At grid reference 36PVC4985223384 (15.5877°N, 32.5322°E), in the capital Khartoum, Sudan’s Security and Defense Council convened its regular weekly session on Tuesday 20 May 2026 under the chairmanship of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, President of the Transitional Sovereignty Council and Commander-in-Chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces. The resulting press statement, delivered by Defence Minister Lt. Gen. Hassan Daoud Kabroun, crossed a threshold the council had previously avoided: it formally acknowledged that armed personnel and military vehicles operating inside cities and markets had become a problem requiring regulation, and it directed the relevant authorities to fix it.

The directive had three components. First, authorities were instructed to regulate the movement of armed individuals and combat vehicles inside urban areas and marketplaces. Second, the council ordered the establishment of formal rules governing the operation of security cells at the district level, specifically covering procedures for identifying those accused of collaborating with the Rapid Support Forces and conducting investigations into them. Third, Kabroun emphasised the council’s standing position on adherence to law, respect for human rights, and the obligation to provide essential services, including electricity and water, to citizens returning to recaptured areas.

The use of the phrase “disorder” in official framing is notable. Sudan’s military leadership rarely uses language that implies criticism of its own forces in public statements. The trigger for the unusual language, as the Aawsat reporting makes clear, is the circulation of videos on social media showing armed personnel engaging in behaviour that residents in recaptured areas describe as looting, arbitrary arrest, and intimidation. Independent verification of all the accounts has not been possible given the ongoing conflict, but the volume and consistency of the reports, spanning multiple cities and multiple state administrations, gives them a credibility that cannot easily be dismissed.

Security cells emerged as an informal administrative structure once the SAF began recapturing towns and neighbourhoods from the RSF in 2024. In a context where the civilian police force had largely collapsed or been displaced, and where RSF sleeper cells and informant networks were a genuine operational concern for the military, security cells provided a rapid-deployment mechanism. They drew from the army, the intelligence services, the police where available, and crucially, from the popular resistance fighters: civilian militias who had taken up arms in support of the SAF but who operate outside formal military command structures and without the discipline requirements those structures impose.

In Omdurman at grid reference 36PVC4418230289 (15.6500°N, 32.4792°E), a police officer integrated into a security cell described to Human Rights Watch what he witnessed in April 2025: cell members entered a woman’s home armed, dragged her out, struck her, and placed her in a vehicle, accusing her of RSF collaboration. HRW’s broader documentation covered seven former detainees, nine relatives of detainees, and eleven lawyers and activists interviewed between June 2025 and February 2026, with reports spanning Khartoum, Al Jazirah, Gedaref, Red Sea, and Northern states. The pattern was consistent: ethnicity, neighbourhood of residence, or prior presence in RSF-controlled territory were treated as sufficient grounds for detention.

Critics quoted in social media commentary, referenced by Aawsat without direct attribution, have characterised the cells as extensions of Islamist organisations affiliated with the former al-Bashir regime, alleging they are used to eliminate political opponents rather than genuine RSF collaborators. The Transitional Sovereignty Council has consistently rejected that framing, with al-Burhan stating publicly that the SAF has no institutional ties to the Muslim Brotherhood or the National Congress Party. The question of cell composition at the neighbourhood level, where local popular resistance commanders may have their own factional loyalties, is not answerable from open sources at this time.

In Khartoum North at grid reference 36PVC5132030273 (15.6500°N, 32.5458°E), the Sudanese Alliance for Rights documented what it described as systematic looting once SAF forces entered neighbourhoods including Shambat Al-Aradi, Al-Halfaya, Al-Safiya, and Kafouri. Citizens attempting to prevent soldiers from taking their property were beaten, threatened with death, and in some cases shot. A retired brigadier general in the army was reported shot for protesting the theft. The SAR report characterised the looting not as isolated incidents by undisciplined individuals but as an entrenched practice in areas newly captured by the military.

The situation in Al Jazirah State, centred on Wad Madani at grid reference 36PWA5604692149 (14.4011°N, 33.5199°E), follows the same pattern. The Aawsat report specifically names Al Jazirah alongside Khartoum as states where residents have complained of what they describe as growing security abuses since the SAF’s reestablishment of control. The combination of armed presence, collapsed civilian infrastructure, and the psychological impact of years under RSF occupation creates conditions in which the distinction between military enforcement and criminal predation is difficult for civilians to draw and for journalists to verify.

The Sudan civil war, now in its fourth year since the April 2023 outbreak, has produced what multiple UN and international observers describe as a catastrophic humanitarian situation. The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect noted that the UN’s Fact-Finding Mission concluded the RSF committed crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide against non-Arab communities around El Fasher. More than 500 civilians were killed in drone strikes by both factions in early 2026 alone. Against that backdrop, the security cell problem inside SAF-held Khartoum represents a second, distinct governance crisis: an army that can retake territory but struggles to govern it without the abusive structures it has created to do so.

The council’s order does not name specific commanders or units responsible for documented abuses. It does not establish an independent oversight mechanism. It does not specify penalties for non-compliance. It does not address the cases of women already detained or sentenced under security cell procedures. The Attorney General’s office, when written to by HRW in March 2026, rejected almost all findings of arbitrary detention and custodial deaths, acknowledging only one case in which criminal proceedings were described as ongoing, without naming the accused. That institutional posture, combined with the absence of enforcement language in the 20 May directive, makes it difficult to assess whether this week’s announcement represents a policy shift or a public-relations response to a social media problem.

Al-Burhan’s January 2026 release of 400 women from Omdurman prison, including those accused of RSF collaboration, demonstrated that personal executive authority can override the security cell system when the political will exists. Whether the same executive authority is being applied to the systemic problem, rather than a visible one-off gesture, is what the coming weeks in Khartoum, Omdurman, and Al Jazirah will show. The international community’s leverage here is limited: the war continues, the RSF remains a genuine security threat in parts of Darfur and Kordofan, and Western governments have little appetite for sanctions that might destabilise the only functioning military institution in Sudan further.