Hassan Koko sits on a homemade wooden bed and stares across the rolling hills of the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan, Sudan. The late-afternoon breeze cools the slope, but he cannot settle.
On November 29 the 50-year-old community health worker had just finished a training course and was drinking sweet tea when a drone struck. Several colleagues were killed. “The drone struck once, then came back again, hitting those who were already wounded,” he says.
Koko survived but was badly hurt. He points to his left knee, where a sharp metal fragment remains months after the attack. “My family was happy I survived. They thought I would die,” he says. “But life is not the same anymore. Sometimes, I walk down to the nearby market, but mostly, I’m just stuck at home.”
A long-running struggle
For decades the Nuba Mountains—largely under the control of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N)—have been a target of attacks by the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF). The current tensions are rooted in 2011, when the region was excluded from the settlement that produced South Sudan’s independence, deepening grievances among more than 50 ethnic groups in the area.
The SPLM-N, an offshoot of the SPLA liberation movement, coalesced in 2011 to press for local autonomy. In February 2025 the SPLM-N formed an alliance with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a pact many observers called precarious and controversial.
The wider Sudan war, which erupted in 2023, has created one of the world’s most severe humanitarian emergencies: estimates suggest more than 150,000 people have died and roughly 14 million have been displaced. Jalale Getachew Birru, a senior analyst with the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), urges a practical reading of the SPLM-N–RSF tie. “Both sides have a common interest, and that’s why they are aligned at this moment, to push back against the SAF,” she says, noting both parties express support for a federal future in Sudan.
A province overwhelmed by displacement
In towns across the Nuba Mountains, RSF fighters move openly—sitting in cafés, lingering in markets and selling looted goods from cars to electronics. But soldiers are not the only newcomers.
At the SPLM-N headquarters in Kauda, Jalal Abdulkarim coordinates humanitarian support for people sheltering in so-called liberated areas. A yellow slip of paper on his desk bears the number he cites as the total arrivals since the war began: 2,885,393, the figure the SPLM-N says it has received.
Abdulkarim says humanitarian programs here rely heavily on external NGOs and UN agencies, but funding has tightened. He blames cuts after political changes in the United States, which he says have reduced donations to agencies such as USAID. “If an NGO previously donated $1 or $2 million, today it’s just $500,000 or $200,000. This is one of the biggest challenges we face,” he says.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates Kordofan hosts “more than a million” internally displaced people. With limited UN presence in the state capital Kadugli and many international NGOs suspending or scaling back operations, accurate counts are hard to obtain.
Life in makeshift camps
Deeper in the mountains, the Umm Dulo Reception Camp stretches over a bare plain where families have raised shelters of sticks and plastic beneath acacia trees. Zone 12, at the camp’s far edge, holds the newest arrivals.
Seventy-six-year-old Fatma Eisa Kuku remembers the nights she fled in Kadugli. “I couldn’t sleep. Every night was rat-tat-tat-tat,” she says, imitating gunfire.
She has found some rest in Umm Dulo, but grief follows her. Three men she calls brothers were taken between dawn and dusk; she has not seen them since. “I don’t know who these people were. If you ask about their identities, you’ll be faced with a lot of rudeness,” she says.
Strained relations and uneasy alliances
Tension runs beneath the surface of Nuba communities. The RSF tends not to integrate with locals; their presence, especially near hospitals and markets, turns crowded public spaces into potential targets. That risk layers on years of inherited anxiety.
Little is publicly known about the SPLM-N–RSF military arrangements, but credible reports suggest RSF training camps have been set up inside SPLM-N territory, according to Jalale Getachew Birru. She also questions how long the alliance can hold. Earlier this year, when the SAF broke the siege of Kadugli—a town long contested by SPLM-N and RSF—the two allies traded blame for the setback, sparking clashes that analysts watched for signs of a collapse. For now, however, the partnership endures.
A contested refuge
At the Mother of Mercy Hospital—the largest medical facility in SPLM-N-controlled areas around Gidel—three wounded RSF soldiers have moved their beds into the shade to escape the heat. The RSF has been accused in multiple reports of systematic killings and other atrocities; its fighters are often described as among the most brutal in the wider conflict.
When asked what they are fighting for, some RSF members point to basic services. “We are fighting because the government [in Sudan] is not doing enough. There are not enough hospitals, infrastructure and schools,” says Hassan Hamid, an injured RSF fighter recovering at the hospital.
For now, Hamid and others appear settled in the Nuba Mountains, and there is little sign they plan to leave. “I want to stay here,” he says. “I want to live in the Nuba Mountains forever.”
Edited by: Benita van Eyssen