“Thousands of men who worked as intelligence operatives under former president Omar al-Bashir and have ties to his Islamist movement are fighting alongside the army in Sudan's war, three military sources and one intelligence source said, complicating efforts to end the bloodshed. The army and a paramilitary force have been battling each other in Khartoum, Darfur and elsewhere for 10 weeks in Africa's third largest country by area, displacing 2.5 million people, causing a humanitarian crisis and threatening to destabilise the region. Reinforcements for either side could deepen the conflict. The army has long denied accusations by its rivals in the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that it depends on discredited loyalists of Bashir, an Islamist long shunned by the West, who was toppled during a popular uprising in 2019. In response to a question from Reuters for this article, an army official said: ‘The Sudanese army has no relation with any political party or ideologue. It is a professional institution.’”