Hassan Koko sits on a handmade wooden bed looking out over the ridges of the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan. The 50-year-old community health worker still flinches when he remembers November 29, when a drone struck his training group after they had finished drinking tea. It returned to hit those who were already wounded. Koko survived but carries a metal fragment in his left knee. “My family was happy I survived. They thought I would die,” he says. Now he rarely leaves the house; short walks to the nearby market are the most he attempts.
For decades the Nuba Mountains have been buffeted by assaults from the Sudanese Armed Forces, but the conflict deepened after 2011, when the area was left out of the arrangements that produced South Sudan. That exclusion widened grievances among the Nuba — a term covering more than 50 ethnic groups across an area roughly the size of Austria — and helped give rise to the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement–North (SPLM‑N), which pushed for local autonomy.
The landscape shifted again in February 2025, when the SPLM‑N formed an alliance with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Analysts describe the partnership as pragmatic: both sides oppose the SAF and have spoken in favour of a federal future for Sudan. But the union has been fraught. Jalale Getachew Birru, a senior analyst at the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project, says the tie-up reflects short‑term interests rather than firm cohesion; the allies blamed one another after the SAF broke the siege of Kadugli, underlining underlying tensions.
Since the wider Sudan war erupted in 2023, the humanitarian fallout has been enormous. Estimates put deaths in the hundreds of thousands and forced displacement in the millions. The Nuba Mountains have absorbed a large share of people fleeing violence elsewhere, swelling towns and camps and stretching already thin services.
RSF fighters are now a visible presence in urban centres across the range — sitting in cafés, roaming markets and sometimes selling looted goods. Their presence, together with huge waves of displaced people, has turned hospitals, markets and public spaces into places of potential peril. There are reports of RSF training sites inside territory controlled by the SPLM‑N, though the precise terms of any military arrangements remain unclear.
Humanitarian capacity has eroded. At SPLM‑N headquarters in Kauda, humanitarian coordinator Jalal Abdulkarim produced a scrawled slip bearing the number 2,885,393 — the tally he says comprises people the SPLM‑N areas have received since the war began. Much of the relief relies on NGOs and UN agencies, but donations have dwindled. Abdulkarim says funding that once arrived in sums of $1–2 million has fallen to between $200,000 and $500,000, leaving gaps in food, clean water, shelter and sanitation.
The International Organization for Migration estimates Kordofan hosts “more than a million” internally displaced people, but precise figures are hard to verify: the UN presence in Kadugli has largely vanished and many international NGOs have scaled back or suspended operations.
Farther into the hills, the Umm Dulo Reception Camp is a sprawl of makeshift shelters woven from sticks and plastic under sparse acacia. Zone 12, on the camp’s outer edge, holds the newest arrivals among more than 34,000 people there. Seventy‑six‑year‑old Fatma Eisa Kuku fled Kadugli with memories of nights she could not sleep. “Every night was rat‑tat‑tat‑tat,” she says, mimicking gunfire. She still aches over three men taken at dawn; she does not know who took them.
Tensions are high. RSF units do not easily blend with local communities, and their distinct presence compounds old fears. Public places where fighters and displaced people mix — markets, hospitals, schools — are now more vulnerable to attack or recruitment. Even where the RSF and SPLM‑N share political aims, hosting armed forces has practical and emotional costs for civilians.
At the Mother of Mercy Hospital, the largest facility in SPLM‑N control, wounded RSF fighters lie in shade outside canvas wards, convalescing after combat injuries. Some of the fighters portray their actions as a response to state failures: “We are fighting because the government is not doing enough — there are not enough hospitals, infrastructure and schools,” said one injured RSF soldier, who added he hoped to remain in the Nuba Mountains.
The result is a precarious duality. The Nuba Mountains function as a refuge, offering shelter to thousands, yet the presence of armed groups and the pressure of mass displacement also make the region more fragile. Local resources are exhausted, humanitarian funding has declined, and the alliances and front lines remain volatile. With fighting and displacement continuing across Sudan, the future of the Nuba Mountains as a sanctuary — and the safety of the people who live there — is deeply uncertain.