Sudan’s Peace Process Is Negotiating a War That No Longer Exists
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John Ashworth
Jul 22, 2026, 5:57:45 AMJul 22
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Sudan’s Peace Process Is Negotiating a War That No Longer Exists
By Ezzat Khairi
African Arguments
July 21, 20260
More than three years into Sudan’s war, the battlefield has changed
more than the peace process. The Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF,
recovered Khartoum and consolidated its hold over much of the north,
east and centre. Fighting shifted towards Darfur, Kordofan and Blue
Nile, while drone attacks reached areas once considered secure.
Khartoum illustrates the danger of confusing territorial recovery with
political restoration: more than 2 million displaced people have
returned, but electricity remains limited and public institutions
struggle to function.
Diplomatic assumptions remain where they were in April 2023. Most
initiatives approach Sudan as a two-sided conflict between a national
army and a paramilitary rebellion. They expect Gen. Abdel Fattah
al-Burhan and Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, leader Mohamed Hamdan
Dagalo, known as Hemedti, to bargain and deliver the forces behind
them.
That model no longer fits the war.
Neither leader fully embodies the coalition fighting in his name.
Their camps contain armed movements, tribal formations, ideological
brigades, local defence groups and commanders with their own
constituencies and expectations of the postwar order. Battlefield
coordination is not political unity, and a leader who can direct an
offensive may still be unable to impose the sacrifices required by
peace.
Coalitions That Can Fight but Cannot Make Peace
The SAF remains Sudan’s formal military institution, but the camp
gathered under its banner extends beyond the regular army. It includes
Darfuri movements associated with Minni Minawi and Jibril Ibrahim,
armed networks linked to the former regime, tribal forces, popular
mobilisation formations and local defence groups. The Africa Center
for Strategic Studies estimates that roughly 150 armed groups and
militias operate across the conflict, a landscape too fragmented for
the image of two disciplined forces facing one another.
Burhan has tried to centralise this camp, including through a 2025
decree placing allied formations nominally under army command. But an
administrative order cannot erase the interests that brought them into
the war. Former rebel movements seek political leverage and state
resources; local militias want security and territorial influence;
networks associated with Omar al-Bashir’s former order see the army’s
survival as a route back into power.
The RSF camp is also broader than Hemedti’s organisation. It relies on
allied tribal and regional forces and has been joined by Abdelaziz
al-Hilu’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, or SPLM-N. Al-Hilu
was named deputy head of the presidential council in the RSF-backed
parallel government, but his movement retains its own command,
territory and political programme. Treating it as merely an RSF unit
confuses alliance with subordination.
A shared enemy can postpone disputes over power, territory and
resources. A settlement brings those disputes forward at once.
War can conceal these contradictions. Peace exposes them.
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Antalya, Türkiye, April 11, 2025
Why Burhan Can Sign but Not Deliver
Any serious agreement would have to rebuild a unified national army,
integrate or demobilise allied formations, establish civilian
oversight, exclude the National Congress Party and former-regime
networks from controlling the transition, and confront wartime abuses.
Each step threatens an important part of the coalition on which Burhan
depends.
Civilian oversight would reduce military autonomy. Disarmament would
weaken militia commanders. Accountability would threaten those
implicated in abuses. Rebuilding one professional army would challenge
movements accustomed to negotiating through their weapons.
Burhan can sign an agreement. The harder question is whether he can
bind the armed actors fighting beside him when implementation begins
to dismantle the bargain holding them together. This does not absolve
him: he helped construct and empower this wartime order. But it means
he cannot become Sudan’s peace president, whether he wants to or not,
without first transforming the coalition that sustains his authority.
Military victories deepen that contradiction. Every battlefield gain
raises expectations among allied groups that they will receive
positions, resources or recognition in the future state. The stronger
the coalition becomes militarily, the more costly compromise becomes
politically. Military momentum can therefore narrow, rather than
expand, the space for peace. Hemedti faces a parallel constraint:
commitments made by the RSF leadership cannot automatically bind
al-Hilu’s movement or every tribal and regional force within its wider
alliance.
The Diplomatic Fiction of Two Parties
Bilateral diplomacy conceals this problem by granting Burhan a
monopoly over the representation of armed power within the SAF
coalition. Hemedti receives a similar monopoly on the other side.
Mediators assume that an agreement between the two men will bind every
force fighting in their names. It may not.
Excluded groups can frustrate implementation without publicly
rejecting an agreement. They can delay withdrawals, conceal weapons,
provoke local confrontations or insist that commitments made by
coalition leaders do not apply to them. A ceasefire can collapse
through supposedly local incidents before either principal party
formally renounces it.
