Sudan’s Intractable War

EVE FAIRBANKS

Hi, Mai. Hi, Ahmed. It’s fantastic to have you here.

MAI HASSAN

Hi, Eve. Thanks so much for having us.

AHMED KODOUDA

Hi, Eve. Thank you for having us.

EVE FAIRBANKS

So you guys recently wrote a fantastic piece for us called “Sudan Is Unraveling,” which is about the devastating conflict that started in Sudan in April 2023. It’s now left at least 150,000 dead, over 10 million people displaced, and a declared genocide. And as I understand it from you, it really was a particularly heartbreaking conflict to break out, because just in 2019, a popular revolution had overthrown the Islamist regime, which was headed by the dictator Omar al-Bashir. And there had been real hope for democratization.

And your piece showed that this isn’t just a dispute anymore between rival generals but has become something much more complex that involves many foreign powers that are vying for influence, and beyond that, that it really has become a kind of conflict that analysts fear will become much more common around the world. So let’s start with the basics. We have the Sudan Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. Can you tell us about the historical relationship between these two main actors who are still the main umbrella factions in this conflict?

MAI HASSAN

So Eve, the Sudan Armed Forces, or the SAF, the country’s official army, and the Rapid Support Forces, the RSF, are the two main agencies that are at war with each other. And what’s in a sense surprising, for people who are following Sudanese history, is that they were actually quite allied during the transition, that they came together to help overthrow Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan’s Islamist regime from 1989 to 2019. They overthrew him, and they, together, alongside civilian actors, were leading a transition process that was supposed to bring about democracy in Sudan.

And during that transition process, one of the big holdouts, or one of the big points of conflict between them, was about security sector reform. How should Sudan’s security sector be structured? And this was a really important point, because Sudan fundamentally has been at war since before its independence. Sudan has—its security apparatus is so fractured. It’s so fragmented. There are so many different militias, paramilitaries all underneath the state umbrella, alongside the army. And these different agencies weren’t really being held accountable by the population, and as a democratic regime, that should be the case. That’s when a lot of the conflict between these two groups really started coming to the forefront.

And one of the main sticking points was how to integrate the RSF, the Rapid Support Forces, into the broader army. The RSF fundamentally asked for about a ten year process. They wanted to further embed themselves into the Sudanese economy, further embed themselves into politics. Hemedti, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the leader of the RSF, wanted to really set himself up for the future of Sudan. On the other hand, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the leader of the SAF, and other SAF leaders, were arguing for a much faster integration, something that would take at most three years. They wanted the RSF integrated and dissolved really, really quickly for the exact opposite reasons—so that the leaders of the SAF could be on top, could really have a firm grasp over the security apparatus and the military-industrial complex. And so that fundamental tension between them about how to integrate these two forces was really at the crux of why war broke out.

EVE FAIRBANKS

It’s interesting that you mentioned just how long the country has been in conflict. And actually, Ahmed, I wanted to ask you about that. You were in Sudan. You did some work, I think, in 2019 with that transitional government. But is there any sense in which we should understand this war as having started earlier than two years ago?

AHMED KODOUDA

Absolutely. I think the roots of the war in April 2023 are traced probably decades before the outbreak of violence. As Mai mentioned, Sudan has experienced civil war almost nonstop for the vast majority of its independent history. Of course, Sudan has been dominated by successive autocratic regimes that have, more or less, ostracized [a] vast majority of ethnic minorities around the country. We’re talking about a series of civil wars that began in 1955, with southern rebels that fought Khartoum governments for independence, ultimately resulting in the secession of South Sudan.

But this war—I think it’s important to kind of begin understanding it with the 2003 civil war that began in Darfur, where certain ethnic groups that were marginalized by successive regimes in Khartoum picked up arms against the Bashir regime, calling for more equitable distribution of resources and access to state power. Now, the Sudanese military had, for a long time, employed the use of militias, oftentimes ethnic militias, throughout the civil war in the south to fight on its behalf, really outsourcing the violence with local indigenous militias that knew the terrain better than the Sudanese Army did. And that’s the same tactic employed in Darfur. And the government in Sudan, unable to quell this uprising in 2003, then went to these Arab nomadic communities and said to them, “We will arm you and fund you if you’re able to help suppress this rebellion.”

