Sudan Nashra: Security incidents prompt review of military-allied joint force role in cities | Military captures key RSF logistical hub in West Darfur, moves within reach of Geneina | Weeklong border impasse ends for South Sudanese on ‘voluntary return’ ferry, source says Juba angered by Cairo, Khartoum’s intransigence

A counter-narcotics unit moved on a criminal network in Port Sudan’s Libya Market. Gunfire broke out, with two suspects killed and two officers wounded. The incident quickly set in motion a much broader political response. The Red Sea State security committee convened an emergency meeting and authorities began restricting the role of the joint force of armed movements signatory to the 2020 Juba Peace Agreement — the military’s main battlefield ally — inside the cities. Investigations into the Port Sudan incident determined that one of those killed had ties to the Sudan Liberation Movement led by Darfur Governor Minni Arko Minnawi, one the main constituents of the joint force, while the other was carrying an order bearing the stamp of another armed movement, a Red Sea State official told Mada Masr. The Port Sudan clash on June 24 capped around two weeks of heightened security concerns. Authorities in River Nile State had announced the seizure of almost a quarter of a million narcotic pills from individuals they identified as joint force members. Days later, another confrontation left a police officer dead inside a station in White Nile’s Gabalein after an altercation with joint force personnel. Those incidents have cast renewed scrutiny on a wartime policy the state has adopted, entrusting allied armed movements with protecting state institutions, securing transport corridors and supporting security operations in cities under military control. Maintaining that expanded role required a rapid expansion of recruitment, which a senior source in an armed movement and an intelligence source told Mada Masr weakened oversight and allowed criminal actors to infiltrate. But rather than distancing its longtime ally from the controversies, the government explicitly named the joint force and one of its main armed movements in announcing each of the recent incidents. The public attribution comes as the military presses ahead with one of its most politically contentious projects: integrating allied armed forces into the state’s security institutions, a step armed movement leaders resist rushing without guarantees as they fear it would erode the political leverage tied to their autonomous forces. A senior source at the General Command who spoke to Mada Masr used the recent incidents to reinforce the security establishment’s case for moving more rapidly with the process announced by Chief of Staff Yasser al-Atta in March. While officials in Port Sudan were reassessing the joint force’s role inside cities, its frontline units were making significant strides in western Sudan. Over several days of fighting backed by drone strikes,  military troops and the joint force and allied civilian fighters captured a string of strategic positions along the corridor between Tina in North Darfur and Geneina, West Darfur’s capital. The most significant gain came on Monday with the capture of Kulbus, a border town around 160 km northeast of Geneina. Situated on one of the main routes connecting western Darfur to Chad, Kulbus has long served as a key Rapid Support Forces logistical hub, used to move supplies and receive cross-border recruits, a military source told Mada Masr. The advances have forced the RSF into a rapid redeployment. According to a security source and a statement from an emergency room in West Kordofan, the paramilitary group called forces from Kordofan while rushing reinforcements from elsewhere in Darfur and mobilizing allied tribal forces to defend Geneina and restore its supply lines. A former military officer told Mada Masr the military’s offensive is part of a strategy aiming to stretch the RSF across multiple fronts, disrupting the group’s plans to advance on Obeid, North Kordofan’s capital. For weeks, the paramilitary group has amassed forces around the city while maintaining a near-daily drone campaign that has left hundreds of thousands of residents living under the constant threat of attack and prompted repeated international warnings over Obeid’s fate. Officials insist Obeid is neither under siege nor facing an imminent ground assault, saying the military is capable of protecting the city. But residents endured another week of drone attacks, including strikes near a private school that wounded several students and another that hit a livestock truck at the city’s eastern entrance. A senior military officer said the drones are being launched from South Darfur’s Nyala and positions west of Obeid. According to the officer, the military also tracked strategic drones targeting Obeid to launch sites inside Ethiopia. At Sudan’s northern border, 78 South Sudanese nationals who had spent a week stranded aboard a “voluntary return” ferry between Egypt and Sudan were finally allowed to disembark early Friday and enter at the Argeen crossing. A Sudanese official at the crossing said the group was admitted into Sudan after intensive coordination with South Sudanese authorities and transferred to White Nile State as an initial stop, in preparation for their onward journey to South Sudan. The passengers had been caught in limbo after departing from Egypt under the understanding that they would be received in Sudan and handed over to South Sudanese representatives for onward transfer, in line with special arrangements that allowed them to board a ferry otherwise designated for Sudanese nationals brought back under the military-led government’s “voluntary return” campaign. But on arrival, Sudan said it had not been formally informed of the transit and refused their entry. Egypt rejected their return, while South Sudan said it