The answer is not to give every militia an equal political seat. That
would reward armed power and turn fragmentation into a constitutional
principle. But ignoring actors capable of spoiling a settlement merely
postpones the problem until the agreement is weakest.
A Process Built for the War That Exists
The SAF and RSF leaderships must negotiate nationwide questions: a
cessation of hostilities, humanitarian access, civilian protection,
monitoring and the broad sequence of withdrawals. But a second
security table should include major armed actors with identifiable
commands, organized forces, territorial presence and the ability to
uphold or undermine a ceasefire.
Direct participation would also limit Burhan’s ability to use his
coalition’s complexity for his own negotiating advantage. Under the
bilateral model, he can invoke allies’ presumed objections to resist
compromise, then claim he cannot compel them to implement commitments
made without their consent. At the security table, those formations
would have to state their interests directly, accept defined
obligations and bear responsibility for compliance. Mediators could
distinguish genuine community-security concerns from demands used to
preserve wartime privilege or strengthen Burhan’s bargaining position.
The same rule should apply across the conflict. Principal SAF-aligned
formations should speak for themselves on security obligations.
Al-Hilu and the SPLM-N should not be represented indirectly by
Hemedti. Abdul Wahid al-Nur’s Sudan Liberation Movement-Army, which
has joined neither camp but retains forces and territory in Jebel
Marra, should participate in talks concerning humanitarian corridors,
local ceasefires and security in Darfur.
Internally displaced families setting up shelter at the Tawila
displacement site in North Darfur, October 19, 2025
This would not be a parliament of militias. Its mandate would be
narrow: declaring forces and weapons, accepting monitoring, observing
ceasefire lines and negotiating verifiable routes towards integration,
demobilisation or disarmament.
A seat to disarm is not a share of the state.
Armed actors can negotiate the mechanics of ending violence. They
should not determine Sudan’s constitutional future, which must remain
the work of democratic civilian forces.
The destination remains clear: one professional military, no parallel
armed formations, civilian control of the state and the return of
politics to unarmed citizens. But diplomacy cannot restore the state’s
monopoly over legitimate force by pretending that monopoly already
exists.
Peace must begin with the Sudan that exists, not the simpler country
its mediators still imagine.
https://africanarguments.org/2026/07/sudans-peace-process-is-negotiating-a-war-that-no-longer-exists/
END
______________________
John Ashworth
ashwor...@gmail.com
+254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile, WhatsApp and Signal)
PO Box 403 - 00206, Kiserian, Kenya
By Ezzat Khairi
African Arguments
July 21, 20260
More than three years into Sudan’s war, the battlefield has changed
more than the peace process. The Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF,
recovered Khartoum and consolidated its hold over much of the north,
east and centre. Fighting shifted towards Darfur, Kordofan and Blue
Nile, while drone attacks reached areas once considered secure.
Khartoum illustrates the danger of confusing territorial recovery with
political restoration: more than 2 million displaced people have
returned, but electricity remains limited and public institutions
struggle to function.
Diplomatic assumptions remain where they were in April 2023. Most
initiatives approach Sudan as a two-sided conflict between a national
army and a paramilitary rebellion. They expect Gen. Abdel Fattah
al-Burhan and Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, leader Mohamed Hamdan
Dagalo, known as Hemedti, to bargain and deliver the forces behind
them.
That model no longer fits the war.
Neither leader fully embodies the coalition fighting in his name.
Their camps contain armed movements, tribal formations, ideological
brigades, local defence groups and commanders with their own
constituencies and expectations of the postwar order. Battlefield
coordination is not political unity, and a leader who can direct an
offensive may still be unable to impose the sacrifices required by
peace.
Coalitions That Can Fight but Cannot Make Peace
The SAF remains Sudan’s formal military institution, but the camp
gathered under its banner extends beyond the regular army. It includes
Darfuri movements associated with Minni Minawi and Jibril Ibrahim,
armed networks linked to the former regime, tribal forces, popular
mobilisation formations and local defence groups. The Africa Center
for Strategic Studies estimates that roughly 150 armed groups and
militias operate across the conflict, a landscape too fragmented for
the image of two disciplined forces facing one another.
Burhan has tried to centralise this camp, including through a 2025
decree placing allied formations nominally under army command. But an
administrative order cannot erase the interests that brought them into
the war. Former rebel movements seek political leverage and state
resources; local militias want security and territorial influence;
networks associated with Omar al-Bashir’s former order see the army’s
survival as a route back into power.
The RSF camp is also broader than Hemedti’s organisation. It relies on
allied tribal and regional forces and has been joined by Abdelaziz
al-Hilu’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, or SPLM-N. Al-Hilu
was named deputy head of the presidential council in the RSF-backed
parallel government, but his movement retains its own command,
territory and political programme. Treating it as merely an RSF unit
confuses alliance with subordination.
