As in much of Sudan, South Kordofan’s security, economy, and intercommunal relations deteriorated following the start of conflict, generating an unsettlingly familiar set of responses from most stakeholders, who had experienced decades of marginalization, war, and hardship. Banditry and looting of livestock and vehicles soared, despite the east remaining relatively secure.
Mercifully for South Kordofan, clashes between SAF and the RSF have been limited since both have concentrated their attention on contesting Darfur, Khartoum, and Obeid (ACLED, 2023; Rondos, 2023). Almost immediately after the conflict began, the RSF pulled nearly all its forces out of South Kordofan, and the remaining SAF forces quickly took control of the RSF camp in Kadugli.[5] SAF then moved most of its artillery and tanks northward to Khartoum and Obeid to support its efforts in the epicentres of the conflict.[6]
Dubeibat (capital of Al Qoz locality and some 60 km north-east of Dilling) and Taiba (a strategic intersection with roads to El Fula in West Kordofan, El Obeid in North Kordofan, Dilling, and Kadugli) bore the brunt of RSF and affiliated militia raids in June.[7]
In a statement made in June 2023, the SPLM-N urged a halt to the conflict and a return to a political solution through negotiation.[8] It also declared that certain parties sought to bring the movement into the conflict by involving the SPLA-N in ethnic conflict.[9] While avoiding openly taking sides, the majority of Nuba came to nominally prefer a SAF victory, seeing the army as a more diverse force and more liable to defend Nuba communities given SAF’s significant Nuba contingent, although memories remained of the military’s atrocities in the state.[10] In another June statement, however, the SPLM-N described the army in South Kordofan as an ‘occupying force’ that sought to liberate the entire region from ‘the filth of occupation’, while referring to attacks on Dilling and Kadugli as ‘self-defence’.[11]
[5] Author telephone interview with a South Kordofan-based academic, 22 June 2023.
[6] Confidential international NGO report seen by the author, 9 June 2023.
[7] The area is populated primarily by Arab Hawazma and Kenana tribes, as well as Nuba. Confidential UN report seen by the author, 20 June 2023.
[8] Statement by Ahmed Yusuf al-Mustafa to Asharq Al-Awsat news outlet (Younis, 2023).
[9] Author telephone interview with an NGO worker, 13 September 2023.
[10] During Juba Peace Agreement (JPA) negotiations in Juba, Al Hilu made it clear that he would not engage with the RSF as he considered them a militia rather than a component of the national army. Author interview with Abdel Aziz al Hilu, Juba, February 2020.
[11] SPLA-N statement by Gen. Kuku Idris, July 2023. This statement was relayed to the author of this paper by a third-party civil society figure.
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