Khartoum’s grinding siege is not simply the product of two exhausted commanders clinging to fading advantages. It is the predictable result of an externalization of the conflict: flows of weapons, fuel and finance from regional actors that have entrenched both sides and turned city fighting into a protracted war of attrition. The effect by May 2024 was strategic paralysis in the capital — neither the Sudanese Armed Forces nor the Rapid Support Forces achieved the decisive superiority required to dislodge the other.
Two dynamics matter most. First, outside suppliers have repeatedly replenished combat power for rival forces, replacing losses and enabling sustained, high‑intensity urban operations. United Nations sanctions monitors told the Security Council that they had received what they described as “credible” allegations of external military support to the RSF through logistics hubs in neighbouring Chad, allegations that regional and international reporting amplified in early 2024. Those routes and the money behind them have transformed the RSF from a light militia into a force with drones, heavier munitions and an ability to mass in Darfur and Khartoum peripheries. The allegation that a Gulf‑based logistics line facilitated recurrent deliveries to RSF positions is a central piece of evidence pointing to how external support reinforced the militia’s staying power.
Second, the army’s capability was also augmented by foreign systems that changed how it fought in and above the city. Reporting in April 2024 documented the arrival and operational use of Iranian‑made Mohajer drones by army forces, a development that helped the SAF regain tactical space around the capital after the first year of fighting. The introduction of these unmanned platforms raised the operational floor for both sides: they enabled strikes, reconnaissance and area denial that set the conditions for repeated offensives and counteroffensives without yielding a strategic resolution. The result was a heavier, more technology‑intensive stalemate.
Taken together, these flows did not create a classic two‑sided proxy war with clear external commanders. Instead they produced a militarised equilibrium. Each replenishment, whether through shipments, covert landings or financial channels, lengthened front lines and hardened positions inside Khartoum. Where the state might have reconstituted authority after a brief campaign, external supply lines made prolonged urban defense and mutual attrition Militarily viable. That in turn made humanitarian pauses fragile and ceasefires ephemeral; the resources to resume fighting were continually in reach.
Regional politics amplified the effect. The Gulf and neighbouring capitals remained deeply engaged in mediation at the same time as some of their interests appeared to create conditions conducive to arming clients or enabling logistics. Efforts such as the Jeddah talks in May 2023 underscored the diplomatic impulse to stop the fighting, but the same regional competition that produced these talks also incentivised hedging through material support. The consequence is a paradox: regional actors simultaneously called for ceasefires and created the means by which combatants could ignore them. That dynamic has repeatedly undermined negotiated pauses and encouraged a war economy that thrives on continued fighting.
The humanitarian and strategic effects are cumulative and long term. By May 2024 UN reporting and humanitarian analyses showed catastrophic damage to infrastructure, collapsed services, and sustained impediments to aid delivery across Khartoum and wider Sudan. Urban sieges and interdicted supply lines, supported and sustained by external logistics, gave combatants leverage over populations and made protection of civilians nearly impossible. The weaponisation of logistics hubs, whether airstrips or regional partnerships, therefore has a direct line to civilian suffering on the ground.
Policy implications are straightforward though politically difficult. First, the immediate priority for outside states should be to choke the logistics chains that sustain the fighting: rigorous interdiction of suspect cargo flights, targeted financial measures against brokers, and co‑operation on aviation and shipping transparency. Second, the Security Council’s limited Darfur‑only arms embargo had already shown its limits; the evidence of cross‑border supply lines underlines the need for a comprehensive approach to arms‑control measures for all of Sudan, with a practical enforcement architecture and investigative mandate. Third, donor and diplomatic leverage must include conditionality on economic channels that sustain combatants — including scrutiny of gold and commodity flows that financed weapons purchases before and after the outbreak of war. Finally, mediators must recognize that powerful external patrons cannot credibly broker or guarantee a settlement while they simultaneously maintain supply lines to clients inside Sudan.
Longer term, Khartoum’s siege demonstrates a broader lesson about the regionalisation of intrastate conflict in the 2020s. The proliferation of unmanned systems and the diffusion of commercial and quasi‑state logistics networks lower the threshold for outside actors to influence outcomes while also reducing the likelihood of decisive victory. That paradox will make wars longer, more destructive and harder to resolve unless the international community adapts policy tools to the logistics realities of modern conflict: coordinated interdiction, export controls that track novel vectors like dual‑use drones and parts, and a political strategy that separates peacemaking from patronage. Absent that shift, the tactical gains foreign support confers will keep local wars locked in low‑intensity stalemate, with catastrophic consequences for civilians and for regional stability.