The pursuit of four Toyota Tundra pickups across Al-Jazirah State sparked fears of renewed insecurity and raised difficult questions about Sudan’s wartime smuggling networks. Beyond the mystery of the vehicles themselves, the incident sheds light on the growing influence of the war economy and the transformation of once-productive regions into corridors of illicit trade.
On 17 June, residents of Al-Jazirah State awoke to reports that several Toyota Tundra pickup trucks had crossed into the state. For many, the name itself was unfamiliar. Those who briefly caught sight of the vehicles watched them speed past, but their appearance alone revived memories of the Rapid Support Forces’ (RSF) occupation of the state.
After months of conflict, residents had unwillingly become familiar with the names of military vehicles and weapons. The arrival of yet another unfamiliar vehicle sparked more anxiety than curiosity.
Communities across Al-Hasahisa, Al-Kamlin and Al-Managil waited anxiously, fearing their villages and farmlands could become the scene of armed confrontations.
The absence of official clarification fuelled speculation. No authority clarified which force the vehicles belonged to, while villages along the Khartoum–Wad Madani highway spent the day suspended between fear and anticipation.
As the hours passed, residents exchanged whatever fragments of information they could gather. Rumour and fact quickly became entangled over the fate of the vehicles. Reports circulated that they had continued toward Al-Hasahisa before turning west into the interior of the state. That night, communities across Al-Hasahisa, Al-Kamlin, and Al-Managil localities waited anxiously, fearing their villages and farmlands could become the scene of armed confrontations as security forces pursued the convoy.
A statement issued by the Al-Jazirah State Security Committee, published on the state’s official platform on 18 June and reviewed by Atar, only deepened the confusion. The committee announced that four vehicles had been detected on the outskirts of Wad Madani. Two had been seized, while the remaining two were still being pursued.
According to the statement, authorities had received intelligence indicating that “Tundra vehicles regularly crossed through the As-Shukkaba crossing from the south, carrying personnel from forces allied with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) who were engaged in smuggling contraband”.
The committee said it had assembled a joint force drawn from multiple security agencies and established an ambush at the As-Shukkaba crossing.
According to the statement, one of the Tundra pickups sped through the checkpoint after refusing to obey orders to stop, triggering a pursuit. During the chase, “a traffic accident caused a vehicle belonging to the Anti-Smuggling Directorate to overturn,” killing two members of the General Intelligence Service in Al-Jazirah State and injuring thirteen others participating in the operation.
The committee added that all border crossings into the state were closed immediately after the incident. It later announced the seizure of two Tundra pickups that it said belonged to forces allied with the SAF and were carrying “a quantity of smuggled goods,” adding that “the necessary legal procedures” had been initiated.
The statement, however, stopped short of identifying which SAF-allied forces it was referring to, leaving their identity unclear. The ambiguity fuelled competing narratives on social media, including claims that the vehicles belonged to the Joint Force of the Armed Struggle Movements. None of these allegations was backed by publicly available evidence or official confirmation. Those advancing the claims pointed only to the Joint Force’s widespread use of this type of vehicle, a fact that, on its own, does not establish any connection to the incident.
In a separate press statement on the same case, the Anti-Smuggling Directorate of the Sudan Customs Forces in Al-Jazirah State said it had received intelligence indicating that a Tundra pickup suspected of transporting narcotics would be travelling along the Wad Madani–Sinnar road. The information prompted officers to establish an ambush near As-Shukkaba.
According to the directorate, the driver ignored orders to stop, prompting a pursuit that continued to the Al-Huda area in Al-Managil locality, where security forces intercepted the vehicle carrying “half a million narcotic pills.” The statement added that two other Tundra pickups were also seized, transporting ninety cartons of smuggled cigarettes and thirty-five cartons of pharmaceutical products, while three suspects were arrested.
One question echoed among residents: How had the vehicles managed to pass every checkpoint in Sinnar State and southern Al-Jazirah without being stopped?
A well-informed security source told Atar that preliminary investigations suggest the suspects arrested in one of the seized vehicles are affiliated with the Joint Force, although no official authority had confirmed that information at the time of publication.
Accounts from Atar’s sources within the security services differed over the route the Tundra pickups had taken into Sudan. Some said they entered through Kosti before travelling via Sinnar into Al-Jazirah State. Others believed they crossed from South Sudan into the town of Ad-Dinder in Sinnar State before continuing north. All of the sources, however, agreed on one point: the vehicles originated in South Sudan.
One security source told Atar that the convoy departed from the town of Renk in South Sudan, passed through Kosti and Sinnar, and stopped for a period in Tayba al-Lahawiyin before resuming its journey.
