Africa File, March 27, 2025: SAF Liberates Khartoum; Burundi and Rwanda Tensions

Africa File, March 27, 2025: SAF Liberates Khartoum; Burundi and Rwanda Tensions

Authors: Kathryn Tyson, Yale Ford, and Liam Karr

Contributors: John Reece and Nick Markiewicz

Data Cutoff: March 27, 2025, at 10 a.m.

Editor's Note: The Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute publishes these updates with support from the Institute for the Study of War.

The Africa File provides regular analysis and assessments of major developments regarding state and nonstate actors’ activities in Africa that undermine regional stability and threaten US personnel and interests.

Key Takeaways:

• Sudan. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) fully retook central Khartoum and are clearing the last pockets of Rapid Support Forces (RSF) resistance from the greater Khartoum area, marking a major military and political victory for the SAF. Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, and other foreign actors have sent weapons to the SAF and RSF that both sides are using in the battle for Khartoum. The RSF has intensified its efforts to defeat the SAF in western Sudan as it loses Khartoum to consolidate control over the western half of the country and enforce a de facto partition.
• Democratic Republic of the Congo. Burundi and Rwanda risk miscalculating in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which could spark a wider regional war in a most dangerous scenario, despite both countries’ efforts to deescalate and avoid a direct conflict. There is a continued risk of military escalation between Burundi and Rwanda, especially given the proximity of each country’s forces in the eastern DRC and the existential threat that each perceives from the other.

Assessments:

Sudan

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have fully retaken central Khartoum and are clearing the last pockets of Rapid Support Forces (RSF) resistance from the greater Khartoum area, marking a major military and political victory for the SAF. The SAF captured the final RSF positions in Khartoum, including the Khartoum International Airport, on March 26.[1] SAF leader Abdel Fattah al Burhan announced the recapture of the city from the RSF from the Presidential Palace in Khartoum.[2] The SAF has encircled the remaining RSF elements in southwestern Khartoum, where hundreds of RSF fighters are retreating into White Nile state across the Jebel Awliya Bridge—the RSF’s only exit out the city.[3] The RSF also maintains positions in Omdurman, Khartoum‘s twin city on the west bank of the Nile River, where the RSF has used its positions to shell and conduct drone strikes against the SAF in the greater capital area since the beginning of the civil war.[4] The SAF has captured some terrain from the RSF in Omdurman over the past week.[5]

SAF control over Khartoum bolsters the SAF political claim to be the only legitimate ruler in Sudan. Burhan outlined plans on February 8 for a new SAF-led government to take charge after the SAF captures Khartoum, and Egyptian media reported that the SAF-backed Sudanese...
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