Now, this is a very broad simplification of the conflict, but the roots of the RSF begin here, when what was then called the Janjaweed, translated as devil on horseback, were officially weaponized and armed by the Bashir regime to fight, which led to one of the most brutal conflicts and was labeled as a genocide at the time—led to upwards of 400,000 people being killed due to that violence. And that conflict simmered for several years, until about 2007 [or] 2008, when a series of failed peace agreements basically led to an increasing reliance on these militias to quell the uptick of violence in Darfur.

Then in 2013, Omar al-Bashir decided to officially regularize these Janjaweed into a parastatal militia, calling it the Rapid Support Forces. And the Rapid Support Forces were led by a camel herdsman turned warlord called Hemedti, who then was given an official army rank of brigadier general, having never attended any formal military training. And the RSF were framed as being border guards, and they were marketed as a mechanism by which the regime could stem the flow of migrants from the Horn of Africa through Sudan, onwards to Libya, and then to the Mediterranean, into Europe.

Then in 2017, Bashir made a pivotal decision to elevate the RSF—which, at that point, had been reporting to one of the security agencies—to report directly to him, making it a sort of praetorian guard. And at that point, Sudan, by all measures, had two parallel armies, with two generals reporting directly to the president. Then that decision came back to haunt Bashir when the RSF increasingly became more powerful and sided with the army to topple him in 2019.

And as Mai had mentioned, during the transitional period, both the RSF, led by Hemedti, and the SAF, led by Burhan, were quite close allies—until the question about security sector reform came about after the coup of 2021. And the conversations on dissolving the RSF into SAF really led to the flashpoint that occurred on April 15, 2023.

EVE FAIRBANKS

Do you think the outbreak of war between these two powerful generals was really going to be inevitable, given that you created two rival militaries in Sudan?

AHMED KODOUDA

I think in many ways, this war was inevitable because the long legacy of autocratic rule and the militarization of Sudanese politics made it that it was almost impossible to dissolve this very powerful militia that was increasingly involved in the Sudanese economy and engaged in international conflicts, having served as mercenaries for the [United Arab Emirates] in Yemen for several years. And ultimately, the process of security sector reform is very difficult, even when you’re talking about integrating rebels into a standing army.

Now, having two parallel armies with competing interests and competing economic involvement throughout various sectors made it very difficult to basically merge these two armies into one, which needed to be a very surgical process. At the same time, the involvement of the military and the elements of the former regime also complicated this process, because elements of the former regime were really interested in undermining this process of transition, because they were completely sidelined during the Sudanese uprising and the subsequent transitional period.

MAI HASSAN

If I could pick up on what Ahmed was saying, one way to think about the conflict is what these two different sides represent. And on the one hand, we have the army, which is infiltrated by Islamists. The regime of Omar al-Bashir was fundamentally, when it started, an Islamist regime, and the top ranks of SAF are members of the Islamic movement. And many of them were very resistant to transition the country to democracy, and during the transition, as Ahmed was saying, were trying to undermine this transition—trying to figure out ways to get back into power and to continue ruling the country autocratically.

On the other hand, the RSF, thinking about how it’s pitching itself in the war that it’s engaging in, it claims to be fighting for Sudan’s marginalized groups. I mean, obviously, we can interrogate this claim, given the levels of genocide that they’ve undertaken against marginalized groups that are under their rule. But fundamentally, the RSF is saying, Sudan has been ruled by riverine Arabs for so long and has not shared the spoils of independence well.

EVE FAIRBANKS

So what I hear you saying is, one way of understanding this Sudanese conflict is that it’s so challenging because there are multiple different disputes all layered on top of each other and playing out in a single battlefield.

MAI HASSAN

That’s a great way to put it, Eve. There are just so many different axes of contestation in Sudan. All of them, at their most basic level, don’t capture the full dynamics of what’s going on, but all of them do capture part of it. So in one sense, we have this cleavage of, how should Sudan be governed? Through Islamism, or through a more secular state? And the secularists themselves are also Muslim, but the idea is, how much should religion play a part in government? How much should Sharia law be the foundation for the regime? Another cleavage in Sudan is thinking about the center versus the periphery. The center, these Nile regions, have been at the center of Sudanese politics for so long. And once you’re in power for so many decades, it’s really, really hard to give it up.

