Sudan’s army says it is cutting a road to Darfur, and counting its own drone kills

Sudan Tribune, datelined El-Khwei on 8 November, reported intensified clashes Sunday between the army with allied forces and the Rapid Support Forces in West Kordofan, and said the westward advance “is designed to secure routes for future military operations in the Darfur region.” Military sources described “fierce battles” Sunday morning at Abu Minaiqir, about 55 km north of El-Khwei, and the army spokesperson said air defences downed an FH-95 long-range drone near Wad Banda — the third brought down in Kordofan in 72 hours, by that outlet’s count. A day earlier the army said it had taken Iyal Bakhit in El Khuwei locality, with Mohammed Didan, spokesperson for the Special Action Forces fighting alongside the army, saying troops had expelled RSF units. Radio Tamazuj, reporting the same Sunday statement, called it the fourth drone and listed the captures as Ayal Bakhit and Umm Marahik. No RSF comment appears in either account, and no independent body has verified any of it.

The drone war is now the organising fact of the conflict. A single anonymous military source told Sudan Tribune on 5 November that authorities had tracked more than 180 drones over roughly two months and shot down most of them — a SAF-side figure about SAF-side performance, and the only aggregate available. The strikes it describes are documented: on 1 November RSF-operated drones knocked the Al Dabbah and Abu Hamad power stations out of service and a civilian was killed at a fuel station; on 3 November a suspected RSF drone hit a fuel station at El Abbasiya in South Kordofan, killing at least seven and injuring 36. The American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, in an Africa File dated 5 November, records the RSF campaign against energy infrastructure since late October alongside intensified SAF drone attacks in densely populated areas of RSF-held Sudan since October, with a rising civilian toll.

What those strikes cost is contested by design. Radio Dabanga reported on 27 October that drone strikes had killed more than 100 people in a South Darfur market; the following day it reported Tasees, an RSF-aligned political coordinating body, placing the toll at 188, while Médecins Sans Frontières received 36 bodies in Nyala. One event, three numbers, only one of them produced by an institution that counts. Meanwhile the city the westward offensive is staged from is itself failing: Radio Dabanga reported on 4 November that residents of El Obeid face fuel shortages, inadequate drinking water and soaring prices for essentials. An OHCHR press release announcing a Fact-Finding Mission report, “Sudan’s Unrelenting War: Civilian Devastation and Deepening Insecurity in El Obeid,” found that expanding drone warfare and severe repression there put civilians at ever greater risk — repression, that is, in a city the army holds.

Assessment: Read the discrepancy, not the map. Two outlets working from the same army statement on the same day cannot agree whether three or four drones were downed, and Sudan Tribune places Iyal Bakhit both inside El Khuwei locality and 100 km from it. That is what a war covered almost entirely through belligerent spokesmen looks like. The underlying logic is still legible: the RSF is using long-range drones to stall a supply route toward Darfur, and the SAF is advertising interceptions because interceptions are the one battlefield claim that costs nothing to make. Treat the 180-drone figure as a claim about capability, not a count.