Drone attacks blamed on RSF take Sudan's war to new and dangerous level

Drones have been widely used in Sudan's two-year-old civil war from the outset, but a wave of drone attacks by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces targeting the country's wartime capital has taken their use to a new and dangerous level, according to analysts.

They said drone attacks by the RSF on Port Sudan and cities to the north and south of the capital Khartoum have left most of the Afro-Arab nation without power after they targeted major fuel storage sites, hydroelectric power stations and major transformers.

“They have succeeded in disrupting life in army-held areas, creating fuel shortages and causing very long power outages in many areas,” said Sudanese analyst Osman Al Mirghani.

The targets, which also included military bases and the city's international airport, might have been chiefly selected to distract the army – the RSF's war enemy – from taking the fight to the paramilitary's strongholds in western and southwestern Sudan after it has recently thrown it out of the capital Khartoum and the central region.

Other objectives, they said, were psychological, though not less significant than the material damage they caused.

The attacks, they explained, shattered the sense of security felt by army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and his top officers in Port Sudan and went some way in devaluing the significance of their recent battlefield gains.

Additionally, they said, the attacks discredited Gen Al Burhan in the public eye for his perceived failure to protect areas under army control and to project the paramilitary's strength after its defeat in Khartoum.

“They reflect the Rapid Support Forces' despair after its recent losses and may also be designed to delay or disrupt the army's preparation to take the fight to the West,” Mr Al Mirghani told The National.

In recent weeks, the RSF used drones to attack key sites in Port Sudan, Kassala and Kosti in the south and Atbara and Mroue in the north. There have also been attacks on sites west of Port Sudan in the nation's eastern region.

The attacks, occurring daily since May 4, have targeted army-held parts of Sudan that had not been touched by the war.

Besides being the wartime capital since Khartoum was overrun by the RSF in the war's early days, the city is home to the military-backed government, diplomatic missions and hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians. It's also the hub for UN and other relief agencies working to feed millions of hungry Sudanese.

The UN, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the EU have all condemned the attacks.

Authorities in Port Sudan, perhaps aware of the demoralising effect of images circulating online of burning fuel tanks, banned regional and international news teams from filming on the streets of the city.

There have also been reports that thousands of residents, including displaced Sudanese, have left Port Sudan in the past week in search of safety elsewhere.

Gen Al Burhan addressed the nation last week in the wake of the attacks. In military fatigues, he spoke while standing with a huge fuel tank fire raging in the background. The attacks, he said, would only strengthen the will of the Sudanese people and vowed to fight on until the RSF is defeated.

But the comforting words of the general may do little to assuage growing concern that the war has steadily chipped away at Sudan's core infrastructure or, some would say, the very foundations of the nation.

“The state, as represented by its infrastructure and basic vestiges, are disappearing,” said Sudanese commentator Mohammed Lateef, citing the large-scale damage to state facilities in virtually every part of the country touched by the war.

“At the end, these are Sudan's losses. The people of Sudan deserve better and don't deserve all this destruction.”

The drone attacks have come at a time of a near-total lull in ground operations since late March when the army drove the RSF out of the capital. The turn to the use of long-range drones rather than initiate ground operations, may be prompted in part by the RSF's heavy manpower losses on the battlefield.

But they may also reflect the paramilitary's recent procurement of new drones, said Mr Al Mirghani.

The analysts name the Chinese-made drone Wing Loong II as the most likely type used by the RSF in the latest attacks.

Mr Al Mirghani says these drones are available on the world market for anyone willing to pay. Branded as “strategic drones,” they fly quietly at high altitude and strike with a high level of accuracy using air-to-ground missiles.

Smaller "suicide" drones, in contrast, are noisy, fly low and are easy to bring down with anti-aircraft guns.

Widely viewed as a power struggle between Gen Al Burhan and his former ally RSF commander Gen Mohamed Dagalo, the Sudan conflict has killed tens of thousands, displaced about 13 million people and brought acute hunger to about 26 million others.

Khartoum, for example, has suffered extensive infrastructure damage, with the majority of medical centres destroyed, buildings wrecked or badly damaged as well as power stations and education centres.

Both sides, meanwhile are accused of war crimes, with the army blamed for the death of hundreds, maybe thousands, in air strikes and artillery shelling as well as the abuse, killing in some cases, of civilians by allied militias.

The RSF, on the other hand, is accused of ethnic cleansing, extrajudicial killings, looting and sexual assaults.