AL-OBEID, Sudan — Nomadic families who once traversed the Kordofan plains with camels, cattle and sheep say the Sudan war, which erupted in 2023, has boxed them into a shrinking perimeter outside this regional hub, where roaming bandits and armed checkpoints have turned routine trips for water and markets into gambles. Their predicament reflects how the Sudan war between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces is shredding livelihoods and security across central Sudan, with nearly 14 million people driven from their homes and ethnic mistrust rising, Feb. 10, 2026.
Sudan war turns Kordofan’s trade routes into a gauntlet
Under low tents on the city’s outskirts, livestock are tethered close and younger herders keep watch, wary that thieves will strike at night. “We used to be able to move as we wanted. Now there is no choice and no side accepts you,” said Gubara al-Basheer, one of several herders who described their plight in a Reuters report.
Another shepherd, Hamid Mohamed, said trying to reach distant markets can mean losing everything. “There are so many problems now. We can’t go anywhere and if we try we get robbed,” he said. Residents and researchers say the banditry is not random: as supply lines fray, armed groups and opportunistic criminals increasingly target livestock, fuel and cash — the backbone of nomadic life.
How the Sudan war hardens ethnic lines
Local researcher Ibrahim Jumaa said the Sudan war has upset a delicate balance of land ownership and seasonal livestock corridors that once helped communities coexist. As movement narrows and rumors spread online, nomads say they are more likely to be treated as suspects — or as prizes — by fighters and rival communities.
The Rapid Support Forces, known as the RSF, emerged from the Janjaweed militias blamed for atrocities in Darfur in the early 2000s. The RSF denies responsibility for ethnically motivated killings and says it prosecutes offenders, but survivors and rights groups say the conflict has revived older patterns of communal violence. A U.N. report cited by Reuters in January 2024 said between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed in El Geneina, in West Darfur, during ethnically driven violence the monitors attributed to the RSF and allied Arab militias.
Kordofan’s insecurity has also intensified as the fighting shifted. In a Nov. 13, 2025, Reuters dispatch, witnesses described the RSF pushing east after consolidating control in parts of Darfur, with new deployments and drone strikes signaling a widening front across the three Kordofan states.
The violence has not spared civilians or aid. The U.N. rights chief said more than 90 civilians were killed and 142 injured in drone strikes by both sides in late January through Feb. 6, according to Reuters, including an attack that hit trucks carrying food aid for displaced people outside Al-Obeid. The Associated Press reported that an RSF drone strike near Rahad in North Kordofan killed at least 24 people, including eight children, and that a World Food Program convoy was attacked in the same province days earlier, the AP reported.
Displacement and hunger tighten the trap
Aid officials say the Sudan war has driven people into crowded towns and makeshift camps, straining water, clinics and policing. UNICEF says 9.5 million people were internally displaced by the start of 2026 and about 21 million faced high levels of acute food insecurity, while roughly 70% of health facilities were nonfunctional, according to UNICEF.
The famine outlook is grim. A Feb. 5 alert by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification warned that acute malnutrition had surpassed famine thresholds in two North Darfur localities and said access across Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan was increasingly constrained — including by contested supply routes from Al-Obeid — according to the IPC.
In Sudan, the hunger crisis has been building for years, but the Sudan war has made relief harder to deliver and easier to steal. A September 2024 Reuters special report found aid agencies were repeatedly blocked from reaching starving communities, a pattern nomads say now shows up as empty markets, missing veterinary drugs and fewer safe routes to sell animals.
For families camped outside Al-Obeid, survival has become a calculation of risk: move and face robbery, stay and watch herds weaken. Jumaa said repairing the social fabric will take more than a ceasefire — it will take rule of law, accountability and a deliberate push to curb hate speech before the Sudan war leaves Kordofan’s nomads with nowhere left to go.