Another cleavage that isn’t really represented by the RSF and SAF, but is when we think about their larger coalitions, is thinking about African versus Arab. This, again, is also a simplification in that all of us Sudanese are obviously African, but there is this idea about the ethnic groups that we came from—if they are fundamentally African or they were Arabized in the past by different Arab groups that had come around. Do people speak Arabic, or do they keep tribal languages? And whereas the RSF are these Arab groups across the Sahel, the army too, the top ranks, are from these Arab ethnic groups, but Arab from a different part of the country. And the SAF more broadly encompasses, at their lower ranks, many African groups as well.

EVE FAIRBANKS

So at this point, is there effectively a battle zone throughout the entire country?

AHMED KODOUDA

I think so. I think right now, what we’re seeing on the ground is that both the RSF and SAF have scrambled to gain allies from Sudan’s patchwork of different regional militias and rebel movements. And we also see that new militias have sprung up and expanded the regions that are in conflict right now. And all the rebel groups have also chosen sides.

I think it’s important to mention the fact that Sudan has had a series of different civil wars, as we’ve mentioned, but what we’re seeing on the ground are these mini civil wars often fought around localized, parochial grievances—historical conflicts that are now being brought to the fore and, even if they were not explicitly violent in the past, have now become violent.

We see that major rebel groups are now picking sides based on their own immediate interests. This is making the conflict much more difficult to resolve. We’re seeing that tribal armed groups, local self-defense militias, or even bandits and gangs have entered the fray as security breaks down throughout the country. Unfortunately, now, with the expansion of the war and the increasing use of drones, the battlefronts are spreading to all corners of the country.

EVE FAIRBANKS

In a sense, this particular conflict or the heart of this conflict that began in 2023 started in Khartoum. It started between these two factions of the military apparatus of the state, but it has since then almost vacuumed up a lot of smaller rebel militias, local disputes, kind of countrywide, regional stuff, ethnic stuff, to some extent religious stuff, identity stuff. So then you get these big, big factions in a sense. Right?

And yet, what you bring out in your piece is that these factions are fluid. You write, “Neither the SAF nor the RSF claims to be waging war for ideological reasons.” Or they do sometimes make those claims, but fundamentally, they’re not necessarily, and that in a way, there’s exchanges being made, promises of resources and so on being made to smaller groups. Ahmed, can you tell us just a little bit about some of the defections that have happened over the course of this war and what that tells us about the nature of these factions and these alliances?

AHMED KODOUDA

I think that the current war has really shattered the previous tropes of this conflict being about Arab versus African. And as we lay out in the piece, it’s really about these two large coalitions that, as you’ve put it, are very fluid and have seen significant infighting, and we’ve also seen prominent cases of side-switching and defection. But at the same time, what we’re seeing is that the lack of coherence within each coalition makes them very prone to infighting. And even the fact that the resources are dwindling, it may result in further defections and side-switching in the coming period.

EVE FAIRBANKS

Mai, how has the involvement of outside powers—so Sudan’s neighbors, the Gulf States, Turkey, and Russia—made this conflict so much worse? And why might it not actually be in these countries’ interests to see the conflict end?

MAI HASSAN

So in part because this isn’t so much an ideological battle, but one fought over material resources. You know, as we write in the piece, theoretically there should be some kind of partition of the pie that allows for peace to happen. But fundamentally, this misconstrues so much of the reality on the ground, in part because today, there’s 100 different groups that have picked up arms.

And so, even if we could come to a negotiating table, what would that look like? Would we have 100 different groups represented at the table? What would a partition of resources over 100 different leaders look like? And this is made all the more complicated precisely because of the international involvement that we’re seeing.

To fund 100 different militias is a really difficult thing, but given, especially when we think about the United Arab Emirates and their support for the RSF and the RSF’s aligned militias, these are groups that are able to get lots of guns, lots of armored cars, lots of resources to continue their military operation to keep the fight going.

EVE FAIRBANKS

Mai, just tell me very quickly, which countries are involved and how? I know that’s actually not an easy question to answer, but very loosely.

