El-Fasher: The Battle That Broke the Siege and Shattered the Narrative

By Sabah Al-Makki

The airdrop over El-Fasher was no ordinary humanitarian mission for a besieged city; it was a thunderous declaration that Sudan cannot be broken, and that its army does not know defeat. On September 29, 2025, the sound of victory echoed across El-Fasher as the Sudanese Armed Forces destroyed the air defense systems encircling the city, neutralized radar stations and anti-aircraft batteries, and reopened the skies for the first time in months—allowing food, medicine, and vital supplies to reach a population worn down by siege and starvation.

For the first time in five months, the army succeeded in delivering supplies to its besieged base after repelling the 247th attack and destroying two advanced air defense systems, bringing the total number of neutralized systems to three. This was not merely the delivery of food and medicine—it was the triumph of spirit, a rebirth of hope for a people who have endured more than 500 days of siege and relentless assault by the Janjaweed militia backed by the Abu Dhabi regime.

This victory forms part of a growing series of military successes. In Kordofan, the army has regained territory and dismantled entrenched strongholds; elsewhere, the militia has retreated step by step. Yet the symbolism of El-Fasher transcends the battlefield map. It represents the breaking of chains and the collapse of a long-propagated narrative—that the army was incapable of achieving the impossible. The field has now proven otherwise: nothing is impossible in the face of the will of soldiers and their people.

The War of Narratives: Propaganda Collapses Before the Battlefield

The Sudanese army has fought two wars in parallel: one of arms and another of narratives. For months, Abu Dhabi and its partners waged a relentless propaganda campaign portraying the Sudanese Armed Forces as weak and destined for defeat—going so far as to label it an “Islamist militia.” Some Western officials echoed that rhetoric, seeking to impose settlements that equated Sudan’s national army with a mercenary force financed from abroad, ignoring the fundamental difference between a historic constitutional institution and a foreign-funded militia.

But the battlefield told a different story. The army that was declared defeated silenced the militia’s most fortified defenses in El-Fasher, destroyed its radar and anti-aircraft batteries, and reopened the sky for relief planes. The propaganda collapsed, exposed not as a miscalculation but as a deliberate scheme to weaken Sudan’s will. The fall of El-Fasher’s defenses buried that narrative once and for all.

In parallel, the Western media war recycled the same tropes: an “Islamist” army, “terrorist” volunteers, and “radicalized” civilians—all framed through the lens of Islamophobia to delegitimize the moral and spiritual roots of Sudan’s resistance. The refrain was constant: “There is no military solution in Sudan.”

But what kind of neutrality is that? Recent history tells another story. Egypt fought a prolonged military campaign in Sinai after 2013 against what it called Islamist threats to national security. Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, if they truly rejected military solutions, would not have launched and sustained a fifteen-year war in Yemen.

In a striking twist of irony, on Tuesday, September 30, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump gathered senior generals and admirals at the Quantico military base in Virginia, declaring that the United States itself faced what he called “a war from within,” pointing to cities like San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles as internal battlegrounds—and hinting at using the army to suppress dissent and protect “national security.” A president threatening his own citizens with a military solution, yet lecturing Sudan, could hardly be more contradictory.

The slogan “No military solution in Sudan” was never neutral. It was a calculated strategy to weaken and dismantle the Sudanese army—the last surviving national institution—preparing the ground for a client regime acceptable to foreign capitals. No sovereign state would accept that its army be reduced to the level of a militia. The battle of El-Fasher demolished that farce: an army deemed incapable dismantled the enemy’s most advanced defenses and lifted the siege of a starving city. It proved that truth is written on the battlefield, not in statements from abroad.

Internal Betrayal and External Designs

The conspiracy was not only external—it came from within, through the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a militia that was meant to be disarmed and integrated into the army. Its commander revealed his intentions early, rejecting integration and launching a coup against the very institution that legitimized his existence. On the first day of the war, he turned his guns on his comrades and besieged the army’s commander-in-chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Provinces then fell one after another—from Al-Jazira to Sennar and Jebel Moya—giving the illusion that the militia was unstoppable. Yet the army stood firm, isolated and vilified, but unbroken.

