On April 15, 2023, conflict between two military factions in Sudan broke out into armed warfare that has continued to ravage the capital city of Khartoum in particular. The outbreak in fighting follows months of rising tensions between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — a paramilitary group known for its atrocities, including in Khartoum in summer 2019 — and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), both of which have worked to quell the ongoing Sudanese revolution.

Begun in December 2018, the Sudanese Revolution overthrew thirty-year dictator Omar al-Bashir in early 2019. Since then, the movement has been adamant in its demand for full civilian rule and the complete overthrow of the military apparatus. However, the RSF’s massacre of civilians in 2019 brought the initial stage of the revolution to an end and brought about a process of counterrevolutionary negotiations that led to a joint military-civilian government. This opened space for the coup of October 2021, in which the military retook control of the state, and led ultimately to this current outbreak of warfare between the RSF and the SAF. Nonetheless, Sudan’s revolutionary forces still exist, and they remain committed to their demands. Radicalized, they now exist largely in the form of neighborhood resistance committees.

To learn more about the situation on the ground and prospects for the revolutionary forces in Sudan, Shireen Akram-Boshar spoke to Raga Makawi. Now based in the UK, Raga Makawi is a Sudanese editor and researcher. She was in Khartoum when the latest outbreak of violence began, and eventually managed to leave for Cairo.