had not been notified of the arrangement at all. A South Sudanese embassy official in Khartoum who spoke to Mada Masr after the resolution attributed the crisis to a procedural misunderstanding and praised what they described as Sudan’s “rapid humanitarian response.” But a South Sudanese government source told Mada Masr that anger is spreading among some officials in Juba, who criticized the treatment of citizens left stranded for days aboard the ferry under harsh conditions. The source said officials are increasingly concerned by what they see as growing coordination between Cairo and Khartoum, which they said translated into hardline positions at the start of the crisis and restrictions on the movement of South Sudanese nationals. Officials expect high-level diplomatic contacts to continue in the coming days to clarify the incident and ensure similar cases do not recur, according to the source. *** Military captures key RSF logistical hub in West Darfur, moves within reach of Geneina Sudanese army troops celebrate the capture of the Kulbus locality in West Darfur, June 29. Courtesy: @Mo_elmalik on X. A string of advances in western Darfur was made this week by the military and the allied joint force of armed movements, backed by civilian fighters, as they captured strategic positions along the corridor between Tina in North Darfur and Geneina, West Darfur’s capital. The areas sit astride a key cross-border supply route that the RSF has relied on to move fighters and military equipment, a military source told Mada Masr. The gains place the military within reach of Geneina and have forced the RSF onto the defensive. According to a security source and a statement from an emergency room in West Kordofan, the paramilitary group redeployed forces from Kordofan while rushing reinforcements from elsewhere in Darfur and mobilizing allied tribal forces to defend the city and restore its supply lines. A former military officer told Mada Masr the offensive is part of a strategy aiming to stretch the RSF across multiple fronts, disrupting the group’s plans to advance on Obeid, North Kordofan’s capital. Both military and RSF sources told Mada Masr that they expect heavy fighting over the coming days as the RSF attempts to push back. Sudanese security forces advance toward Geneina. Courtesy: @Sudan_tweet on X. The offensive began on June 27, when military forces and allied units advanced from the border town of Tina and recaptured Abu Gamra in the Karnoi locality, killing and capturing dozens of RSF fighters and seizing several combat vehicles, according to a military source. The forces continued westward, crossing North Darfur’s border and capturing the strategic town of Kulbus in West Darfur on Monday after another round of fighting that the source said left the RSF with heavy losses in personnel and equipment. Military forces seized more than 15 combat vehicles, destroyed around 10 others and captured ammunition depots and military supplies, according to the source. Among the several personnel captured was the RSF commander responsible for operations in Kulbus, Saleh Dudeen, they added. According to the source, the military relied extensively on drones during the operation. Located on the Chad border about 160 km northeast of Geneina, Kulbus lies on one of the main cross-border routes linking western Darfur to Chad, making it one of the RSF’s most important logistical hubs, the source said. The paramilitary group has long used the town to receive cross-border recruits, enlist foreign fighters and redistribute military supplies, according to the military source. Its capture, they said, leaves only a handful of towns and limited RSF positions between military forces and Geneina. Mohamed Ahmed Adam, an activist in West Darfur who previously served in the executive team of former state Governor Khamis Abakar, argued that the loss of Kulbus would constrain the RSF’s ability to resupply and maneuver, weaken its fighters’ morale and increase pressure on its positions in Geneina. He said control of the town would help the military secure the Chad border while placing a vital cross-border trade corridor under military control. The military built on those gains on Tuesday. A source in the military-allied joint force told Mada Masr that, in coordination with the military, joint force fighters carried out clearing operations around Kulbus, pursued retreating RSF forces, seized additional combat vehicles and advanced to Bir Keleikal in eastern Jebel Moon, about 70 km from Geneina. RSF fighters mobilized in Geneina and the Kamdebbi area to its north the following day, before launching an offensive to retake the lost territory in Jebel Moon, a second source in the joint force said. The joint force fighters foiled an attempted flanking maneuver, and the attack was repelled, according to the source. A former military officer told Mada Masr that the advancing forces are unlikely to encounter major logistical difficulties as they are operating in areas with strong local support for the military, particularly around Kulbus, which is home to large Gimr tribal communities. Supplies could continue to reach the front through cross-border social networks operating via Chad, as has been the case around Tina, as well as through desert supply routes and sustained air support from military aircraft and drones. The captured territory also gives the military the option of deploying drone launch sites closer to Geneina and Saraf Omra on the border with North Darfur, the former officer said. The military’s push in western Darfur, they added, is intended to disrupt RSF plans to advance on Obeid by creating a growing threat to the group’s rear. The military also intends to keep the RSF stretched across multiple battlefields by opening fronts in Kordofan, Blue Nile State and the Northern State desert, they added. The advance appears to have triggered a large-scale