MAI HASSAN

I’d say that the two largest external actors at this point are the UAE, which is backing the RSF militarily by providing arms—not so much political cover, but instead by giving drones, by giving guns, giving bullets, all that stuff—and Egypt, which is backing SAF, the Sudan Armed Forces. [Egypt is] both providing military support but also giving a lot of political support and trying to push for a negotiation that really privilege SAF and SAF’s interests. So those are probably the two main international actors.

EVE FAIRBANKS

Ahmed, Sudan is simultaneously depicted very often in the course of writing about this conflict as, I don’t know, very straightened, very empty, very, very poor—which, it has been partly impoverished to a great degree by this conflict—but also like a sort of prize bag overflowing with resources. What are the resources that these international actors are fighting over? And also, how is that motivating people within the country and this conflict within the country?

AHMED KODOUDA

Sudan is quite rich in natural resources. We’re talking about the second-largest share of arable land in Africa. We’re talking about abundant water that comes through the Nile River. We’re talking about gold and other important commodities, like gum arabic, which is essential for a lot of international corporations that use it for—integrating it into food products.

And at the same time, Sudan has a lot of other mineral resources, like gold, which has sustained the economy for a large part of the past decade and a half. Unfortunately, I think the regional players do not necessarily want or inherently have an interest in the continuation of the war. But at the same time, their interests—both in Sudan’s resources and their geopolitical interests—are not necessarily hindered by the war’s continuation. And here, I’d like to highlight two things.

First, I think that for Egypt—it’s quite interested in controlling or ensuring that the Sudan Armed Forces has full control over the Nile Basin. In any potential confrontation with Ethiopia, that’s going to be quite important for Egypt as it vies for maintaining its share of the Nile waters. At the same time, we’ve seen that even during the war, the export of Sudan’s gold to the UAE has never really stopped. So even during the war, the UAE continues to receive a significant share of Sudan’s gold and other mineral resources.

When it comes to the domestic population, unfortunately, for Sudan’s entire existence, the population has never really benefited from these resources, because oftentimes, they were siphoned by regime elites or those associated with either the RSF or elements of SAF, which has long been integrated into the Sudanese economy.

EVE FAIRBANKS

Mai, how has air war become a component in this conflict and sort of further complicated it?

MAI HASSAN

So when we think about conflicts traditionally, we often think that most of the fighting, most of the death, most of the destruction, is on the front—the actual place where the two armies meet and collide. That’s where we hear the bullets. That’s where the cannon fire is. But actually, in this war, airpower has allowed both sides to destabilize deep into the territories of either side.

And so what I mean by that is, if we think about Port Sudan—the de facto capital of SAF, a part of the country that has never been touched by the RSF—just earlier in May was destabilized by drone attacks. And if we think about Nyala—the de facto capital of the RSF—that city has been pummeled by air strikes for quite some time. And so, again, even though the front lines are. . . even if they’re shifting or in the middle of the country, each side can still get at the heart of the other’s base and places that are thought to be safe.

AHMED KODOUDA

And I think that one important strategy, especially for the RSF, has been to employ these drones to make the vast majority of the country ungovernable and further destabilize SAF’s ability to represent itself as the legitimate state power in the country.

EVE FAIRBANKS

Well, let me ask you, Ahmed, when did these drones start to become a feature in the war? Where are they coming from? And were they mainly being used initially by the RSF?

AHMED KODOUDA

Drones were always a part of the conflict—from the outset. Initially, the Sudanese Armed Forces managed to secure very small, nonstrategic drones that were mostly used for surveillance or to drop very small munitions that didn’t really have any major impact on the battlefield. However, over time, SAF managed to strengthen its airpower, because it had basically complete aerial dominance because of the air force. It added strategic drones that were then used to destabilize the areas of control of the RSF.

Now more recently, RSF has managed to secure its own strategic drones that have devastated Port Sudan, attacking very strategic fuel depots and munition depots, and attacking one of the major air force bases on the Red Sea. Those were reportedly directly procured and supported by the United Arab Emirates.

EVE FAIRBANKS

For the RSF, was its goal ever to take the entire country?

