Sudan’s Fragile Peace: Washington’s Conference and the Politics of Humanitarianism| Sudanow Magazine

What took place in Washington under the title of a “Sudan Peace Conference” cannot be read in isolation from its true context. It represents a belated attempt to recycle a crisis that has largely been settled on the battlefield, rather than a comprehensive peace initiative in the strategic sense. The evidence is visible on the ground, most notably in the breaking of the siege through the opening of the Dilling–Kadugli roads. Peace, when it follows a fundamental shift in the balance of power, should serve to entrench justice and move beyond sterile debates—not to manage the confusion resulting from the collapse of a regional military project that failed on the ground due to rebellion, resilience, and state reconstitution.

The talk of a “ready-made document,” an “end to the war,” and “humanitarian access,” after nearly three years of international silence, reflects less a genuine concern for peace than a late attempt to adapt to a new reality imposed by military developments. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), previously marketed under the notion of “plurality of parties” as a force capable of imposing a fait accompli, have seen their core operational structure dismantled. Their leadership and tribal base have fractured; they have lost strategic cities, weapons depots, and supply lines, and have shifted from a coup project into a fragmented security burden.

At such moments, peace processes do not usually begin; rather, political rescue efforts for the militarily defeated do. This is the core dilemma of the Washington conference. It did not stem from a realistic reading of the roots of the conflict, but from a desire to leap over its outcomes by reinserting a collapsing militia into the political scene under humanitarian and diplomatic banners—revealing the bankruptcy of the wills that supported and sponsored the rebellion and continue to do so.

The danger in the conference’s discourse does not lie in its talk of aid or humanitarian truces, but in its attempt to manufacture a false equivalence between the Sudanese state—with its existing legitimacy—and a militia that has committed massacres, genocide, rape, looting, and forced displacement. These acts can only be described as crimes against humanity and have been condemned by credible international human rights mechanisms. The RSF is neither a political actor, nor a social force, nor a legitimate negotiating entity. It is an armed organization outside the law, founded on systematic violence and sustained by a war economy. It possesses no moral, legal, or national right to sit at a table determining Sudan’s future and its system of governance after such a record of devastation.

Incorporating such an entity into political negotiations does not constitute a settlement; it is a crime against the Sudanese people. It amounts to the re-legitimization of crime and the entrenchment of impunity—a logic that history has repeatedly shown does not produce peace, but rather lays the groundwork for more brutal and vengeful cycles of violence.

The most problematic dimension of this path lies in the instrumentalization of humanitarian action as a tool for political whitewashing and the use of material leverage to reward the perpetrator. When slogans of civilian protection and humanitarian access are raised while deliberately avoiding the naming of perpetrators, the halting of their arms supplies, and the accountability of their sponsors, humanitarianism is stripped of its ethical value and reduced to a tool of selective, utilitarian political pressure.

Here, the stark contradiction in the Emirati role becomes evident. The United Arab Emirates, which today presents itself as a “humanitarian donor” in Sudan, is the same actor that has faced multiple accusations—supported by reports and investigative journalism and human rights documentation—of providing direct and indirect support to the RSF, whether through arms supplies, facilitation of logistical networks, or fueling the war economy across the region. In any serious ethical or political assessment, it is impossible to separate the actor who helped produce the catastrophe from its later claim to play the role of humanitarian savior.

The concept of “humanitarian donors” loses its meaning when neutrality is absent and when humanitarian funding contradicts the source of the crime itself. Humanity is not measured by the volume of shipments, but by the principles and conventions that govern it—by standing clearly with victims, through moral clarity, integrity of action, and a willingness to bear political and ethical responsibility. When aid is used to whitewash roles or to recycle a politically defeated militia, we are facing politicized humanitarianism that serves regional balances and diplomatic courtesies rather than the victims’ blood.

In the same context, one cannot overlook the problematic role played by the former U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan, Tom Perriello, and the current envoy, Massad Boulos. Their statements at various stages reflected a clear bias in political assessment. Whenever the Sudanese state achieved tangible military progress or civilian actions that directly touched citizens’ lives, the envoy rushed to downplay these developments or frame them as “escalation” rather than a restoration of state sovereignty, repeatedly invoking the “Quartet” as the most appropriate framework for a solution—despite the state having clearly defined its options and principles for engaging with any genuine peace-seeking will.

In practice, this Quartet has been overtaken by events and is no longer capable of producing a real settlement, due to structural flaws that have plagued it since inception: imbalance, conflicting interests among its members, lack of neutrality by some, and its failure to name sources of violence or exert real pressure on the sponsors of the rebellion. Clinging to a framework proven ineffective does not signal commitment to peace, but rather an inability to keep pace with realities on the ground.

Conversely, a new regional current has begun to take shape in recent months, along with a political safety net more aligned with the concept of genuine peace in Sudan. This includes countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. Despite differing motivations, this path is characterized by greater political realism, respect for Sudanese sovereignty and existing institutions, rejection of false equivalence between the national army and outlaw militias, and affirmation of Sudan’s unity and institutional integrity.

This shift does not represent ideological alignment, but rather a growing recognition that any peace not rooted in the state, public sentiment, and the addressing of the roots of rebellion—while putting an end to harmful regional interventions—will be delayed, temporary, or illusory.

As for the talk of imposing a civilian government from abroad under vague slogans, it reflects a superficial understanding of Sudanese reality and reproduces projects of external tutelage. The Sudanese people do not reject civilian rule as a principle; they reject guardianship and the recycling of elites that failed to secure genuine popular legitimacy or became tied to external agendas. Civilian governance is not a formula imposed through conferences or crafted by envoys. It is a national internal process that begins after defeating the rebellion, drying up its arms sources, holding its leaders accountable, and returning to constitutional legitimacy and the logic of one state and one army.

Any genuine settlement in Sudan must start from a non-negotiable premise: criminalizing the RSF as an outlaw militia, its complete removal from the political and security landscape, the surrender of its weapons, and the accountability of its leadership—followed by the launch of a civilian transitional process without imposed names or platforms. Handover and transfer, not forced partnership, is the foundation.

What is unfolding today in Washington is a test of Sudanese awareness before it is a test of international intentions. Either a national narrative grounded in justice and sovereignty prevails, or an imposed narrative seeks to politically rescue a militia after its military and legal collapse. History teaches us that wars that end without justice do not truly end; they return in more violent forms. This is what Sudan cannot afford to repeat.

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