Wad Madani Battle: Turning Point in the War in Sudan
19 January, 2025
Port sudan(sudanow)---
In every war, one battle would be the turning point. The Wad Madani battle was decisive in the current war the country is witnessing since April 2023.
To put it simply and neutrally, this is a paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), rebelling against the national army. It was not alone. Its vested interests have found echo with foreign parties that wanted some Sudanese quarter to lead this war of proxy.
But normally, history says, the overall national will prevails. And no matter how long a war lasts, it is going to end at some point, either through cheer defeat of one party, or through weakness that drives the two to come to the negotiating table.
Equally true is the fact that no negotiations would ever take place and succeed if the two sides are in a state of equilibrium.
The battle of Wad Madani is, in our view, the turning point towards the end of the war. It is the battle that tilts the balance of power in a dramatic way.
This is exactly the scenario outlined above; when the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) recovered the town of Madani, central Sudan, from the handgrip of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militias.
Not only was it strategically vital and important but militarily, politically and morally this was a turning point.
The town is in the cross roads linking western Sudan to the East, and to the north and well to the south. But it was rather more the heart of the largest irrigated agricultural project in Sudan and in Africa and the Middle East by and large.
This town is unique in one aspect in which it vies the national capital Khartoum: arts and culture and, may be this was what made it unique, is a melting pot and a microcosm of the Sudan.
In short this is the third largest town in Sudan, according to latest population census. It came immediately after Fashir, capital of North Darfur region.
For these reasons and other, including the need to keep open its line of supply, material and human, the militias did their level best to control the town and to maintain that position.
They amassed troops from Khartoum’s eastern areas, brought support in men and in ammunitions from Darfur and Kordufan. It made sure to remove anything that could be a source of resistance: thus the atrocities committed there.
The army, knowingly, pulled out of the town without putting up a fight. However, one would guess this was part of a plan to: avoid exposing civilians to atrocities and destruction.
For example of one pilot instructed by the president of the Sovereign Council, Gen Abul Fattah Al Burhan, to hit enemy positions under a bridge in Madani, without damaging the structure of the building, which they did, thus sparing a vital public utility in the town, from destruction.
“We were monitoring them and we in particular were monitoring this bridge. Huge enemy forces were amassed here. I asked one military pilot: could you missile-hit the enemy beneath the bridge, without destruction of the bridge? And he said he could. And he did “Burhan revealed for the first time while standing in front of the intact bridge.
“From that point we were sure Madani was coming back to join liberated areas” he added.
Second they were planning to stretch the rebel forces capabilities and to distance its lines of supplies. Third this would mean convoys of RSF forces would be mobilized to move towards the area. It would in military terms gathering forces in open area to be at the mercy and firepower of the Sudanese air force, on their way from Darfur and Kordufan to Madani. This same scenario took place before the final battle.
The strategic town, which sits at the heart of Sudan’s economy’s backbone, the Gezira project, succombed into control of RSF in December 2023, which a few weeks earlier was named genocide perpetrators, thus ending its legacy as an institution. From December 2023 up to Jan. 2025, an era of atrocities and subjugations started there under RSF.
The New York Times, the BBC, the CNN and Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab with the support of the Avaaz Foundation, have each produced a detailed and documented incriminating research studies showing hundreds of civilians were killed, assaulted and GBSV committed by the RSF. None of these agencies has any relations with the Sudan or its government.
The atrocities led to the displacement of millions of people, to areas in and outside the Sudan.
It was time for the government to show its iron teeth. And in a painstaking planning and action, Sudan’s Armed Forces, closed down on the rebel and its allies from three axes. And in January 2025, it hit back with might and precision of which the aforementioned parable of the bridge and ultimately recovered the town. It was a major setback for the militias. And it is expected to be a turning point in the war.
As Gen Burhan stressed: “this is the beginning for the liberation of all town and cities” he made the remaks in a statement during his most recent tour in Shamalia and Nahr Nil states of northern Sudan, in January 2025.