Sudan’s army names a Blue Nile commander and pulls units from four states south

Sudan Tribune reported on 7 September that the Sudanese Armed Forces had moved reinforcements into Blue Nile from White Nile, Al Jazirah, Gedaref and Sennar states, citing military sources, and that the military command had established a dedicated joint operations centre for the Blue Nile front under Major General Walid Agabna. The reinforcement follows RSF and allied SPLM-N pushes into territory across the Geissan and Kurmuk localities. The same report carried allegations by Abdelati Mohamed El Faki, commissioner of Kurmuk County, that planeloads of fighters landed at Assosa airport on Sunday and moved to the Fana camp in Ethiopia’s Benishangul-Gumuz region, in an airlift he said the United Arab Emirates facilitated. Sudan Tribune stated it could not independently verify the claims, as it also could not verify El Faki’s 3 September allegation that four camps inside Ethiopia were training RSF personnel and staging drone flights.

In North Kordofan the army is telling a different story. Sudan Tribune reported from El Obeid on 6 September that the SAF and allied forces had taken Hamrat al-Wiz, tightening a supply corridor to the capital and broadening the buffer around the garrison towns of Jabrat al-Sheikh and Bara. “The army, the Joint Force, and Special Task units have liberated Hamrat al-Wiz and expelled the RSF,” said SAF field commander Malik al-Burof in a video filmed outside the town’s captured police headquarters. That account is one-sided and unconfirmed. Set against it, Security Council Report’s September forecast describes a significant build-up of RSF and allied fighters around El Obeid itself, and repeated drone strikes on power and fuel stations that have forced medical facilities and water stations to shut down, with displacement sites in the city expanding.

Assessment: Both Kordofan narratives can hold at once: a highway to Khartoum reopened while the state capital stays encircled. What would settle it is which roads into El Obeid are actually open, and nobody has published that. On Blue Nile, separate the claim from the event. A district commissioner’s allegation about Emirati airlifts is single-sourced and partisan; the appointment of a named joint operations commander and the transfer of units out of four states is a decision the army made and can be checked. Stripping Gedaref and Sennar to hold Kurmuk is a statement about where the SAF now expects to be attacked.