Sudan’s army is gaining ground — but territorial momentum is not a civilian victory

Sudan’s Armed Forces have a new momentum narrative. The danger is allowing that military narrative to become a substitute for an accountability one.

SAF says it captured al-Mazroub in North Kordofan after heavy fighting, extending recent gains against the Rapid Support Forces. The town matters because of its position between army-held areas of North Kordofan and RSF-held territory farther west. Army officials describe the advance as pressure on RSF supply routes. SAF has also claimed a major blow against the RSF and its SPLM-N ally in Blue Nile.

Those claims describe a changing battlefield. They do not describe the end of the war.

The RSF still controls almost all of Darfur and parts of Kordofan, while other southern areas remain contested. The Sudan civil war (opens in a new tab), which entered open SAF-RSF fighting in April 2023 (opens in a new tab), has repeatedly shown why territorial maps can be misleading welfare indicators. A town changing hands may improve one force’s logistics while simultaneously generating displacement, reprisals, interrupted markets and new exposure for civilians living along the next front.

That is why the relevant lever is not simply “who is winning?” It is who controls armed formations, supply corridors and decisions about where the next offensive goes.

Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (opens in a new tab), as army chief and Sudan’s de facto leader, bears command-level responsibility for the SAF side of that escalation. Hemedti (opens in a new tab), as the RSF’s central leader, occupies the corresponding accountability position for a force that retains enormous territorial power despite the army’s recent gains.

Neither side should be allowed to convert battlefield progress into an implicit claim of civilian legitimacy.

Al-Mazroub is especially important because Kordofan is not merely another patch of contested territory. It is part of the connective geography between SAF-controlled central and eastern areas and the RSF’s western strongholds. If the army can further constrict those routes, the RSF’s ability to move personnel and supplies may deteriorate. If the RSF responds by intensifying attacks elsewhere, however, the same military success can move rather than remove the civilian burden.

Blue Nile adds another warning. SAF’s description of a “knockout” operation is a belligerent’s claim. The reported losses and battlefield effects require independent corroboration, and the RSF had not publicly supplied a corresponding account in the reporting available on October 4.

Factrail should therefore resist victory language from either command structure. The useful causal chain is narrower and more defensible: territorial gain → altered supply access → changed military capacity → likely movement of the front → new civilian risk.

Sudan’s map may be moving toward the army in parts of Kordofan. The welfare ledger is not moving automatically with it. Until territorial gains translate into durable civilian protection, access, return and accountable government, “momentum” remains a military description — not a social outcome.