MAI HASSAN

So I think initially, Hemedti’s goal was for an overwhelming military victory, perhaps not over the entire country but at least to show [the RSF’s] military dominance over SAF. And this was very much in the early stages of the war when the idea was, who’s going to be the big gun? Who’s going to be the big general that ends up leading the transition period? This is still back in April, May of 2023 when the idea was that we could still transition back to a democracy—just who would be on top? And so, in the initial periods, the RSF was really fighting for domination on the battlefield to secure that place at the negotiating table.

AHMED KODOUDA

I think Hemedti, from the outset, sought to take over the entire state through a coup. Initially. . . There’s been a lot of debate on who shot the first bullet. But once the fighting began on [April 15, 2023], it became very clear that Hemedti’s interest was to topple Burhan and take over the state in a traditional coup. Sudan has had more coups than any other country in the world. And at the same time, he aimed to secure political backing from some of the various political elements from the beginning of the war.

But it became obvious that he [was] not able to take over the country because SAF managed to ensure that some of the key military installations, such as the military headquarters and some of the various military installations, were not taken over. And for about, I want to say, five months, Burhan was actually holed up in the heart of Khartoum, surrounded by the RSF, and ultimately managed to escape, and then established the SAF’s government in Port Sudan.

So right now, it’s very difficult to see any situation in which Hemedti and the RSF are able to run the country. And in fact, they’re currently trying to establish a parallel government, which they’ve officially announced their intention for, now almost two months, but have not been able to announce any sort of official parallel government in the areas of their control.

EVE FAIRBANKS

That takes us to this moment in which you’ve written in your piece, “The map of territorial control in Sudan today suggests a bifurcated country”—or even a bifurcated future maybe—“with the west—apart from El Fasher, North Darfur’s capital—largely under the RSF’s grasp, and the east, north, and center of the country held by the SAF.”

And we have this transitional agreement that was signed in February in Nairobi by the RSF and some of its partners to declare a parallel government over the swaths of land they control. Is anybody talking about a formal partition akin to the one that gave birth to South Sudan, or is what’s more likely a de facto partition akin to, you give the examples of Libya and Yemen.

MAI HASSAN

Well, a de facto partition is already in place, and the de facto west and the de facto part held by SAF are having their own economies, using different currencies even today, and engaging in trade with their partners. And so there is already a de facto partition on the ground. One of the things, though, that’s become increasingly talked about, at least among the Sudanese diaspora community, not just those of us in Sudan, but the 10 million of people who are displaced to other countries, is that a partition of Sudan—I don’t even think two countries captures the realities on the ground.

People are talking about three, four, potentially five countries, given the actual battlefield dynamics and the different ethnic configurations on the ground. We could think about Abdelaziz al-Hilu and the [Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North] have been wanting self-determination in Kordofan for decades. Thinking about Darfur as an entity that could be de facto independent. And then some of the more riverine central Arab parts.

But when we think about what actual partitioned Sudan would look like, none of these countries are economically or even politically viable. So many of these countries would be landlocked. So many of these countries, if they have gold, don’t have that much arable land. If they have access to a port, then do they have the minerals that would help launch their economy? So it’s definitely something to think about. And then when we think about the political viability of these places, yes, we could [imagine], we could draw on the map the Darfur regions, the old Darfurian states of Sudan.

But there’s just so much diversity of ethnic groups in that area and ethnic groups that have fought tooth and bone at this point—really, really deep cleavages, genocide going on by some parts or the other. And so given the territorial reality of how states would be drawn, it would just be so messy politically to actually put some of these groups together if it were actually done. The likelihood of continued violence in each of these de facto or de jure partitioned states would just keep Sudan and partition Sudan on the path of war for decades to come.

EVE FAIRBANKS

Ahmed, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on that.

AHMED KODOUDA

Yeah, I think Mai laid it out quite succinctly. One thing I’d like to add is that formal partition may seem ostensibly or superficially attractive as an option to end the violence. But if any indication or precedent can be taken from the situation of South Sudan, any breakup of the country will not lead to an end to violence or some sort of peace, lasting peace, in any new states that would come about. As Mai mentioned, the viability of these states would be in question, but at the same time, it’ll be very difficult to create an ethnically homogenous state in any part of the country, leading to really the devolution of conflict rather than the resolution of these wars.

