The most recent advances by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan’s capital Khartoum and the nearby city of Omdurman indicate a change to the bitter and bloody stalemate that has dominated the past months of the Sudanese war.

Last week, General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, who heads the SAF, returned to headquarters in Khartoum for the first time in almost two years. Earlier in January, the SAF had managed to recapture the strategically important city of Wad Madani, which is around 180 kilometers (110 miles) south of Khartoum.

“When Wad Madani fell to the Rapid Support Forces in December 2023, a shock went through the entire country,” Hager Ali, a researcher at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, told DW.

“The Sudanese lost confidence in the Sudanese Armed Forces’ ability, which is why Wad Madani is seared into the peoples’ memories as a watershed moment,” she added.

The RSF had burned crops, razed fields and destroyed farming equipment.

“They weaponized hunger against the people of Sudan in order to establish control,” Ali explained, adding that “this was the moment when food insecurity not only became worse by a hundred-fold, it also became something that nobody is going to be able to remedy for the foreseeable future.”