SUMMARY
The Sudan Founding Alliance (SFA), also known as the Ta’sis (or Tasees) Founding Coalition, was a Sudanese political-military alliance established on 23 February 2925 amid the country’s ongoing civil war, which began on 15 April 2023. Led primarily by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the alliance brought together a broad coalition of armed and political actors opposed to the authority of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudanese government led by Transitional Sovereignty Council Chairman Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. In addition to the RSF, the SFA included factions from established rebel movements, most notably the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-North (SPLM/A-North) under Abdelaziz al-Hilu, as well as Darfur-based armed groups, and a range of civilian and political organizations. Rather than functioning solely as a military coalition, the SFA presented itself as an alternative political and governing alliance that sought to challenge SAF dominance and reshape Sudan’s political system through a new model of governance.
The alliance emerged directly in response to al-Burhan’s 10 February 2025 announcement of plans to establish a civilian-led transitional government under SAF oversight, a move the RSF and its allies interpreted as an attempt to formalize military supremacy rather than pursue genuine democratic transition. In reaction, RSF leaders and allied factions convened in Nairobi, Kenya, where they formally launched the SFA and signed the Sudan Founding Charter. This charter laid the political and constitutional foundation for the creation of a parallel “Government of Peace and Unity” intended to administer territories under RSF and allied control. Through this framework, the SFA explicitly rejected al-Burhan’s proposed transition, refusing SAF leadership and portraying the army’s political roadmap as a continuation of authoritarian governance, coup politics, and the entrenched influence of Islamist networks associated with the former Bashir regime.
The Sudan Founding Charter set out the SFA’s broader ideological vision: the establishment of a new secular, decentralized, and democratic Sudanese state based on the principles of freedom, equality, and justice. It called for dismantling Sudan’s historically centralized, militarized, and Islamist political structures, restoring civilian governance, restructuring the country into a federal system, and creating a newly unified national military outside SAF control. In doing so, the SFA directly challenged the SAF’s claim to exclusive legitimacy as Sudan’s governing and military authority. This transformed the conflict from a struggle over military power into a wider contest between competing state-building projects, with the SFA seeking not accommodation within existing institutions but the complete restructuring of Sudan’s political system under entirely new foundations.
SFA has been involved in the intrastate and one-sided categories of UCDP organised violence.