A shared enemy can postpone disputes over power, territory and
resources. A settlement brings those disputes forward at once.
War can conceal these contradictions. Peace exposes them.
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Antalya, Türkiye, April 11, 2025
Why Burhan Can Sign but Not Deliver
Any serious agreement would have to rebuild a unified national army,
integrate or demobilise allied formations, establish civilian
oversight, exclude the National Congress Party and former-regime
networks from controlling the transition, and confront wartime abuses.
Each step threatens an important part of the coalition on which Burhan
depends.
Civilian oversight would reduce military autonomy. Disarmament would
weaken militia commanders. Accountability would threaten those
implicated in abuses. Rebuilding one professional army would challenge
movements accustomed to negotiating through their weapons.
Burhan can sign an agreement. The harder question is whether he can
bind the armed actors fighting beside him when implementation begins
to dismantle the bargain holding them together. This does not absolve
him: he helped construct and empower this wartime order. But it means
he cannot become Sudan’s peace president, whether he wants to or not,
without first transforming the coalition that sustains his authority.
Military victories deepen that contradiction. Every battlefield gain
raises expectations among allied groups that they will receive
positions, resources or recognition in the future state. The stronger
the coalition becomes militarily, the more costly compromise becomes
politically. Military momentum can therefore narrow, rather than
expand, the space for peace. Hemedti faces a parallel constraint:
commitments made by the RSF leadership cannot automatically bind
al-Hilu’s movement or every tribal and regional force within its wider
alliance.
The Diplomatic Fiction of Two Parties
Bilateral diplomacy conceals this problem by granting Burhan a
monopoly over the representation of armed power within the SAF
coalition. Hemedti receives a similar monopoly on the other side.
Mediators assume that an agreement between the two men will bind every
force fighting in their names. It may not.
Excluded groups can frustrate implementation without publicly
rejecting an agreement. They can delay withdrawals, conceal weapons,
provoke local confrontations or insist that commitments made by
coalition leaders do not apply to them. A ceasefire can collapse
through supposedly local incidents before either principal party
formally renounces it.
The answer is not to give every militia an equal political seat. That
would reward armed power and turn fragmentation into a constitutional
principle. But ignoring actors capable of spoiling a settlement merely
postpones the problem until the agreement is weakest.
A Process Built for the War That Exists
The SAF and RSF leaderships must negotiate nationwide questions: a
cessation of hostilities, humanitarian access, civilian protection,
monitoring and the broad sequence of withdrawals. But a second
security table should include major armed actors with identifiable
commands, organized forces, territorial presence and the ability to
uphold or undermine a ceasefire.
Direct participation would also limit Burhan’s ability to use his
coalition’s complexity for his own negotiating advantage. Under the
bilateral model, he can invoke allies’ presumed objections to resist
compromise, then claim he cannot compel them to implement commitments
made without their consent. At the security table, those formations
would have to state their interests directly, accept defined
obligations and bear responsibility for compliance. Mediators could
distinguish genuine community-security concerns from demands used to
preserve wartime privilege or strengthen Burhan’s bargaining position.
The same rule should apply across the conflict. Principal SAF-aligned
formations should speak for themselves on security obligations.
Al-Hilu and the SPLM-N should not be represented indirectly by
Hemedti. Abdul Wahid al-Nur’s Sudan Liberation Movement-Army, which
has joined neither camp but retains forces and territory in Jebel
Marra, should participate in talks concerning humanitarian corridors,
local ceasefires and security in Darfur.
Internally displaced families setting up shelter at the Tawila
displacement site in North Darfur, October 19, 2025
This would not be a parliament of militias. Its mandate would be
narrow: declaring forces and weapons, accepting monitoring, observing
ceasefire lines and negotiating verifiable routes towards integration,
demobilisation or disarmament.
A seat to disarm is not a share of the state.
Armed actors can negotiate the mechanics of ending violence. They
should not determine Sudan’s constitutional future, which must remain
the work of democratic civilian forces.
The destination remains clear: one professional military, no parallel
armed formations, civilian control of the state and the return of
politics to unarmed citizens. But diplomacy cannot restore the state’s
monopoly over legitimate force by pretending that monopoly already
exists.
Peace must begin with the Sudan that exists, not the simpler country
its mediators still imagine.
https://africanarguments.org/2026/07/sudans-peace-process-is-negotiating-a-war-that-no-longer-exists/
END
______________________
John Ashworth
ashwor...@gmail.com
+254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile, WhatsApp and Signal)
PO Box 403 - 00206, Kiserian, Kenya
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