The civil war in Sudan, which has continued for over 1,000 days, is spilling over its western borders into Chad and threatening to destabilize a regime that is already walking a tight rope.

“We cannot have our defense and security forces dragged into the conflict,” Chadian government spokesperson Gassim Cherif said on January 17 in a news conference, revealing that seven Chadian soldiers had been killed two days earlier by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

​The paramilitary, at war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since April 2023, was reportedly pursuing the army-affiliated militias in Sudan’s Darfur region across the border into Chad on January 15, after a week of fighting in Girgira and Mastura areas in Tine. Located on the border with Chad in Sudan’s North Darfur state, just above the demarcation with West Darfur, the town of Tine, along with Ambara and Karnoi, is among the last areas of the Darfur region where fighting with the RSF continues.

​The RSF had consolidated its control over most of the region by late October 2025 after overrunning the defenses of the North Darfur state’s besieged and starved capital, El Fasher, and depopulating it by killing tens of thousands. With the fall of El Fasher, the SAF lost the last foothold in the Darfur region.

Border tensions on the rise

​Attacks increased on the Chadian border as the RSF pushed further into the remote northern reaches of the state to eliminate the small holdouts of SAF-aligned militias – the Joint Force – and local self-defense groups known as the Popular Resistance. On December 26, two Chadian soldiers were killed in a strike on an army camp by a drone originating from Sudan, two days after the RSF had taken over the holdouts of Abu Qamra, Ambara, and Karnoi, holding it briefly before being forced to retreat under SAF drone strikes.

​With the RSF also using drones, both sides blamed each other for this strike on Chadian territory. Amid renewed fighting this year, the RSF overran Tine on January 9, before it was retaken by the Joint Forces the following day.

​The RSF has since stepped up its attacks on these areas. Amid the intensified fighting, both warring parties are making conflicting claims of control. In this fluid situation, RSF units pursuing retreating soldiers of the Joint Force across the border into Chad were reportedly stopped by the Chadian soldiers from the garrison in the border town of Birak on January 15. Attacking the garrison, the RSF killed and wounded Chadian soldiers and destroyed several of its military vehicles. “This is our final warning,” Chadian government spokesperson Cherif said during the conference.

Inflaming Chad’s internal contradictions

The RSF attacks risk inflaming internal contradictions within Chad, whose government is widely reported to have assisted the UAE in supplying weapons to the RSF through its territory, helping the latter consolidate power in Darfur.

​Among the non-Arabic speaking communities the RSF is cleansing from Darfur are the Zaghawa ethnic group, spread on both sides of the border, from which Chad’s president, Mahamat Déby, hails. This has caused discontent in the Zaghawa-dominated upper echelons of Chad’s military, risking Déby’s core support base as he walks a tight rope, balancing his dependence on France with posturing sovereignty to placate a growing mass sentiment against French neocolonialism.

Read: Will Chad deal the final blow against French military presence in Africa’s Sahel?

​In the meantime, stress on Chad’s border towns is also increasing with the continuing influx of refugees from Sudan across a 1,400 km border. The population in the town of Adré, from where most of the Sudanese refugees enter Chad, has risen tenfold in the course of this war, ratcheting up prices and increasing unemployment among the local population, and laying the grounds for outbreaks of disease like cholera.

​Another 18,000 families have been displaced toward the Chadian border in the fighting between December 22 and January 16 in Tine and surrounding areas, killing over 103 civilians and wounding 88.

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