Seven months after a heated diplomatic exchange between Sudan and the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) ambassadors to the United Nations went viral, a potential path to negotiations has emerged, with Turkey offering to mediate between the feuding nations.
The army-led government of Sudan has accused the UAE of supporting its partner-turned–rival, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group that the United States has now officially determined has committed genocide in Darfur.
Additionally, the US Treasury Department has recently imposed a new round of sanctions targeting seven UAE-based entities connected to the RSF. The sanctions also named RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Dagalo, known as ‘Hemedti’, for command responsibility.
On the battlefield, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have regained momentum since September. This culminated last week in the recapture of the strategic city of Wad Madani, pushing out the RSF, which had controlled the city for over a year since December 2023, and putting a damper on the paramilitary group’s hopes of controlling central Sudan.
Despite recent gains by the army, total victory remains elusive. The RSF still firmly controls most of Western Sudan, a region approximately the size of mainland Spain, while continuing to contest the Kordofan region and increasingly shrinking pockets in the country’s centre, including the national capital Khartoum.
Meanwhile, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the army chief, has publicly held to a hardline position of rejecting negotiations with RSF while denouncing the UAE for backing his adversary, even as a man-made humanitarian crisis escalates, with half the country facing acute food insecurity.
But according to Cameron Hudson, a Senior Fellow in the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) who previously advised US special envoys to Sudan, the position of the army’s leadership is more nuanced than it appears in the fiery speeches often seen in the media.
Hudson visited Port Sudan, the new de facto administrative capital, in November and met with key members of the ruling military junta, including General al-Burhan.
“I took away from my time there that they [SAF and government officials] would be, under the right conditions, prepared to talk directly to the RSF and negotiate an end to the war,” Hudson told The New Arab.
“Whether that includes a governing role for the RSF, that clearly seems unlikely, or even for the RSF to continue to exist in any form” he added.
The SAF, having largely outsourced its infantry role to the RSF over the past decade, now manages ad-hoc alliances with various power brokers to counter its former paramilitary offshoot.
These alliances include former Darfuri rebel groups that joined the government after signing the 2020 Juba Peace Agreement, armed factions from Eastern Sudan (some of which are backed and financed by Eritrea), and Islamists affiliated with Omar al-Bashir’s ousted regime.
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While the latter group has become perhaps the most critical source of manpower for the SAF, their involvement has proven to be a double-edged sword: complicating peace efforts and hindering the SAF’s ability to garner broader domestic and international support, given the Sudanese public’s not-so-distant revolution against Bashir’s rule in 2019.
Notably, several key figures from al-Bashir’s regime, including al-Bashir himself, face International Criminal Court (ICC) charges for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur.
The most visible Islamist force in the anti-RSF coalition is known as the Al-Bara’ ibn Malik Brigade, which has become a critical supporter of the SAF’s ground operations and its drone warfare on RSF targets in central Sudan.
A fighter from Al-Bara’ ibn Malik Brigade, who asked to remain anonymous, defended their role in an interview with The New Arab, saying “we are Islamists, but we are fighting as Sudanese”.
He added: “Many of us left comfortable lives abroad and in the Gulf to come and fight for our country and our concern is not to rule Sudan but to stop the janjaweed [RSF] and their violations against the people and from destroying Sudan”.
Reports indicate that the Sudanese Islamic Movement (SIM), closely aligned with al-Bashir’s dissolved National Congress Party (NCP), has financed volunteer recruitment efforts, thereby granting Islamists affiliated with the deposed Omar al-Bashir regime a significant foothold and autonomy in the ongoing conflict.
But the Baraa Ibn Malik Fighter rejected this, claiming that “our orders come from the army and not from any political bodies”.
He went on to add: “Our weapons are from the army and whatever other activities we do outside, for example, social services are funded by [private] donations.”
Despite these claims, Baraa’s growth and acquisition of heavy weaponry – including drones – has irritated even the leadership of the SAF. The brigade frequently showcases footage of its operations on social media, prominently displaying its own insignia rather than that of the SAF.
Complicating previous mediation efforts is the fact that Islamist influence has effectively straitjacketed the SAF’s leadership, making negotiating the terms of deals difficult, especially when they seek to hinder the interests of SAF’s Islamist partners.
The SAF’s failure to comply with confidence-building measures agreed upon in Jeddah on 7 November 2023, particularly the arrest of escaped former regime leaders, has deepened suspicions about its ties to Islamists and their influence over the army.
Additionally, the army’s later withdrawal from the secretive Manama talks in January 2024, brokered by the UAE, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, further fuelled concerns about its commitment to dismantling the previous regime’s networks.
The proposed agreement would have revived the efforts to dismantle the former regime’s power structures and arrest its key leaders. The army’s withdrawal led many observers, including Hemedti, to suggest that such a deal is unpalatable given the SAF’s reliance on Islamist support in the ongoing war effort.
