, and humanitarian convoys.
Between late January and 6 February, over 90 civilians were killed, and 142 were injured by drone attacks in Kordofan alone, according to local monitoring groups. On 7 February, an RSF drone strike hit a vehicle carrying displaced families, killing 24 people, including eight children.
The escalation comes as Sudan's war enters its third year, amid a rising death toll among civilians, one of the world's largest mass displacements, and mutual accusations of war crimes. Kordofan, with its strategic oil fields and supply lines intertwined with military movements, has become a focal point that observers say could determine the course of the next phase of the conflict.
While the Sudanese Armed Forces lifted RSF sieges in Dilling and Kadugli by late January, reopening critical supply routes, the military gains triggered relentless retaliatory drone strikes from both sides. Medical facilities have been directly targeted: 31 people were killed in attacks on health centres treating wounded civilians. Aid convoys and fuel trucks in North Kordofan have also come under fire, further constricting humanitarian access in a region facing famine conditions.
UNICEF reports that over 88,000 people have been displaced from Kordofan states since late October 2025, with the region now identified as a major conflict epicentre alongside North Darfur and Sennar.
Rubio's failed deadline represented a genuine diplomatic breakthrough or an attempt to freeze existing battle lines remains unclear, but fighting intensified rather than subsided as the deadline approached.
Life under fire in Kordofan
For civilians in the region, military calculations about negotiating positions seem far removed from daily reality.
Ahmed Ibrahim (a pseudonym used for security reasons), a resident of a besieged town in Kordofan, describes daily life as a series of difficult decisions. "We go to sleep not knowing whether we will wake up to shelling or not," he says. "People here don't talk about politics or international initiatives. They only think about how to secure water or find a safe way out if the situation worsens."
Previous ceasefire announcements have not brought relief, Ibrahim says, and talk of a ceasefire no longer inspires optimism as it once did. "We have heard about many truces before, but they have not changed anything. Every time they say the fighting will stop, it intensifies."
The introduction of intensive drone warfare has added a new dimension of terror to daily life. Unlike artillery, which residents can sometimes predict based on frontline positions, drones strike unexpectedly—targeting markets during shopping hours, vehicles on evacuation routes, and medical facilities treating the wounded.
Ibrahim stresses that residents' biggest fear is that diplomatic failures will trigger even more desperate military escalation. "Civilians will pay a heavy price," he says.
In areas where front lines overlap with residential neighbourhoods, survival calculations have become more complex. "We are not counting the days left until the deadline," Ibrahim says. "We are only counting the nights that can pass in peace."
Cairo charter launched as fighting intensifies
Parallel to the military escalation, on 1 January, Sudan's Independence Day, 45 civil and political entities announced the Cairo Charter, a document calling for an end to the war and a return to democratic civilian rule. The timing of the announcement carried symbolic significance, an attempt to revive civilian political discourse amid a country mired in military logic.
The charter sets out principles, including ending the war, uniting the civil front, and rejecting any settlement that maintains military domination. However, its practical impact, given the ongoing fighting and the complete failure of Rubio's diplomatic initiative, remains widely questioned even within civil society.
In Kordofan, where political initiatives intersect with the immediate reality of war, activists in the resistance committees have expressed mixed views on the charter.
Asim Ahmed Musa, a leader of the resistance committees in Kadugli, sees the document as a "glimmer of hope" amid a deadlock. He says the mere fact that so many civil entities have come together around a common vision "keeps the idea of civilian rule alive, even if it seems unattainable now."
The charter reflects demands that have been raised by the grassroots since the outbreak of the revolution, Musa says, but he acknowledges its immediate impact is limited, particularly as drone strikes now kill civilians with increasing frequency. "We know that statements do not stop bullets or drones, but without these attempts, any language other than the language of war may disappear altogether."
Mohamed Mustafa Ahmed Daba, a member of the resistance committees in Kadugli, offers a more cautious reading. In his view, the charter reveals a gap between political theorising and reality on the ground. "These documents speak the language of principles," he says, "but the people here live by the language of survival."
Civilians in areas of direct conflict "do not have the luxury of thinking about the political future when the present itself is under threat," Daba says. With drones now killing families in their vehicles and patients in hospital beds, the disconnect between diplomatic language and lived reality has only widened.
Despite this difference in assessment, both activists agree on the fundamental problem: the absence of mechanisms to ensure that political initiatives translate into concrete outcomes, even as weapons—increasingly sophisticated ones like armed drones—remain the primary means of resolving disputes. They also point out that any civilian process remains fragile unless it is accompanied by real pressure to stop the fighting.
Mounting atrocities
On 8 February, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned that atrocities risked escalating further as fighting spread across Kordofan.
During a January visit to Sudan, Türk had expressed grave concern that atrocity crimes committed during and after the takeover of ElFasher could be repeated in Kordofan, citing reported advances by the RSF and Sudan People's Liberation Movement–North forces, continued mass displacement, and extreme food insecurity with famine conditions confirmed in Kadugli and a risk of famine in other areas including Dilling.
Following the lifting of sieges in late January, those warnings proved prescient. The resumed fighting has brought not relief but intensified violence, with drone warfare adding a devastating new capability to both sides' arsenals.
On 5 February, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy issued a statement marking 1,000 days of war in Sudan, demanding unimpeded humanitarian aid access and warning that the international community could not stand by while civilians faced starvation and bombardment.
"After 1,000 days of conflict, the people of Sudan deserve peace, not escalation," Lammy said.
Yet as of 10 February, no diplomatic breakthrough has been reported. Security Council forecasts suggest ongoing escalation into late February without a truce, with Kordofan's strategic importance, its oil fields and supply routes, ensuring it remains contested territory where neither side can afford to withdraw.
These civilian voices reflect a contradiction Sudan is experiencing: an international deadline presented as a humanitarian window, versus military escalation that suggests the warring parties still see force as their primary means of achieving gains.
The failure of Rubio's deadline has not prompted either side to return to negotiations. Instead, the Sudanese Armed Forces' tactical victories in lifting sieges have been met with RSF drone retaliation targeting civilians, infrastructure, and humanitarian operations. The SAF, meanwhile, has deployed its own drones against RSF positions and supply lines, with civilians caught in the crossfire.
Caught between these dynamics, millions of civilians find themselves in limbo, where peace is not close enough, and war is not far enough away to allow them to catch their breath. The introduction of intensive drone warfare has made survival even more precarious, as attacks can come at any moment without the warning signs that traditional artillery provides.
In Kordofan, the question remains open. As Ibrahim puts it, residents are not waiting for diplomatic outcomes. They are waiting for nights without shelling and days without drones.
This story was published in collaboration with Egab.