EVE FAIRBANKS

You’ve written, and I’d like to quote your piece, that, “Even if some short-term truce could be reached, the large assortment of ethnic groups and ideological camps that have allied with each side means that restoring social cohesion will be even more difficult.” And you explain how, after two years of conflict, the fault lines, certain existing fault lines in the country, have hardened, and divides have become even more emotional. In the coverage we read of this war, given its tremendous humanitarian toll, civilians often appear as a statistic, and we lose sight of the country’s internal politics.

So, Ahmed, I’d really like to ask you, are some parts of the Sudanese population backing particular factions? Do people want one side or the other to win, or is there kind of just an overwhelming desire to be rid of both these generals? We don’t hear much about the actual political culture and what Sudanese people, who would obviously really hope for a democratic transition, are thinking here.

AHMED KODOUDA

Sure. I think you’re absolutely right. The humanitarian situation has been devastating. I mean, that has reverberated in all aspects of society. Now we’re seeing over 19 million children in Sudan have been out of school for the vast part of the last two years. That is going to have severe repercussions for Sudan for decades to come.

I think one element of this war has been the collapse of formal politics. Sudan has been experiencing a series of political processes and transitions and different governments and regimes coming in and out of power in Khartoum, but this war has really led to the freezing of formal political processes in Sudan. We see that political parties and civilian leaders have been largely sidelined, and it’s really the guns that have been dictating events on the ground. And the reality is that politics continues, but basically in the shadows and in exile. Sudan is now a question about humanitarian and security implications really, not about political ones.

The question about the civilians, I think the vast majority of Sudanese civilians, especially those inside Sudan, have a desperate need to end the war. Now, of course, what we see online and on social media is really a lot of folks that are in the diaspora. Their feet are not on the fire and are backing one or the other, and it’s really been this constant agitation for the continuation of the war. But the reality is that the lay Sudanese want to see this war come to an end.

I would say that it depends where you are, who you’re backing. I think the lion’s share of Sudanese people believe that the Sudanese military is obviously the legitimate force that needs to be reformed. A lot are calling for a very deep structural reformation of the Sudanese Army. And at the same time, no one is calling for the RSF to replace the army outright. Everyone knows that there needs to be a political process. But the problem is that the public has been really alienated and completely sidelined, and a vast majority of Sudanese on either side of the divide want to see the war come to the end.

But the reality is, there’s been really erosion of public trust and of the social contract, because a lot of people had high hopes after the collapse of the Bashir regime, and then that, to lead to this really devastating conflict, has really eroded people’s trust in formal politics, I think, which is obviously very bad. And ultimately, the war has destroyed the social fabric, has destroyed the country’s infrastructure, and has set the country decades backwards.

MAI HASSAN

In thinking about the refugee situation, so many Sudanese streamed out of the country—I shouldn’t say streamed, fled the country, forced out to neighboring Ethiopia, to Chad, Uganda, Kenya. And those countries economically are a little bit more livable. But then quite a substantial number of Sudanese also ended up in Cairo, because of similar language, access through the Sahara, and this porous border.

But Egypt itself is having a huge economic crisis. And with so many Sudanese migrants and displaced people coming in, the situation for Sudanese has just gotten substantially worse. The ability to get a visa to Egypt in the past as a Sudanese person was quite easy, something that you didn’t have to think twice about, whereas now they’ve stopped issuing lots of visas especially for Sudanese men.

Many neighborhoods that are dominated by Sudanese, you’ve seen the rents skyrocket by a lot of rhetoric in Egyptian media about, “Sudanese coming in and taking our jobs, Sudanese coming in and taking where we’re going to live,” and just the economic crisis there fueling anti-Sudanese sentiment. Many Sudanese people [are] running out of money or are being deported because they don’t have correct papers, and others just having to return back to Khartoum or other parts of Sudan despite this war, this ongoing war, because it’s just no longer sustainable as a refugee in many of these other countries.

EVE FAIRBANKS

Is there a policy by the United States or European countries that could have some real impact here? I know there have been efforts to propose peace negotiations, but they often imported concepts from other conflicts that really don’t resemble this one. And then other countries are obviously approaching this, as you’ve explained, from a self-interested and transactional point of view. Has there been any policy over the past couple of years, either proposed by the Biden administration or somebody else, that you felt was really promising or could point toward a promising route out of this conflict? Ahmed, let’s hear from you.

