In this paper, by primarily using oral histories collected over many years, I explore war and its “aftermath” for women in the two Sudan’s many conflicts—political, military, ethnic, and regional. It is clear that some Sudanese in the conflict zones see themselves as “heroically” dealing with these conflicts while others are indoctrinated to see themselves as “bystanders” or “supporters” of the heroic ones. These are all highly gendered performances in a militarized state of affairs. Public and semi-public performances of the “heroic life” are most often by men. Women’s performances are more often as “victims” or as nurturers to those living underground or in prisons. I show that the negative impact of conflict on women in the war zones may not differ significantly from the impact during “peace”-time or in the “aftermath” of war. Because Sudan is in continuous conflict, there is no dichotomy between war and peace, only a continuum in the state of affairs and in the gender performances. For women in the conflict zones of various regions of the two Sudans—especially in the contemporary conflict in Darfur—so much of the “homeland’s” past and present is written on their bodies, which sets up a situation in which men, through the position of women in the “national allegory,” make claims to their own homeland through the bodies of “their” women and attempt to defile the homeland of their adversaries in the same way. In Darfur, the Nuba Mountains, and South Sudan women have been subjected to forms of sexual violence and other atrocities. In fact, in most instances of gender-based violence in the conflict zones, that violence is linked less to conquest and war booty than to the defilement of the adversary’s “homeland” through women’s bodies. To further complicate the situation for women in conflict zones, the relationship of the perpetrator and victim may be one of ambivalence (Homi Bhabha), unsettling notions of victim, spoils, and vanquisher. The fluid and ambiguous gender performances of women in the two Sudans are as unsettled in the “war zones” as in the “peace” of “civilian” life.