OPINION: The tragedy unfolding in Sudan stands as one of Africa’s darkest humanitarian crises today a painful reminder of how fragile peace can be when power, mistrust, and poverty intertwine. What began in April 2023 as a power struggle between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese Armed Forces, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, commander of the Rapid Support Forces, has spiraled into a devastating civil war. Both men once worked side by side after overthrowing longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir in 2019, but their uneasy alliance quickly fractured over plans to merge their forces and transition to civilian rule.

The fallout has since reduced Khartoum and Darfur into battlefields, displaced over nine million people, and left millions more on the brink of famine, according to UN estimates.

It is a bitter irony that Sudan, once hailed for peacefully giving birth to Africa’s youngest nation, South Sudan, in 2011, now finds itself bleeding from within. Cities once alive with commerce and promise are now ghost towns; hospitals bombed, aid convoys looted, and families torn apart as the world watches in fatigue. The African Union, conscious of the danger the conflict poses to regional stability, has tried to reignite hope.

In early October 2025, it hosted a high-level forum in Egypt, bringing together regional leaders and international partners to push for a lasting ceasefire. Meanwhile, another AU delegation has been in Washington, D.C., engaging with U.S. officials and the United Nations on peace and security in Africa with Sudan topping the agenda.

Yet diplomacy moves painfully slow against the urgency of human suffering. Every day of delay deepens the scars on a nation already battered by decades of military rule and civil unrest. For Sudanese civilians, many of whom have fled to Chad, Egypt, and South Sudan, the dream of a peaceful homeland feels increasingly distant. Still, within the despair, there lingers a quiet resilience a hope that one day the guns will fall silent, and Sudan will rise again, not as a cautionary tale, but as a story of survival and rebirth.