Cross-Border Depth: Sustaining Sudan’s War Beyond the State
By: Dr. Abdelnasser Selum Hamed
Sudan’s war has entered a post-territorial phase. The production, regeneration, and redistribution of combat power are no longer confined to sovereign space — a shift that fundamentally alters the relationship between war, territory, and state authority. What appears to be unfolding is not episodic cross-border movement, but the consolidation of a structured regeneration architecture capable of sustaining organized violence beyond the immediate pressures of the battlefield. In this configuration, territorial control becomes secondary to institutional endurance. The central question is no longer which side holds a city today, but which side can reliably regenerate combat power over time.
Available indicators of activity in Ethiopia’s Benishangul-Gumuz region suggest the reorganization of elements affiliated with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Should this activity operate through a sustained and structured cycle — encompassing reception, screening, unit restructuring, specialized retraining, restoration of command hierarchies, and systematic redeployment — it would indicate that a significant portion of force reconstruction has effectively migrated beyond Sudanese territory. This is not a tactical adjustment; it represents a structural transformation in the conflict’s geography.
In conventional civil wars, attrition unfolds within shared sovereign boundaries. Armed actors exhaust one another through geographic containment, and losses accumulate cumulatively and irreversibly. However, when regeneration mechanisms are externalized, attrition ceases to function linearly. Battlefield depletion becomes provisional rather than terminal. Loss is converted into delay rather than decisive defeat.
A Reuters investigation lends quantitative substance to this assessment. Documents reviewed by the agency indicated that approximately 4,300 RSF fighters were undergoing training at the site in early January 2026. A diplomatic cable cited in the report suggested the facility’s operational capacity could reach roughly 10,000 personnel. Satellite imagery identified more than 640 tents within the compound, while convoys transporting between 50 and 60 fighters per truck were observed moving toward the area in late 2025. When interpreted operationally, these figures indicate an organized personnel rotation mechanism — structured for sustained force recycling rather than temporary shelter.
If operating at scale, such an arrangement constitutes regeneration rather than sanctuary. It reconfigures the spatial logic of war. The frontline ceases to function as the primary determinant of conflict dynamics and instead becomes a consumption node within a broader production system. Combat theaters expend manpower; cross-border hubs restore it.
In protracted conflicts, tempo determines survivability. The actor capable of compressing the interval between battlefield loss and organizational reconstitution acquires a structural advantage that transcends temporary territorial setbacks. Control over time — rather than space — becomes decisive. The conflict shifts from a contest over ground to a competition over institutional renewal capacity. Instead of converging toward mutual exhaustion, the war risks stabilizing at a sustainable equilibrium of organized violence.
The broader implication concerns the Horn of Africa’s fragile security architecture. Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, and Egypt are embedded within an interdependent matrix of strategic suspicion and hydropolitical competition. The introduction of distributed force-generation capacity inserts a durable variable into that system. Sovereignty becomes elastic. Borders no longer separate war from peace; they regulate the movement between depletion and renewal.
Wars sustained through external depth are rarely exhausted within their own frontiers. When the cycle of force production migrates beyond sovereign boundaries, the state risks becoming the most fragile component in the conflict equation. A civil war, under such conditions, evolves into a networked conflict structure — territorially contested yet institutionally buffered.
The deeper danger lies not solely in military persistence, but in normalization. Once regeneration becomes routinized, violence acquires administrative continuity. The war system adapts, stabilizes, and internalizes rhythm.
And when war acquires rhythm, it ceases to be a temporary crisis. It becomes infrastructure — capable of reactivation, redistribution, and renewal across borders and over time.
About the Author
Dr. Abdelnasser Selum Hamed
Senior Researcher & Director, East Africa and Sudan Program, FOx Research
Researcher in Crisis Management & Counter-Terroris