‘Sudan after the El-Obeid massacre’: When military discipline collapses and wars blur into identities

In recent days, a video from the city of El-Obeid in North Kordofan has sent shockwaves across Sudan and beyond, showing scenes of Sudanese army soldiers carrying out executions of civilians.

Although there has been no official comment so far, the footage’s widespread circulation has reignited long-standing questions about the conduct and discipline of regular forces amid a war that has dragged on for more than a year and a half.

The timing of the incident is striking. It came only days after the fall of Al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—a loss described as a severe psychological and moral blow to a military institution already facing growing criticism since the conflict began.

The sequence of events led observers to suggest that what occurred in El-Obeid may have been a form of “revenge attack” by certain army units that conflated specific local communities with their battlefield adversaries.

Historically, the Sudanese army has sought to preserve its image as a unified national institution, yet the current war has exposed deep internal fractures.

Divergent regional loyalties and alliances of necessity—with armed, tribal, and even extremist Islamist groups—have made it increasingly difficult to distinguish between organized military action and acts of individual or collective retribution.

The scene in El-Obeid is a stark indicator of how dangerously thin the line has become between regular and irregular conduct within the state’s military structure.
On another front, the parallel information war continues unabated.

While media pages close to the army circulate narratives accusing the RSF of committing similar atrocities in Al-Fashir, Sudanese human rights sources have pointed to attempts at misleading the public through the dissemination of fabricated or outdated footage.

This competing wave of propaganda complicates verification efforts, yet also illustrates how “narrative warfare” has become a central instrument of conflict, no less potent than weapons on the ground.

From a human rights perspective, local organizations have described what happened in El-Obeid as potentially amounting to a war crime that warrants an independent investigation.

However, mechanisms of justice within Sudan are virtually paralyzed, and humanitarian agencies face mounting restrictions on their operations—the latest being the Port Sudan authorities’ decision to expel senior World Food Programme officials—at a time when hundreds of thousands face severe shortages of food and medicine, particularly in Darfur and Kordofan.

What is unfolding in Sudan no longer appears to be a mere struggle between rival factions of the armed forces, but rather a gradual transformation in the nature of the war itself.

Since mid-2024, the conflict has taken on an increasingly localized character, driven by regional and ethnic motivations that make any talk of “victory” meaningless amid the erosion of national cohesion and the widening cycle of vengeance.

Ultimately, the El-Obeid incident reveals a new level of complexity in Sudan’s war: the collapse of military discipline, the erosion of social trust, the rise of hate rhetoric, and the absence of accountability.

Unless serious steps are taken to rebuild institutions of justice and restore control over the armed forces, such atrocities risk becoming not exceptions—but a recurring pattern in a war descending deeper into chaos by the day.