Trump finally got Sudan right: Squeeze the warlords

Ask a 17-year-old in Darfur why she did not sit her school-leaving exam this year, and she will not mention an American ceasefire text. The exam was held only in territory the army controls. Ask a shopkeeper in Nyala why the banknotes in his drawer became worthless overnight, or a father in Kordofan why his newborn has no birth certificate, and the answer is the same: not a truce, but a decision by the SAF-appointed authorities in the middle of a war.Sudan is living through a de facto partition. Its territory is divided between two armed forces, each of which has built its own governing authority. Society is fractured along ethnic lines, and both sides recruit on that basis. Hate speech and open calls for secession are heard on both sides. The army-appointed administration’s decisions on education, currency, and identity documents have hardened these divisions. The rival administration’s parallel steps have driven them deeper.The danger goes beyond a split between east and west. Neither camp is cohesive. If the war continues, Sudan could fracture into fiefdoms ruled by warlords, threatening the state’s very existence and the region’s stability for years. It is the war, not a ceasefire, that has brought Sudan to this point, and only a peace process can reverse the descent. The SAF’s appeal to national unity is a pretext. It came in response to mounting American pressure: in September, Washington withheld General Burhan’s United Nations visa, reportedly pending his acceptance of a 90-day ceasefire, and the State Department declared that neither the SAF nor the RSF represents legitimate governance. For those resisting an end to the fighting, the war has become an end in itself: It keeps them in power, enriches them, and lets them crush their civilian opponents. They are buying time until those aims are secured.No party should be allowed to treat delay as strategy, because ordinary Sudanese pay for every day without a ceasefire. U.N. relief chief Tom Fletcher says more than two-thirds of the population urgently need aid, with services in El Obeid at a breaking point. The World Food Program reports some 20 million people facing acute hunger, while displaced families in Tawila receive half rations. The International Organization for Migration warns that the aid pipeline could collapse without urgent funding. The costs no longer stop at Sudan’s borders. As a recent report by The Century Foundation shows, the war is becoming entangled with the turmoil around Bab el Mandeb, one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes, and with the conflict that has erupted in Ethiopia. Sudan’s war is now part of a wider regional confrontation, one that threatens international peace and security.None of this would matter if either side could actually win. Neither can, and Sudan’s history is clear. The first civil war began in 1955 and lasted 17 years before ending with the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972. The second lasted 22 years, killed some 2 million people, and ended with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005. Darfur went through Abuja and Doha before the Juba Peace Agreement of 2020. Each of these wars was fought for military victory. Each ended in a negotiated settlement, reached only after years of avoidable death. The clearest proof is the Islamist regime of 1989 itself. It declared jihad in the South and staked everything on total victory, then signed the CPA 16 years later. In 2011, the country lost a quarter of its territory.SILENT ON SUDAN, LOUD ON ISRAEL: YOUR ANTISEMITISM IS SHOWINGThat is the real content of today’s “military victory” project: restoring the Islamist order whose 30 years in power gave Sudan the secession of the South, atrocities in Darfur that led the ICC to indict its president, international isolation, economic collapse, and parallel armies such as the Rapid Support Forces, which it now fights by creating still more parallel armies. That would not be victory. It would be the return of the regime that created the conditions for this war. History offers Sudan no war won by force. The only question is how many more must die before the inevitable settlement, and whether the country will still be whole when it comes.This is why Washington’s recent turn is the right one. Over more than three years, Sudan’s warring parties have shown that they do not respond to appeals and diplomatic courtesies. They respond to costs. What is needed now is a coherent pressure package: an expanded arms embargo that shuts off the foreign supply lines fueling the war; the delegitimization of both warring parties, ending any hope that the war can serve as a ladder to power; and sanctions on any actor, inside or outside Sudan, that obstructs a ceasefire or humanitarian access. Pressure alone will not end the war, but pressure tied to a coordinated process for a ceasefire and a political settlement can. That is why Massad Boulos’s current effort to bring the Quad and the Quintet behind a single track matters. If Washington holds this course, the Trump administration can be the one that ends the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe.Khalid Omer Yousif is a Sudanese political leader and former minister of Cabinet affairs in Sudan’s civilian-led transitional government (2019–2021). A longtime advocate of democracy, peace, and civilian rule, he has opposed Sudan’s Islamist regime since his student activism in the late 1990s. He played a leading role in the 2018-19 revolution, helped negotiate Sudan’s democratic transition, and has remained active in efforts to end the current war through a civilian-led political process. He writes and speaks regularly on Sudan, regional security, and countering extremist movements.