Sudan's RSF and allies formalise vision for parallel government

Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied groups signed a transitional constitution on Tuesday that takes them a step closer to setting up a parallel government during a two-year-old war with the army that threatens to split the country.

The paramilitary RSF has recently been on the back foot in the conflict, which has caused mass displacement, extreme hunger, bouts of ethnically-charged killings and sexual violence.

As fighting rages, the RSF on Tuesday launched its latest long-range drone attack on power infrastructure, targeting Sudan's largest power generation station at the Merowe Dam, according to an army statement and knocking out power in swathes of northern Sudan.

The army claimed gains in the Sharg el-Nil area as it sought to surround the RSF in the capital, Khartoum.

The RSF-led constitution is designed to supplant a constitution signed after the army and RSF ousted long-ruling autocrat Omar al-Bashir during an uprising in 2019. In 2021 the two military factions staged a coup, derailing a transition towards civilian rule, but in April 2023 plans for a new transition triggered warfare between them.

The RSF and its allies had in late February agreed in principle to form a government for a "New Sudan" as they sought to pull legitimacy from the existing army-led government and facilitate advanced arms imports.

The new constitution formally establishes a government and maps out what it describes as a federal, secular state, split into eight regions.

It provides for a bill of basic rights, giving regions the right to self-determination should certain conditions, chief among them separation of religion and the state, not be met.

It also calls for a single national army, with the signatories as the "nucleus". Elections are mentioned as an outcome of the transitional period, without any fixed timetable.

Signatories include the powerful and secular-minded SPLM-N, which controls vast areas in Sudan's South Kordofan, and other smaller groups.

The RSF and its allies have said the government will be formed in the coming weeks but it is unclear who will be in it or where it will operate from.