As reports spread that the vehicles had entered from South Sudan, one question echoed among residents: How had they managed to pass every checkpoint in Sinnar State and southern Al-Jazirah without being stopped, only to reach the outskirts of Wad Madani?
From Sinnar to Al-Jazirah, Then White Nile
More than thirty Tundra pickups currently operate across Al-Jazirah State. None carries official licence plates.
Security source in Al-Jazirah State
Another security source, who spoke to Atar on condition of anonymity, said the four vehicles entered Al-Jazirah State from the south through Sinnar and passed unchecked through inspection points in southern Al-Jazirah. According to the source, security personnel stationed at As-Shukkaba, on the southern approach to Wad Madani, became suspicious only after the drivers refused to stop, setting off a chase during which the vehicles travelled at what he described as “extraordinary” speed.
Security forces eventually intercepted two of the pickups, while the remaining two continued through Wad Madani toward Al-Hasahisa. One was later captured in the Al-Huda area of Al-Managil locality. The fourth vehicle, which the source said was carrying the group’s leader, managed to disappear deeper into the state using unpaved rural roads.
This account is partially corroborated by a resident of Wad Bilal village, near Al-Hasahisa, who told Atar that he saw two pickups travelling in different directions before six military vehicles—led by one mounted with a DShK heavy machine gun—passed in pursuit. He said one of the fleeing vehicles headed west of Al-Hasahisa, while the other continued south along a dirt road bypassing the village.
A source within the General Intelligence Service in Al-Jazirah State told Atar that security units deployed drones to survey large areas of the state while searching for the fourth vehicle. The source estimated that more than thirty Tundra pickups currently operate across Al-Jazirah State, most of them entering from the south through Sinnar before some continue toward Khartoum State. None, he added, carries official licence plates.
At the time of writing this report, the authorities had not announced that the fourth vehicle had been located. Two security sources tracking its movements, however, told Atar that it had succeeded in unloading its cargo in the Kambo Agar area, within the Ar-Ribi’a administrative unit of Al-Hasahisa locality, before leaving after its occupants received intelligence that security forces were approaching.
According to the two sources, the vehicle then travelled via the Jabal Awlia route southwest of Khartoum before heading toward Rabak in White Nile State. They said it had been carrying approximately 30,000 narcotic pills, which authorities later recovered from the home of a resident in Kambo Agar village. Altogether, they estimated, the four vehicles had transported more than 600,000 narcotic pills, in addition to large quantities of smuggled Shamlan cigarettes.
In Kambo Agar village, one resident told Atar that military forces had completely sealed off the village, preventing anyone from entering or leaving before discovering quantities of narcotic pills and cartons of smuggled cigarettes inside a resident’s home. He added that villagers never saw the vehicle said to have transported the contraband, suggesting it had arrived during the night while people were asleep.
In Sinnar State, a security source attached to the 265th Air Defence Brigade told Atar that intelligence services had not detected the four vehicles involved in the incident as they passed through the state. They do, however, routinely monitor and intercept similar vehicles travelling north from the south. According to the source, more than twenty pickups of the same model are currently impounded by Customs in Singa, a pattern he said points to an organized smuggling network that relies on these vehicles to transport weapons, narcotics, and unlicensed pharmaceuticals.
The source also believes that during the period of RSF control over Al-Jazirah and Sinnar states, the same type of vehicle was used to transport weapons arriving from Eritrea into Sudan. As for how these pickups reached the country’s interior, he said ongoing investigations and security assessments point to three possible supply routes.
The first originates in Libya, from where, according to the source, the Joint Force of the Armed Struggle Movements acquires the vehicles. The second runs through the Sudanese-Egyptian border, with the SAF reportedly procuring the vehicles before transferring them to border groups in eastern Sudan for use in transporting weapons arriving from Eritrea. The third—and currently the most active—route emerged after the RSF gained control of parts of the border between West Kordofan State and South Sudan.
By Saturday, 20 June, one of Atar’s sources said drones operated by Al-Jazirah State’s Anti-Smuggling Directorate, in coordination with state and federal security agencies, had determined that the fourth vehicle had reached Rabak in White Nile State.
The following day, local media reported that a Toyota Land Cruiser pickup had been seized in Kosti after what they described as a high-speed pursuit. A source close to the security services said the operation took place in the Al-Rawat Al-Garia Al-Saba’a village, southwest of Kosti, where the Military intelligence had laid an ambush for a vehicle suspected of involvement in smuggling activities before arresting its occupants and initiating legal proceedings against them.
