There is no end in sight for Sudan’s catastrophic civil war 

By Tom Gardner, Africa correspondent, The Economist

No city in Sudan besides the capital, Khartoum, is more fiercely fought over than el-Fasher, in the western region of Darfur. For much of 2024 it was under siege by the Rapid Support Forces (rsf), a paramilitary group that has spent more than 18 months trying to vanquish the regular Sudanese army, the Sudanese Armed Forces (saf), and seize control of the state. As a result, el-Fasher is where the famine that now threatens to consume the whole country began. Because of the intensity of the fighting there, it is also a useful place to look to understand where the conflict, which is possibly the biggest and most devastating anywhere in the world today, might be heading next.