redeployment, with the RSF shifting forces from other fronts toward Darfur. The Dar Hamar emergency room in West Kordofan said RSF forces withdrew from Nuhud in the early hours of Wednesday with around 60 combat vehicles, heading toward Fasher. In a statement issued on Thursday, the group added that another convoy of around 80 vehicles left Fula on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, moving toward East Darfur’s Daein. A security source also told Mada Masr that additional RSF forces arrived in North Darfur’s Malha, in what they said is an effort to attack military-allied armed movement forces deployed along the Chad border. Other RSF forces were redeployed from South Darfur’s Nyala to Geneina and the nearby Serba area, according to the source. An RSF source dismissed reports that Geneina was under threat as “nothing more than wartime propaganda,” insisting that RSF forces remain capable of recapturing all lost positions. The source confirmed that reinforcements have already arrived and claimed they would enable the RSF not only to reverse the military’s gains, but also to push as far as Tina, predicting fierce fighting would break out along the front in the coming days. Reports that fighting could soon reach Geneina have heightened concerns among its residents. In response, West Darfur’s RSF-affiliated administration urged residents on Thursday to ignore what it described as “rumors” seeking to “spread panic,” insisting that the security situation remains under control. *** Military recaptures base in Blue Nile The Fourth Infantry Division in Damazin announces recapturing the Sarkam military base. Courtesy: Fourth Infantry Division in Damazin Facebook page. The military recaptured the Sarkam military base in Blue Nile’s Kurmuk locality on Monday, days after it fell to the RSF, before advancing into Maggaga, another defensive position to its northwest. In a statement , the Fourth Infantry Division in Damazin said the operation, carried out alongside allied forces, inflicted heavy RSF losses in personnel and equipment. It added that clearing operations were continuing to secure the recaptured positions and prevent retreating RSF fighters from regrouping. Last week, the RSF seized Sarkam, southwest of Sali, a key military command center for operations in southern Blue Nile. Magagga, a strategic area for the defense of Kurmuk and Damazin that has repeatedly changed hands over recent months, was captured by the RSF in May. *** Drone attacks on Obeid continue Aftermath of drone strike on gas station in Tendelti, White Nile State. Courtesy: @alalmyalsudani on X. Residents of Obeid faced another week of drone attacks as the RSF kept up pressure on the North Kordofan capital. An official in Obeid told Mada Masr that a drone exploded near a private school on Sunday, injuring eight students. The children were taken to hospitals with minor injuries. Another drone struck a livestock truck at the city’s eastern entrance on Wednesday night, according to the official, who said the repeated attacks have deepened public anxiety. According to a senior military officer, the RSF is launching drones targeting Obeid from Nyala in South Darfur, from sites west of Obeid around Um Badr and Jabal Abu Gouri, and from an airstrip in Um Daraba. The officer said the military also tracked strategic drones targeting Obeid to launch sites inside Ethiopia. Despite the continued attacks, the officer said the military remains confident it can protect the city. According to the officer, air defenses have been reinforced and fortifications have been built around critical areas in preparation for any ground assault. North Kordofan Governor Abdel Khaleq Abdel Latif sought to downplay concerns that Obeid is facing an imminent ground assault, saying in comments to the press the “RSF’s closest position is in Bara, 57 km away.” In neighboring White Nile State, which has also come under the RSF’s drone campaign in recent weeks, the military announced on Thursday that its air defenses shot down a strategic drone over the town of Tendelti and released footage of the interception. The Sudanese army targets an FH-95 strategic drone over the city of Tendleti in White Nile State. Courtesy: The Sudanese Armed Forces Facebook page. *** Security incidents prompt review of military-allied joint force role in cities Forces belonging to the Anti-Narcotics Police in Port Sudan. Courtesy: Al-Jamaheer. A string of security incidents involving individuals authorities said are affiliated with the joint force of armed movements has triggered a review of one of the state’s wartime security arrangements — allowing allied armed movements to operate in cities outside combat zones. The most recent occurred on June 24, when a counter-narcotics unit raided a criminal network in Port Sudan’s Libya Market. The suspects opened fire on the force, triggering a firefight. Two traffickers were killed, two counter-narcotics officers were wounded and a police vehicle was destroyed, according to a security source. Investigators found that one of those killed had links to the Sudan Liberation Movement led by Darfur Governor Minni Arko Minnawi (SLM-Minnawi) while the other was carrying an order bearing the stamp of an armed group, a Red Sea State official said. The findings prompted the state’s security committee to convene an emergency meeting to review regulations governing armed personnel while adopting additional measures aimed at preventing military credentials from being used to facilitate criminal activity, a senior security source in the eastern command zone told Mada Masr. The state’s security decision was not based on one incident, but on a growing worry about discipline within the joint force’s ranks as well as increasingly vocal fears among the public that the coalition’s expanding role in cities could mirror abuses committed by RSF-affiliated elements in areas under the