Characters

"Sudan's army will emerge victorious. There is no alternative to victory."

A career military officer with no charisma but considerable political cunning, al-Burhan rose through Sudan's army under Omar al-Bashir and participated in the 2019 coup that removed him. He and RSF commander Hemedti jointly toppled the civilian transitional government in October 2021, intending to rule together. That partnership shattered in April 2023 over the terms of RSF integration into the armed forces. A dispute between two generals about who would subordinate their forces to the other — each knowing what they would lose — ignited a war that has devastated the country.

"We fight for the Sudanese people. The army fights for power."

Known universally as 'Hemedti' — a childhood nickname — Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo is one of Africa's most powerful warlords, having transformed himself from a camel trader to the commander of a 100,000-strong paramilitary force through decades of violence, opportunism, and ruthlessness. He built the RSF from the remnants of the Janjaweed militias that committed genocide in Darfur. His forces have deployed to Saudi Arabia's Yemen war, mined gold across Sudan's west, and now contest control of an entire country. He operates from a command structure that moves constantly and is backed by the UAE, which values him as a counterweight to Islamist political forces.

"They are killing us. The world must hear us."

Khamis Abbakar was the governor of West Darfur State — one of the regions hardest hit by the 2003–08 Darfur genocide and the site of renewed RSF atrocities in 2023. As RSF forces and allied militias swept through El Geneina, the state capital, Abbakar repeatedly issued public appeals for international intervention, broadcasting evidence of massacres of Masalit civilians. He was captured by RSF fighters and executed on video on June 14, 2023 — his death broadcast to the world as a demonstration of RSF power and impunity. His killing was condemned by the UN and cited in genocide investigations.

"I accept to be tried before any Sudanese court."

Omar al-Bashir ruled Sudan for 30 years as the archetype of a post-colonial military strongman — using divide-and-rule tactics, Islamist ideology, and extraordinary violence to maintain power. He oversaw two catastrophic civil wars: the north-south war that killed 2 million and produced South Sudan's independence, and the Darfur genocide that killed 300,000 and earned him the distinction of being the first sitting head of state indicted by the International Criminal Court. Ironically, he was overthrown in 2019 — not by his enemies but by the very generals, Burhan and Hemedti, whose careers he had built. By 2023, he sat in a Khartoum prison while the war between his former subordinates consumed the country he had governed.

"This transitional period is Sudan's last chance for a democratic future."

An economist who spent decades working for the UN Economic Commission for Africa, Abdalla Hamdok was the civilian face of Sudan's 2019 pro-democracy transition — the closest Sudan came to genuine democratic governance in its modern history. Appointed prime minister after al-Bashir's fall, he implemented economic reforms, removed Sudan from US terrorism designations, and began normalizing diplomatic relations. He survived an assassination attempt in March 2020. He was arrested in the October 2021 military coup, briefly reinstated under international pressure, and then resigned in January 2022, warning that the country was headed for catastrophe — a prediction that came true sixteen months later.

"We will defend Darfur. We will not let history repeat itself."

Minni Minnawi is one of the most complex figures in Sudan's long conflict — a Darfuri rebel who fought the SAF-backed Janjaweed in the 2003–08 genocide, then signed a peace deal with Khartoum, then rejoined the rebellion, then joined the Juba Peace Agreement in 2020, and by 2023 found himself allied with the SAF against the RSF — the very forces that had previously been his enemies' weapon. As governor of Darfur and commander of his armed movement, Minnawi became a key SAF partner in the defense of El Fasher, where the coalition of former adversaries stood together against the RSF's genocidal advance.

"The path to peace requires the Sudanese parties to choose dialogue over weapons."

The German diplomat and Middle East scholar appointed as the UN's Special Representative for Sudan from 2021 to 2023, Perthes spent two years attempting to facilitate Sudan's democratic transition and then desperately trying to prevent the April 2023 war — and failing at both. He organized the UNITAMS (United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission) framework negotiations that were meant to restore civilian government after the 2021 coup. When war broke out, he scrambled to arrange ceasefires that lasted hours. He was eventually expelled by Sudan's SAF government in June 2023 — accused by Burhan's administration of bias toward the RSF — ending the UN's direct mediation role at a critical moment.

"We will never disarm until security is guaranteed for Darfur's people."

The founder of the Sudan Liberation Movement and one of the original Darfuri rebel leaders who took up arms against al-Bashir's government in 2003, Abdel Wahid al-Nur has spent more than two decades in Paris exile refusing to sign any peace agreement that doesn't provide genuine justice for Darfur's African communities. He represents the Fur ethnic group — the largest in Darfur and one of the primary targets of the RSF's 2023 violence. His refusal to join Juba peace processes while calling for justice has made him a controversial figure — admired for consistency by some, blamed for obstruction by others. In the 2023 war his fighters, many in Jebel Marra's mountain stronghold, remained an independent force complicating any simple SAF-versus-RSF narrative.