After more than three years, Washington continues to fumble its way through a response to Sudan’s heart-wrenching war. This past week, it may have inadvertently backed itself into a diplomatic corner that offers no options for either itself or Sudan’s army to exit, putting a ceasefire even further out of reach. As world leaders gathered in New York for the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly, Washington pressed hard on the leaders of the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) to sign an unconditional ceasefire that would freeze the conflict and allow unimpeded access for critical aid deliveries.
In the past, the rebel Rapid Support Forces militia, using the ample diplomatic and public relations support from its chief regional backer, has been quick to agree to any deal that puts it on equal footing with the national army it is seeking to unseat. But with no intention or ability to implement the terms of any ceasefire, the RSF’s commitment to peace is likely worth what one would expect from a mercenary army that has committed multiple rounds of genocide. Still, United States officials repeatedly refer to the RSF in diplomatic circles as the more “cooperative party”.
In that light, since earlier this year, Washington’s pressure campaign has been focused on the SAF almost exclusively in the misguided belief that sufficient pressure would bring the army to its knees and cause it to abandon its effort to liberate the millions of Sudan’s civilians trapped under RSF rule. But 20 years of comprehensive US sanctions on Sudan, far more biting and wide-ranging than anything Presidents Donald Trump’s or Joe Biden’s administrations have imposed, should have taught the Trump team that sanctions in Sudan are not instruments to be used tactically. This is a regime capable of withstanding US pressure over the long run.
Nonetheless, a new round of US sanctions against SAF military procurement networks in June was followed by the imposition of chemical weapons sanctions in July despite the lack of any credible attempt to investigate the facts of their use on the ground. Later, in August, the US added to its punitive approach by tabling a new initiative at the UN to impose a countrywide arms embargo, updating the Darfur arms embargo dating from the first Darfur genocide in the early 2000s, which the RSF and its regional backers have flouted on a nearly daily basis since the start of the war. Washington’s latest move was widely interpreted as an unbalanced attempt to target the army’s supply networks that had recently enabled a number of critical battlefield victories for the SAF and created a shift in momentum in the conflict.
But lacking the minimum votes from even half the UN Security Council to expand the embargo in addition to the likely prospect of a Russian veto, the US agreed to a one-month technical extension of the current embargo in the hope that an additional month of lobbying would add supporters to its initiative. The final piece of Washington’s maximum pressure campaign came last week when it chose to tighten its noose around Khartoum by making General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s attendance at the General Assembly contingent upon his signing of Washington’s stale ceasefire deal. Acts of diplomatic blackmail are high-risk gambits and, in this case, reflect more Washington’s own deep embarrassment and growing frustration at failing to get a deal signed than the army’s intransigence.
Since Washington first tabled its ceasefire proposal in the days leading up to last year’s UN General Assembly, it has been repeatedly stymied by both sides’ unwillingness to sign. But fighters are going to fight. Especially if they believe that the deal they are meant to sign only allows the other side to regroup and rearm.
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