Sudanese Intelligence Between the Battlefield and Security Diplomacy: How the Sudanese Intelligence Service Withstood State Collapse and the War of Information

By Abdel Nasser Salim Hamid

At a time when state institutions disintegrated and cities turned into battlefields, Sudan’s General Intelligence Service (GIS) continued to operate with strategic silence, holding together the fragile threads of the nation as its pillars crumbled. Its role was not limited to gathering information; it was managing an invisible war—its banner was awareness, its weapon was intellect, and its battlefield was the very survival of the state.

In great wars, it is not the strongest who survives, but the smartest. That was the truth revealed by Sudan’s complex war since April 2023, when state institutions fell one after another, the capital became a line of fire, and the nation fragmented into multiple fronts. At the moment when decision-making collapsed and leadership faltered, one mind remained thinking—the General Intelligence Service. The institution evolved from a traditional apparatus into a national think tank, waging a war of survival with strategic calculation rather than chaotic reaction.

From the first days of fighting, the GIS realized that the confrontation was not merely between an army and a militia, but between the state itself and the chaos threatening its existence. While the armed forces fought on the frontlines in Khartoum, Darfur, and Kordofan, the intelligence service engaged in a parallel war—the war of information against oblivion. Security minds are not measured by the number of guns, but by their ability to turn disorder into knowledge and knowledge into decision.

In calculated silence, intelligence officers supported field operations, guiding precision strikes through reconnaissance, analysis, and the protection of vital supply routes. Many officers from the Special Operations Unit—officially dissolved in January 2020 after a limited mutiny in Khartoum—voluntarily returned to the field, fighting alongside the army in El Fasher, Omdurman, and Nyala. They understood that this was no longer a battle for power, but one for existence. Local field reports documented casualties among GIS personnel during observation and support missions, though no official numbers were released.

Yet the service’s deeper role lay beyond the battlefield, in orchestrating the architecture of the state from behind the scenes. When the political decision-making center vanished, the GIS became an unofficial “national operations room,” combining analysis, risk management, and decision-making under pressure. As planning and administrative institutions collapsed, the GIS retained a unique capacity to connect the remaining fragments of the state—from surviving civil ministries to army command on the ground—into one network of institutional awareness.

Its mission evolved from pure security work to multidimensional coordination, treating information as an instrument of governance rather than merely an intelligence tool. It monitored, analyzed, assessed risks, and advised both military and political leadership discreetly. While state institutions reacted impulsively, the GIS acted with crisis management logic, not reactionary panic. This distinguished it as an organization possessing what could be called a “culture of survival”—the capacity to reproduce state functions in the absence of the state itself.

In a shifting war environment, information became a strategic weapon. The GIS relied not only on human sources but also developed advanced monitoring systems based on field surveillance technologies, geospatial analysis, and restricted wireless networks, drawing on two decades of counterterrorism experience. The objective was to transform intelligence into strategic decision-making—for intelligence triumphs not by knowing, but by using knowledge at the right moment. Hence, the GIS emerged as the “mind controlling the tempo,” balancing battlefield intelligence with political and diplomatic pressures to keep the state’s decision-making mechanism alive amid chaos.

This performance embodied what security studies describe as “intelligence resilience”—the ability of an institution to function within a hostile, institutionally collapsed environment. The Sudanese experience proved that a state endures not through material power, but through institutional intelligence and the capacity to think when all else fails.

Understanding that wars are fought not only with weapons but also with narratives, the GIS recognized that controlling information was half the victory. As misinformation flooded the public sphere, it worked to counter disinformation and protect public consciousness through what might be called “cognitive security”—shielding society from psychological and intellectual fragmentation. In wartime, security begins with the word before the bullet, and with trust before obedience.

From the outset, the GIS adopted principled neutrality—not as detachment, but as a strategy for national survival. Amid institutions divided by rival power centers and political factions, the GIS maintained its position as guardian of the state rather than a tool of authority. This balance between national loyalty and institutional independence made it a rare exception in a landscape of fragmentation. While intelligence agencies in countries such as Yemen and Syria collapsed after aligning themselves with regimes instead of nations, the Sudanese GIS preserved its unity because it remained the “state’s service,” not the “regime’s service.” That distinction safeguarded Sudan’s mind when its political body fell apart.