A new mediation proposal by Turkey appears to be the most promising effort to resolve the Sudanese conflict, although logistics and the substance of the talks are still in the planning stage. Additionally, the SAF’s victory in Wad Madani has shifted the army’s eyes away from the negotiating table and onto the battlefield.
This development, coupled with the statement from Lieutenant General Shams al-Din Kabbashi of the SAF “that there will be no negotiations with the Rapid Support Forces from today onward,” suggests a hardening of positions that could complicate and indefinitely delay peace efforts. Although the SAF has ruled out negotiation with the RSF, it has not yet commented on whether its talks with the UAE would continue.
Just before Wad Madani’s recapture, the offer to mediate had been welcomed by both the SAF and, curiously, even by the UAE, despite the implication that it is a belligerent in the conflict and not an innocent bystander, as it claims.
Turkey has recently cemented itself as a key diplomatic peacemaker in the Horn of Africa following its successful mediation between Somalia and Ethiopia regarding Ethiopian port access.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan orchestrated a breakthrough seven-hour negotiation that resulted in the Ankara Declaration, resolving a yearlong diplomatic crisis that many feared could have led to a regional war that also risked drawing in Egypt and Eritrea.
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Furthermore, since Sudan’s popular revolution in 2019, which led to the ouster of Omar al-Bashir’s dictatorship, Turkey has hosted numerous high-ranking figures from the previous regime. Among them is Ali Karti, Bashir’s former foreign minister and Secretary General of the Sudanese Islamic Movement, a spiritual incubator of Bashir’s ousted National Congress Party (NCP).
Karti, who was sanctioned by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for “actively obstructing efforts to reach a ceasefire,” returned to Sudan from Turkey shortly after the October 2021 coup.
This coup was orchestrated by Hemedti and al-Burhan, before their alliance fractured, to oust the civilian members of the transitional government. The coup resulted in the reinstatement of many Islamists in government positions, as well as the return of Islamist leaders who had been exiled due to policies targeting them and their assets following the 2019 revolution.
Moreover, Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid, currently the head of Bashir’s dissolved NCP, also returned to Port Sudan in October of 2024 after spending over two years in Turkey. While these high-profile figures have returned, many loyalists of former President Omar al-Bashir’s regime remain in Turkey.
If negotiations advance, Ankara is likely to utilise its perceived neutrality and acceptability among all parties to facilitate dialogue with the most resistant faction within the SAF alliance, aiming to broker a deal.
The US, despite having conducted most of the diplomatic leg-work to stop the fighting in Sudan – starting with talks in Jeddah shortly after the war began and continuing in Geneva – has not succeeded in making any breakthroughs.
The most recent US-led initiative, co-hosted with Switzerland and Saudi Arabia in Geneva, failed to launch, in large part due to the SAF’s explicit rejection of the US’s inclusion and portrayal of the UAE as an impartial and constructive actor, leading to their boycott of the talks.
This occurred despite both UN and US investigators confirming the UAE’s direct involvement and support for the RSF in Sudan’s conflict.
Additionally, low-level diplomatic representation by the US at the various talks has done little to signal serious engagement.
Notably, neither Secretary of State Antony Blinken nor President Biden have directly participated in any of the negotiations.
In Washington, the Biden administration’s lacklustre performance in peace-making has prompted grassroots initiatives from the Sudanese community to engage with policymakers, hoping to elevate Sudan’s position on the administration’s agenda.
Mohammad Seifeldin, a lawyer and former local politician, has been part of these efforts and has met with the US Special Envoy for Sudan along with other members of the Sudanese diaspora in the Washington DC area, but describes the community as having “exhausted all available avenues to elevate the Sudanese crisis”.
Many Sudanese, including Seifeldin, support measures to pressure the UAE and curb arms sales to the Gulf state.
Several congressional lawmakers share this perspective, with Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative Sara Jacobs leading efforts to block a proposed $1.2 billion arms sale to the UAE for its “arming” of the RSF.
These actions also underscore a growing recognition, acknowledged by Turkey’s mediation offer, that any meaningful ceasefire talks in Sudan must involve Abu Dhabi and address its role in supporting the renegade paramilitary.
“The RSF is the army of the UAE,” Hudson said, emphasising that the UAE’s regional power ambitions necessitate a strong military, but its small population has pushed its leaders to rely on mercenary forces like the RSF.
The RSF was deployed by the Saudi-UAE coalition in Yemen in 2015 to combat the Houthis. Furthermore, with alleged UAE financial support and coordination, RSF units expanded their operations to Libya, fighting alongside Khalifa Haftar’s forces.
“To imagine a scenario where the RSF goes away, we have to diminish the UAE’s demand for it,” Hudson added.
Elfadil Ibrahim is a writer and analyst focused on Sudanese politics