paramilitary group’s control. Throughout the war, authorities have relied on elements of the joint force — the military’s main battlefield ally, composed of the armed movements signatory to the 2020 Juba Peace Agreement — to guard public institutions, secure transport routes and assist with selected security operations in cities under military control. For some within the government, the recent issues can be explained by a rapid recruitment drive to sustain both battlefield and urban deployments that a senior source in one of the force’s main movements and an intelligence source said weakened vetting procedures and allowed criminal actors to infiltrate the force. But the government is not shying away from pinning the incidents on its longtime ally, either, as authorities have explicitly named the joint force and an armed movement in announcing the incidents. The disclosures come as the military presses ahead with a plan to integrate allied armed forces into the state’s regular security institutions — a highly contentious process as the armed movements view their autonomous military structures as a key source of political leverage secured under the Juba agreement. The Port Sudan raid on June 24 came after two earlier incidents that had already heightened concern among security officials. On June 14, authorities in River Nile State seized nearly a quarter of a million narcotic pills from whom they said were members of the joint force. Then, on June 22, a confrontation between police officers and three joint force members inside a police station in the White Nile’s Gabalein left one officer dead and another wounded before military intelligence intervened and detained the suspects, preventing one of them from detonating a hand grenade, a military source in White Nile’s 18th Infantry Division told Mada Masr. According to the eastern command security source, the Port Sudan raid reignited a broader debate within state institutions over how to regulate armed personnel operating outside combat zones. Leaders in the joint force have attempted to distance the coalition from those implicated in all of the events. A field commander in the joint force told Mada Masr that the leadership is “taking very seriously all the incidents that occurred in recent days.” “What happened does not reflect the position of the joint force,” they added, “but rather the actions of individual members or small groups, which should not be generalized to the thousands of fighters serving on the frontlines.” According to a joint force official and a senior official from one of the participating armed movements, the leadership requested access to military and security investigations into the Port Sudan and White Nile incidents. They said the leadership would cooperate with investigators and would not shield any member found to have used weapons outside military duties. Commenting on the Libya Market incident, the senior official argued that the presence of movement orders or military documents “does not automatically mean the movement’s leadership or the joint force authorized or directed their actions.” Wartime conditions, the official said, have allowed criminal groups to exploit military uniforms, forge stamps and counterfeit movement orders to facilitate their activities. A member of the joint force’s leadership council nevertheless acknowledged an “urgent need to reorganize the force’s presence in cities” and limit its responsibilities to military operations and the battlefield. Rather than functioning as a single centrally commanded military institution, a source in the SLM-Minnawi explained that the joint force is a coalition of units that remain subordinate to the armed movements that make it up, retaining varying degrees of administrative, organizational and logistical autonomy while coordinating operations on some fronts. As fighting spread across Sudan, authorities increasingly relied on allied groups not only to reinforce frontline operations, but also to protect government facilities, support selected security operations, secure transport routes and carry out wartime logistical and administrative tasks in cities away from combat, according to the source. To sustain those deployments, the movements continued to recall former fighters and open new recruitment across their traditional areas of influence. The speed of that mobilization came at a cost. According to the SLM source, standards of recruitment, training and discipline varied widely between units. A General Intelligence Service source said some criminal actors linked to smuggling and drug trafficking networks were able to exploit the expansion to infiltrate armed groups. The SLM source stressed that joint force units deployed in cities should not be conflated with those operating on the frontlines. The security arrangements in cities, the source said, generated recurring disputes over where the joint force’s responsibilities end and those of the police, judiciary and other state security institutions begin. A political figure close to several of the armed movements cautioned against portraying the recent incidents as evidence of a rift between the military and the joint force, arguing that doing so would undermine the military alliance at a critical stage of the war. The priority, they said, should be “swift institutional and legal remedies, not political or media wrangling.” But for the military, the institutional answer is to curtail the freedom of the movements as such and bring them under the command structure of the state, a politically sensitive process the military leadership has championed in recent months even as the armed movements have pushed against rushing it. A senior military source at the military’s General Command used the recent incidents to strengthen the security establishment’s case for accelerating the integration of allied armed forces into the state’s regular