Despite its involvement in the field, the GIS did not neglect the humanitarian front. From the early weeks of the war, its officers, coordinating with the United Nations through a joint national mechanism, secured humanitarian corridors from El Fasher to Wad Madani and protected medical convoys alongside local authorities and international organizations. This marked a shift from conventional security toward “human security,” where people are part of the safety system, not merely its subjects.

From this perspective, the service developed an internal concept known as “security through awareness,” which engages citizens in protecting themselves and their country through knowledge rather than fear. An informed society, it reasoned, is the first line of defense against collapse. This approach helped rebuild public trust in an institution once viewed as opaque; today, the GIS has come to represent a “rational state”—an entity that thinks and protects simultaneously.

Regionally, the GIS extended its role beyond Sudan’s borders. The war created a dangerous security vacuum along the frontiers with Chad, Libya, and the Central African Republic, reviving networks of arms, gold, and fuel smuggling. Through discreet channels, the service reactivated intelligence partnerships and security cooperation with neighboring agencies in Egypt, Chad, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, exchanging information and monitoring cross-border movements under what could be called “quiet intelligence diplomacy.” This approach relied on professional dialogue and tacit understandings rather than public deals or political noise.

Thanks to this strategy, Sudan avoided total isolation despite the collapse of its central government. The GIS restored Sudan’s relevance to regional security architecture as an actor rather than a void, practicing what might be described as “shadow diplomacy”—maintaining regional balance when official diplomacy was absent.

None of this would have been possible without leadership that combined firmness with rationality. Lieutenant General Ahmed Ibrahim Mufaddal, who assumed command of the GIS in late 2022 succeeding Lieutenant General Jamal Abdel Majid, understood that protecting the homeland begins in minds, not behind barricades. He now leads one of the most challenging chapters in Sudan’s modern history, merging strategic vision with operational discipline. Under his command, the GIS has ceased to be a closed institution; it has become an open-minded entity governed by a delicate equation—discipline in decision-making and flexibility in execution.

After more than two and a half years of war, the question is no longer who holds the weapons, but who holds the mind. Amid the collapse of institutions and the blurring line between state and chaos, Sudan’s General Intelligence Service has proven that it is not merely an agency operating in the shadows, but the vigilant intellect preserving the idea of the state when its political and military bodies both disintegrated.

The GIS fought its war with invisible tools—awareness, information, and analysis—against a tide of rumors, uncontrolled weapons, and shifting alliances. When the mechanisms of governance broke down, the service became the “continuing mind” maintaining the state’s self-connection. Working methodically in silence, it rebuilt command-and-control networks from the ashes of collapse and redefined national security: the human as the objective, the intellect as the means, and information as the weapon.

As bureaucracy collapsed, the capital emptied, and power fractured among competing centers, the GIS preserved its capacity to think as the state’s memory and neural system. It understood that a state is not only geography but accumulated awareness, and that war is not the end of existence but a test of consciousness. Acting with rare rationality in an emotional environment, it maintained the fine threads linking the army to command, society to trust, and the nation to its idea.

While many institutions faltered under successive shocks, the GIS endured because its legitimacy stemmed from an idea, not from power. It sought neither publicity nor dominance, but worked from behind the curtain to preserve balance, prevent total collapse, and redefine “security” as a state of collective awareness rather than coercion.

The Sudanese experience has shown that a state can be defeated on the battlefield yet survive as long as it retains a thinking mind. In Sudan, that mind was the General Intelligence Service—the last national institution capable of thought when all others ceased to act. From division it emerged more mature and flexible; from the heart of war, it forged a new philosophy of security defined by one principle: awareness instead of allegiance, intellect instead of force.

Today, more than two years into the war, the Sudanese Intelligence Service stands as the strategic memory of the nation and the mind redefining the state itself. It did not defend a regime or faction, but the very idea of Sudan—the idea of survival amid disintegration, reason amid ruin, and intellect amid noise. When the guns fall silent, the record will show that it was awareness, not weaponry, that saved what remained of Sudan from total collapse.

Wars do not destroy nations as much as they expose their fragility—and survival belongs not to the strongest, but to the smartest.

In this historic test, the Sudanese Intelligence Service proved to be the mind that stayed awake when all others slept, and that awareness—however besieged by chaos—remains the final line of defense for the idea of a nation.