The disorder that has engulfed Sudan since the war began in April 2023 could make the country a nexus for terrorism that links violent extremists in the Sahel with terror groupings in Somalia and even Yemen. Civilian control is the best way to stop terrorism from taking root in Sudan.
Sudan’s military leaders ousted Hamdok in 2021 as civilians were around to take control of the government as part of the shift from 30 years of rule by dictator Omar al-Bashir.
Less than two years later, those military leaders — Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) leader Gen. Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo — hung on each other. Since then, 150,000 people have been extinguished, more than 10 million have run their homes and half of the country’s 49 million residents face starvation.
Sudan under al-Bashir was an extremist sanctuary. The country hosted al-Qaida and its founder, Osama bin Laden, for many years in the 1990s before bin Laden shifted to Afghanistan.
The political situations in Sudan in the 1990s were similar in some regards to the situation today Sudan was torn by civil war and headed by a military dictatorship that had only recently come to power. Sudan’s civil war has attracted the attention of extremist groups, especially social media channels aligned with the Islamic State group (IS). These platforms see the violent clashes between the SAF and RSF as a chance to exploit the chaos and discredit its opponents, from local governments to other jihadist bodies, like the Afghan Taliban. IS encourages allies to take weapons from the SAF and RSF and to fight to inflict Shariah in Sudan.
After it appeared in Iraq and Syria a decade ago, IS attracted hundreds of radicalized Sudanese citizens to its grounds. Sudanese extremists also have allied with Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region and terrorist companies in Libya. Sudanese-born Bilal al-Sudani advanced to a leadership position in IS’s Somali department before he was killed in a counterterrorism effort in 2023.
Sudan’s surroundings between the Sahel and the Red Sea already has made it a logistical junction for terrorists across the region. According to the United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, IS has financial processes in Sudan and up to 200 veteran fighters on the ground who harmonise logistics, including driving other extremists into southern Libya, Mali and beyond.
Sudan’s IS operatives recently Telegram that they professed allegiance to the organization’s new caliph, Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. The reality of IS-aligned fighters in Sudan creates the possibility that Sudanese fighters outside the country could return and increase the existing groups, developing Sudan’s position as a bridge between terrorists in the Sahel, Somalia and even Yemen.