military and security institutions, announced by newly appointed Chief of Staff Yasser al-Atta in March. The source said the challenge facing the state is redefining the relationship between the demands of wartime command and the requirements of rebuilding a central state capable of exercising a monopoly over the use of force, pointing to growing momentum behind plans to speed up integration. Several of the armed movements have resisted a rapid integration process without broader guarantees preserving the political influence they secured under the 2020 Juba Peace Agreement, while the military has pushed to move forward with implementation largely on military terms. *** Weeklong border impasse ends for South Sudanese on ‘voluntary return’ ferry, source says Juba angered by Cairo, Khartoum intransigence The Sinai ferry near Wadi Halfa port. Courtesy: Sudan News Agency on Facebook. After spending a week stranded aboard a “voluntary return” ferry between Egypt and Sudan, the remaining South Sudanese passengers caught in a cross-border diplomatic impasse were finally allowed into Sudan early on Friday. Sudanese authorities admitted 78 South Sudanese nationals through the Argeen border crossing following intensive contacts and direct coordination with South Sudanese authorities, an informed Sudanese official at the crossing told Mada Masr. The two countries agreed to transfer the group immediately toward White Nile State as a first stop, in preparation for their onward journey to South Sudan. The official added that the transfer from Argeen proceeded smoothly without procedural or security complications, taking into account the group had been stranded at sea for a week. That humanitarian concern was less evident during the preceding week, when the group remained stranded aboard the Sinai ferry after a bureaucratic breakdown left neither Sudan nor Egypt willing to let them disembark. The Sinai normally carries Sudanese nationals under Khartoum’s “voluntary return” campaign to bring back Sudanese who fled the war into military-held areas. But more than 100 South Sudanese were also allowed aboard after what organizers told Mada Masr were special arrangements made with Egyptian and Sudanese authorities to accommodate the passengers carrying expired passports and residency permits and, for some children, no identification documents. According to a relative of one of the passengers who spoke to Mada Masr last week, the group was told South Sudanese representatives would receive them after they crossed into Sudan and arrange the remainder of their journey home. But once the ferry arrived, Sudan said it had never been formally notified of the transit and that the passengers lacked documents permitting entry. When the ferry was returned to Egypt, Egyptian authorities refused to allow the passengers back after they had already exited the country. South Sudan, meanwhile, said it had not been informed of the arrangements in the first place. The passengers remained aboard the ferry, with only 31 admitted later into Sudan as an exceptional measure, until contacts between the three governments eventually broke the impasse on Friday. The official at the Argeen crossing said the crisis has prompted high-level coordination between Sudanese and Egyptian authorities, resulting in new understandings regarding mechanisms for the transit of nationals from neighboring countries. The arrangements, according to the official, would ensure that all documentation is completed in advance to prevent similar legal and diplomatic impasses at the border. An official at South Sudan’s embassy in Khartoum praised Sudanese authorities for what they described as a “rapid humanitarian response,” attributing the crisis to procedural misunderstandings between Egyptian and Sudanese authorities over return lists and expired travel documents. Officials in Juba appeared less willing to treat the matter as a mere bureaucratic mishap. In contrast to the calm and appreciative tone adopted by South Sudan’s embassy in Khartoum, a South Sudanese government source told Mada Masr that widespread resentment and anger prevail among some South Sudanese officials who strongly criticized the treatment of the passengers left aboard the ferry for days under harsh conditions. The source said officials were increasingly concerned by what they viewed as growing coordination between Cairo and Khartoum that translated into hardline positions adopted by both governments at the outset of the crisis and unjustified restrictions on the movement of South Sudanese nationals, who, they argued, had been treated as deportees at ports and border crossings. According to the government source, the officials stressed that high-level diplomatic and political contacts among the three countries would continue in the coming days to clarify the circumstances surrounding the incident and ensure that such situations affecting the safety of South Sudanese citizens are not repeated. During the impasse over the past days, a South Sudanese security source told Mada Masr that relations between Cairo and Juba have been strained by South Sudan’s request in May that Egypt close its military base in Upper Nile State. A political source in Cairo familiar with state decision-making on Sudan said at the time that Egypt was using the stranded South Sudanese nationals to send Juba a message that it would reciprocate what it viewed as poor treatment by South Sudan, a reference to recent diplomatic tensions after Juba requested Egypt to vacate a military base in South Sudan. The post Sudan Nashra: Security incidents prompt review of military-allied joint force role in cities | Military captures key RSF logistical hub in West Darfur, moves within reach of Geneina | Weeklong border impasse ends for South Sudanese on ‘voluntary return’ ferry, source says Juba angered by Cairo, Khartoum’s intransigence first appeared on Mada Masr .