AHMED KODOUDA

I think over the past decade or so, the United States’ relationship with Sudan has been really one where Sudan was seen as a secondary issue. It never really came to the forefront of either the first Trump or Biden administration. During the first Trump administration, the relationship with Sudan was largely transactional. It was focused on the normalization with Israel and basically forcing Sudan to sign the Abraham Accords at a moment where Sudan was going through a very difficult transition and an economic crisis.

In fact, the United States at that point had forced the Sudanese transitional government to pay $350 million as compensation for the attacks against the USS Cole in Yemen that were perpetrated by the Bashir regime, which is the same regime that the Sudanese people fought and toppled in a peaceful uprising. At the same time, we saw that, basically, there was no real genuine support for the democratic transition that was sought after during that period and during the Biden administration, while there were some commendable efforts to push for negotiations with Saudi Arabia in Jeddah, those really never got the necessary political backing that was needed.

The United States is a staunch ally of the United Arab Emirates, and it’s a staunch ally of Egypt, and both those countries have competing interest in Sudan. And we’ve not seen any effort recently in the new Trump administration to bring about an end to this war.

MAI HASSAN

Fundamentally, I think this conflict is going to make us rethink the way that negotiations have to happen, because traditionally, the way that conflicts come to an end is that everyone who had picked up arms gets a seat at the negotiating table. But with over 100 groups on the ground today who have taken part, who have sided with either SAF or RSF, how can we imagine negotiations with 100 people, with 100 different groups on the ground?

And fundamentally, what does this suggest for Sudan’s future, even if a pie was able to be divided equitably among these 100 groups and everyone were to agree with it? What does this suggest for Sudan’s future if you don’t like the amount of resources that you and your community are getting, then pick up arms, fight against the government, start a war, and then you’ll be brought into the negotiating table?

There has to be a way in which formal civil society, informal civil society, has a seat at the table. One of the really beautiful things that’s come out of this conflict is the way in which Sudanese on the ground have been looking out for each other, these community kitchens that have sprung up, these community emergency rooms that have sprung up all across the country to take care of one another.

These are the people that are doing the work that a state should be doing—providing meals, providing healthcare. But how do we aggregate these groups, or how do we involve these groups who really have the trust of their local communities? How do we get these people represented at the negotiating table?

EVE FAIRBANKS

Is there a trustworthy convening party that could help that process? Let me ask you quickly, Ahmed.

AHMED KODOUDA

I think the Saudis have tried their best to convene, at least, cease-fire talks in Jeddah, and those talks had led to an initial framework agreement, or a declaration of principles, rather. But no real momentum has picked up since the first months of the war. Later on, the United States, during the waning days of the Biden administration, tried to convene talks in Geneva, but those also failed.

The African Union has been largely sidelined, and the United Nations has been completely absent. So at this stage, it’s very difficult to see any collective political international momentum for a sustained peace effort in Sudan, simply because, as I said earlier, while no one country wants this war to continue, at the same time, these countries’ interests are not really undermined by the continuation of conflict.

MAI HASSAN

With Sudan’s past conflicts, we often saw the Western troika of Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States having really large involvement in Sudan and trying to broker peace, and trying to craft agreements that were neutral from the side of these external players but then were at least nominally in the best interest of the Sudanese people.

But given global developments that are happening today, with the United States receding from the world stage, with Europe really focused on their own security in the face of what Russia is doing, that’s really left a hole in which regional Gulf actors are stepping in and playing more of a role. And their interests in Sudan are quite material, aside from wanting a political outcome that benefits the Sudanese people.

EVE FAIRBANKS

I think that’s an important note to end on. I mean, in no way was it ever the case that previous peace efforts were based entirely on principle, but there was a concept that at least in theory they should be, and it does seem like what you get here are interventions that are more openly by foreign parties that are more frank about, “Let’s try to get parties to the table. Let’s try to get this to end, but our role here is also for ourselves.” So, thank you guys so much for being here.

MAI HASSAN

Thanks, Eve, for having us and for shining a light on the situation in Sudan for your readers.

AHMED KODOUDA

Thank you so much.