On the international stage, foreign powers pushed blueprints for “civilian transitions” that ignored Sudan’s political history and context. Their goal was not democracy but the weakening of the army and the empowerment of foreign proxies. The irony was bitter: authoritarian monarchies with no elections and dictatorial regimes without mandates took it upon themselves to lecture Sudan—a nation of revolutions, constitutions, and parliaments—on democracy.

This foreign project soon revealed itself as a fully-fledged proxy war. Weapons flowed from Abu Dhabi’s arsenals through Chad, Libya, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Puntland, and Somaliland. Parallel to that, political fronts were manufactured and branded as “civilian,” fronted by Abdalla Hamdok to give the coup a veneer of legitimacy. Thus, foreign arms merged with political theater to besiege Sudan’s sovereignty both on the battlefield and in diplomatic halls. Western capitals echoed the same refrain—“no military solution”—as they equated the army with the RSF. But El-Fasher shattered that illusion: imported artillery can be destroyed, fabricated figures can be exposed, but conviction and sovereignty cannot be broken.

Legendary Resilience and the Power of Conviction

From the darkest beginnings, Sudan’s army faced war with limited resources against a militia flush with foreign funds, advanced weaponry, and drone support. It rebuilt itself unit by unit, fighting street by street in Khartoum—sometimes armed with little more than blades. In a city of 12 million, it adapted to the brutal demands of urban warfare and turned a war of attrition into a slow, steady reclamation of land and dignity.

International pressure never ceased. Each time the army advanced, a truce was imposed under the guise of peace—serving only to allow the militia to rearm via foreign supply lines. Every ceasefire was violated, and yet international statements routinely condemned both sides equally. The defenders were sanctioned; the aggressors were shielded by false legitimacy.

Still, the army’s resilience reached the level of legend. Its strength was not measured in numbers or firepower, but in an unyielding will. Global Firepower ranks Sudan ninth among African armies in manpower and equipment—but such indicators cannot measure the decisive factor: the Sudanese soldier. If war were determined by artillery alone, the army would have fallen in three days. Major General Osman Mohamed Abbas Osman, former head of the East African Standby Force, revealed that the original plan was to destroy Sudan’s army within 72 hours. The plan collapsed. The army absorbed the first strike, exhausted its attackers, and mastered the brutal art of urban warfare—turning the battlefield into a graveyard for the coup project.

This endurance is not born of weaponry but of belief. The Sudanese soldier fights not for a paycheck but for faith, duty, and homeland. In foreign capitals, that commitment is viewed as a threat—for an army grounded in conviction cannot be bought or dismantled through diplomacy. It answers only to a higher duty, beyond foreign pressure—and that makes it impossible to tame.

Hence the persistent Western effort to diminish it: not because it wields artillery, but because it embodies conviction—the conviction that Sudan will remain master of its destiny; that its army will defend its land at any cost; that faith is not a weakness, but a source of moral strength. It represents a model of resistance rooted in belief, discipline, and national pride—not a mercenary militia or an ideological faction, but a professional, national army willing to sacrifice what others cannot. Such spirit cannot be manufactured in think tanks, purchased with oil wealth, or imposed by force. It is the foundation of Sudan’s endurance—and the very reason its adversaries resort to defamation and coercion.

Sudan Between Foreign Puppets and the Will of Its People

This war has not been against the army alone, but against Sudan’s sovereignty, its faith, and its right to freedom. Breaking the siege of El-Fasher by neutralizing the radar and air defense systems was not a fleeting military feat—it was a resounding declaration that the army will press forward and never bow. Its advances in Kordofan and beyond are not merely survival—they mark the rebirth of the Sudanese state.

The project to subdue Sudan has collapsed. Its military front has crumbled, its political façade has withered under the weight of betrayal, and its foreign-aligned spokesmen have lost credibility—signing their own political and moral death warrants.

Legitimacy is not bestowed by foreign conferences or media studios. It is born on Sudanese soil, by the will of its people. The statements of collaborators are mere echoes of hollow schemes.

History will bear witness. Propaganda may spend endlessly to distort the army’s image, but what will remain in Sudan’s record is courage, sacrifice, and defiance. This war is not merely a battle of arms—it is a test of sovereignty and dignity. And the people and army of Sudan have proven that dignity is neither bought nor sold, and that sovereignty is defended with blood, faith, and the unbreakable will of its own citizens—not with foreign deals or political puppets.

Source: Brown Land – Arabic