The dollar costs twice as much in army territory as it does in RSF-held Nyala

Sudan Tribune reported on 1 November that the army and the RSF are running an economic war alongside the military one, with mutual plans to restrict liquidity, control exchange houses and dominate parallel markets, and with the gap between the two zones widening daily. For that Sunday, its sources priced the US dollar at between 9,800 and 10,200 Sudanese pounds on the parallel market in government-held areas. In Nyala, in RSF-held Darfur, the cash dollar was quoted at 4,600 to 5,500 pounds, while the rate for digital transfers exceeded 6,500. Sources in Nyala described the RSF as relying on a hybrid financial system. Concordant sources in several regions told the outlet that cash transport and banknote exchanges between the two territories face tight security surveillance and strict inspection at military checkpoints. None of this is corroborated by central bank data or by a market tracker.

The spread inside Nyala — roughly 1,000 to 1,900 pounds between cash and a digital transfer — is the figure that carries information. It describes an acute shortage of physical banknotes in Darfur, the predictable residue of the 2024 currency reissue, which stranded old notes outside the banking system in territory the state no longer administers. A stronger nominal pound in Nyala is a symptom of that scarcity rather than evidence of RSF monetary competence. On the other side of the line, the drone campaign against transformer stations is working in the opposite direction: Sudan Tribune attributes outages affecting hospitals, water stations and bakeries to the strikes, and every hour of lost pumping and milling capacity in army-held cities raises the cost of the goods those 10,000-pound dollars have to buy.

Assessment: Currency borders outlast front lines. Checkpoint inspection of banknote convoys is the point at which two war economies stop trading with each other, and once separate price levels bed in, reunification becomes an exchange-rate problem on top of a political one — the sort of thing that survives any transition Haavisto convenes before Christmas. Treat the numbers as indicative: one outlet, unnamed money-changers, a single trading day, no central bank series to check them against. And resist the obvious reading. The side whose currency looks firmer here is the side whose population cannot get hold of cash at all.