The Interests of the War Economy
Armed movements and military formations do not remain merely military actors. They gradually evolve into economic actors, financing their activities through smuggling networks.
Former officer in Sudan's General Intelligence Service
As investigations into the movements of the Tundra pickups continue, a security expert, former officer in Sudan’s General Intelligence Service, argued in an interview with Atar that the allegations involving individuals linked to either the Joint Force or other SAF-allied forces point to a crisis far deeper than an isolated smuggling operation.
In protracted conflicts, he said, armed movements and military formations do not remain merely military actors. They gradually evolve into economic actors, financing their activities through smuggling networks that enable rapid capital accumulation and the cultivation of patronage systems. In his view, this dynamic allows the war economy to generate interests of its own, blurring the line between military activity and organized crime while steadily eroding the authority of state institutions.
He warned that the influx of large quantities of narcotics into Al-Jazirah—the agricultural heartland of Sudan—threatens not only public security but the foundations of the country’s productive economy. Instead of protecting agricultural supply routes and markets, the state’s attention is diverted to pursuing smuggling networks, while young people—the principal productive force in rural communities—become increasingly vulnerable to recruitment into the narcotics trade and the wider shadow economy.
The clashes between official security agencies and individuals reportedly affiliated with SAF-allied forces, the expert argued, reflect a deeper structural problem arising from the proliferation of competing armed centres of power. The existence of armed formations operating outside a unified military chain of command creates an environment in which military and economic interests become intertwined. Some units, he suggested, acquire a degree of operational autonomy that can provide cover for activities associated with the war economy and smuggling networks, while simultaneously weakening the state’s ability to exercise coherent authority.
He added that highly capable four-wheel-drive vehicles such as the Toyota Tundra are no longer used solely for military operations. They have become integral to the logistical infrastructure of smuggling networks, prized for their ability to manoeuvre across difficult terrain and evade checkpoints. In his view, this reflects an increasingly blurred boundary between military supply lines and illicit trade routes.
From the “Milk Pickups” to the Tundra
The Tundra is no longer merely a vehicle. Together with the ‘milk pickups’, it marks a broader historical transition from an economy sustained by agricultural production to one increasingly shaped by war.
Years before the war, Toyota Hilux pickups—known locally in Al-Jazirah simply as al-bakasi—formed one of the pillars of the state’s agricultural economy. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, they became synonymous with agricultural production, prized for their ability to navigate Al-Jazirah’s muddy roads, particularly during the rainy season. They carried labourers and farming inputs to the fields, transported harvests at the end of each season, and eventually became the primary means of delivering fresh milk to processing plants in Khartoum. From that role they acquired their enduring nickname: the “bakasi al-laban,”_ (milk pickups).
Since Brigadier General Abu Aqla Keikel defected from the RSF in October 2024, the Toyota Hilux—or al-bakasi, as it is known in Al-Jazirah—has featured prominently in the mockery directed at Keikel and his forces by RSF fighters, who derisively refer to them as the “milk pickups.”
The war, however, transformed the meaning of that image. During the RSF’s occupation of Al-Jazirah between December 2023 and early 2025, livestock was looted on a massive scale, while the dairy trade—once a cornerstone of the local economy—collapsed. Yet the phrase “milk pickups” persisted in videos posted by RSF soldiers, no longer as a description of a vehicle but as a term of ridicule directed at an economic model rooted in agriculture and productive labour.
The debate over the Tundra pickups has therefore evolved far beyond a criminal investigation. It has become a battleground for competing political and social narratives. By linking the vehicles to the Joint Force, to particular communities, or to the al-kanabi—the settlements historically established for seasonal agricultural labourers—public discourse has increasingly sought an internal culprit upon whom to pin responsibility for the security breach. In the process, the more urgent question has receded into the background: how were these vehicles—regardless of who operated them—able to pass through dozens of checkpoints and reach the heart of Al-Jazirah?
The Tundra, then, is no longer merely a vehicle, just as the “milk pickups” are no longer merely a mocking nickname. Together they mark a broader historical transition: from an economy sustained by agricultural production to one increasingly shaped by war.
If al-bakasi once symbolized the irrigated fields of Al-Jazirah, productive labour, and the civic values associated with an agricultural society, the Tundra has come to embody coercive power, security pursuits, cross-border smuggling, and the infrastructure of the war economy. Between these two symbols lies the story of Al-Jazirah’s own transformation—from a region once defined by cultivation and work to one increasingly dominated by the vocabulary of war and the informal economy, reproducing and deepening social divisions even after the front lines have receded.
