In late October 2025, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary organization fighting for control of Sudan, captured the city of El Fasher, in Darfur, marking yet another step in the country’s bloody civil war. Tens of thousands of civilians have fled the city and thousands have reportedly been killed. With the fall of the Sudanese Armed Forces’ (SAF) last stronghold in western Sudan – coming two months after RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti) declared a parallel state in Nyala – Sudan’s east–west split is now almost complete.

Although the international community has condemned the reported mass atrocities, unlawful killings and sexual violence, and refused to recognize the RSF’s self-proclaimed government, formal legitimacy is not what keeps the paramilitary force alive. This non-recognition of the RSF is belied, however, by a vast international network of complicity, involving illicit trade and organized crime. While much attention has focused on Chad and eastern Libya as likely conduits for material support from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the RSF also depends on Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR) as logistics corridors for trafficking military supplies and smuggling gold.

For a time, the SAF, backed by Türkiye, Iran, Egypt and Russia, appeared to be gaining ground against the RSF in western Sudan, having disrupted several important supply lines. Yet the fall of El Fasher demonstrates the RSF’s resilience and the breadth of the networks that sustain it. There is a real danger that the RSF could expand again and open fresh fronts, underscoring the urgent need for coordinated international and domestic pressure to be exerted on countries in the region.

Chad’s shifting role

Shortly after the war in Sudan broke out in April 2023, Chad faced credible allegations of facilitating RSF military resupply operations, with airports in Amdjarass and Abéché reportedly serving as hubs for UAE-supported cargo flights. These claims intensified resentment among Chad’s influential Zaghawa community, whose members straddle the Sudanese border and have been targeted by RSF violence. Mounting domestic opposition, combined with the SAF’s growing capacity to intercept supply routes and its threats to strike targets inside Chad, ultimately pressured N’Djamena to scale back its cooperation with the RSF.

In 2025, the number of flights from the UAE to eastern Chad decreased. Air traffic subsequently shifted northwards to Kufra in eastern Libya, or directly into Nyala, South Darfur, under the cover of darkness. The RSF’s capture in June of the border area where Sudan, Libya and Egypt converge, supported by a Libyan militia aligned with Khalifa Haftar, commander of the Libyan National Army, further facilitated onward ground supply routes from Kufra to the RSF.

Internal fractures within Chad’s security apparatus contributed to intelligence leaks that exposed covert state support for the RSF – most notably the alleged diversion of Chinese-supplied air defence systems originally delivered to Chad, and the facilitation of vehicle shipments to Sudan through the port of Douala in Cameroon and via Chad. Seeking to limit reputational damage following these revelations, N’Djamena has recently attempted to signal distance from the RSF, including by returning vehicles that were looted in Sudan by the RSF and trafficked across the border into Chad.

Although some trafficking routes through Chad remain active – especially established flows of arms and military materiel through its northern regions – the country has clearly moved on from being the RSF’s primary rear base to becoming a contested and less reliable corridor.

Looking south

As Chad’s support has waned, the RSF’s attention has not only shifted north to Libya but also southwards. In recent months, South Sudanese– and Kenyan-registered aircrafts have been observed landing in Nyala and offloading supplies. Kenyan-registered aircrafts have also transported wounded RSF fighters. In February 2025, Kenya hosted the RSF meetings that produced a charter for Nyala’s ‘parallel government’, and in June the SAF accused Kenya of supplying arms to the RSF. This was met by strong denial from Nairobi. In August, the United States Senate called for an investigation into Kenya’s links to the RSF as part of its review of Kenya’s ‘major non-NATO ally’ status, a designation granted in 2024 that affords Nairobi significant military and financial privileges.

Controversial aviation links also lead to Uganda. In May 2025, the SAF destroyed a Kenyan-registered Boeing 737 in Nyala that had been converted for cargo and was allegedly carrying RSF military supplies. The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime later confirmed with local sources that the aircraft was in fact operated from Entebbe, Uganda, where its owner and pilot resided.

South Sudan has become central to the RSF’s gold economy. In March 2024, several hundred kilograms of gold supposedly produced in the militia’s industrial mine in Songo were transported to Wau in South Sudan and flown to Juba on a commercial airliner, before being transferred to a private jet bound for the UAE. There have also been reports of artisanal gold originating in RSF territory being smuggled through South Sudan.

Lastly, the CAR has also potentially become a conduit for external support for the RSF. Early in the conflict, the RSF received weapons on at least two occasions from the north-east of the country. The Russia-backed Wagner Group has allegedly been involved in such transfers. However, relations between Wagner and the RSF appear to have deteriorated amid allegations in early 2025 that the mercenary group was making cross-border incursions from the CAR into Darfur. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi has begun courting Bangui with proposals to refurbish Birao airport, near the Sudan border, raising concerns that the site could become a new supply hub for the RSF.

While the CAR’s support for the RSF has not yet materialized, the country is increasingly becoming an attractive option for the paramilitary group, given the SAF’s mounting pressure on southern aviation routes. Since December 2023, Sudan’s Civil Aviation Authority has overseen South Sudan’s airspace due to the latter’s delays in establishing its own system, granting the SAF valuable intelligence on suspicious overflights, including those from Kenya and Uganda. The RSF is apparently adapting to this reality by constructing dozens of makeshift airstrips across Darfur and Kordofan. Designed for light aircraft, these strips bypass formal air-control networks and are less vulnerable to SAF drone attacks. Many are located adjacent to gold extraction sites, and could therefore fulfil the dual role of replenishing arms supplies and smuggling gold out.

The RSF’s networks extend across the region, forming an opaque web of commercial, criminal and political interests. Exposing the actors involved and their practices in these hubs is essential to disrupting their operations. Accurate information can inform targeted sanctions, aviation monitoring and diplomatic engagement with countries serving as sources or transit points. Civil society, the media and opposition groups can also play a part by challenging enabling policies, as Chad’s example shows. Coordinated, region-wide action targeting all critical hubs is needed to meaningfully constrain the RSF’s operating space and halt the group’s growing momentum.

The GI-TOC’s forthcoming report ‘Collateral circuits: The impact of Sudan’s war on arms markets and mercenary networks in Chad and Libya’ offers an in-depth analysis of how Sudan’s conflict has activated new regional supply nodes, and expanded and reshaped trafficking infrastructures.