Two former weapons inspectors have compiled a thirty-two-page file built from testimony gathered in Nairobi. Eight witnesses described barrel-like objects falling near the Al Jili oil refinery in Khartoum, accompanied by strange odours and burning lungs.
Sudan’s civil war has already displaced fourteen million people and pushed close to twenty million towards hunger. The suffering meets an accusation carrying its own grim history, chlorine dropped from military aircraft onto a civilian population. A comparable accusation steered Syria’s war for over a decade, and Bashar al-Assad’s government still collapsed within days.
How Chlorine Entered the Front Line
Investigators examined material depicting gas canisters adapted from an ordinary water treatment plant into crude munitions. Dr Gareth Williams, a former senior official at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, called what he saw “troubling” and consistent with fabrication for delivery by aircraft.
Reporting cited in the dossier adds that Sudan’s army built a hidden stockpile and ran bomb trials on remote terrain, allegedly with components smuggled through Yemen’s Houthi network.
No outside patron had to supply finished arms. The will to adapt equipment already present inside the country’s own infrastructure proved enough on its own.
An Accusation Aimed at One Side
The Sudanese government formed its own technical committee, which concluded last May that it found no evidence to support the claim. Washington disagrees.
At the OPCW’s Executive Council in July, the American ambassador told member states that internal reviews cannot replace treaty access, and pressed Sudan’s generals to admit inspectors.
The two positions leave the OPCW caught between a formal request for explanation and a government that maintains its own account already stands complete.
Separate American press reporting adds further detail. It describes a covert unit inside the SAF built to develop munitions capable of dispersing toxic gas. Officials in Washington reviewed the same material as early as January last year, assessing identical allegations.
Sanctions Precede Any Battlefield Gain
Khartoum’s diplomacy has already felt the consequences sooner than its front lines have. Washington imposed sanctions over chlorine allegations in 2024 and widened them last year, and a bipartisan bill working through Congress would broaden that regime further still.
Sudan’s response has been to distance itself from Tehran, curbing its purchases of Iranian drones and welcoming EU envoys into Khartoum for the first occasion since the war began. Khartoum’s army, courting American goodwill, has picked an unfortunate juncture to stand accused of breaching the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Ground Gained, War Unresolved
The record does not prove toxic weapons deliver much on the battlefield itself. The army has clawed back positions around Khartoum over the past two years, gains its artillery and Iranian drones can explain without any help from chlorine. The RSF have absorbed their own reversals without facing any comparable chemical accusation.
The war grinds on into a third year regardless. Famine still spreads across Darfur and Kordofan, and a decisive win eludes every armed side on the ground.
Assad’s Precedent, Paid for Twice
In Syria, Assad used chemical weapons over three hundred times, including the 2013 sarin attack on Ghouta that killed an estimated 1,400 people and drew American cruise missiles in 2017. His government survived those strikes for years, only to fall to a rebel offensive in 2024.
Toxic weapons earned Assad’s government a temporary reprieve that his own authority did not outlive for long. The file the next Syrian government inherited still traces stockpiles Damascus never fully declared, a legal and diplomatic burden that persisted long after the regime fell.
Syria’s new authorities only began destroying the remnants of that programme this month, verified for the first occasion by the OPCW since 2014. A decade of unresolved obligations kept unwinding long after the war that produced them had already ended.
Sudan’s generals seem to have calculated that battlefield momentum outweighs an OPCW file, a calculation Assad’s circle once made too.
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Read also:
How Turkish Drones Turned The Tide in Sudan
Sudan Trades Iranian Drones For American Goodwill
Nile Tensions: South Sudan at Risk of Renewed Conflict
