Sudan’s political crisis is deepening as the war that began in April 2023 evolves beyond a battlefield confrontation into a far reaching institutional breakdown that continues to block any credible path to peace.
According to a recent media report, the conflict is increasingly shaped by overlapping military and organisational interests, with senior figures in SAF allegedly maintaining informal links with networks tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. These connections, analysts say, have helped entrench the war by undermining political dialogue and delaying accountability, effectively freezing Sudan’s stalled transition.
The report suggests that SAF leadership, including its commander and close aides, has repeatedly resisted calls for a ceasefire or inclusive political talks, driven in part by fears of legal accountability for past abuses against protesters and civilians. Among the most sensitive cases is the violent dispersal of the sit in outside army headquarters in June 2019, which left large numbers of civilians dead and injured.
Observers cited in the report argue that an undeclared coordination exists between SAF figures and Islamist aligned networks aimed at postponing independent investigations or official reports into previous crimes. Such delays, they warn, are intended to shield senior military and political leaders from exposure and prosecution.
This dynamic, the report says, has deepened internal divisions and weakened prospects for national consensus, while reinforcing a culture of impunity. SAF commanders and their allies are accused of bearing significant responsibility for violence that unfolded in Khartoum and other cities during earlier protest crackdowns, as well as for exerting pressure on judicial institutions to obstruct justice.
The accusations highlight how political and security pressures have paralysed the legal system, preventing meaningful accountability and further endangering Sudan’s fragile democratic transition.
The report stresses that Sudan’s conflict cannot be understood solely as a struggle between armed forces. It also involves political and organisational actors seeking to reshape power balances by prolonging the war and blocking peace initiatives to secure long term ideological and political gains. The consequences, it notes, fall most heavily on civilians, who continue to face constant threats to personal safety and access to basic services.
Weak rule of law and a compromised judiciary have enabled this military organisational alignment to obstruct comprehensive investigations into abuses, while the war continues to devastate infrastructure and deepen humanitarian crises across the country.
The resulting institutional collapse has triggered mass displacement and hindered relief operations, leaving civil society groups struggling to respond to the scale of human suffering.
Internal rifts between military leaders and sidelined civilian actors further expose the narrow prospects for a political settlement, particularly as influential organisational forces refuse to relinquish the power they accumulated amid security chaos.
The report concludes that any serious peace process will require sustained regional and international pressure on SAF leaders to accept political compromises rooted in justice and accountability. Without such pressure, entrenched interests are likely to continue blocking progress, even as civilians remain the primary victims of Sudan’s prolonged and destructive war.
