After three years of war in Sudan, the Sudanese people continue to pay the worst price. Since the start of this year alone, 700 civilians have been killed in drone strikes by the warring factions; two out of every three Sudanese are now acutely food insecure; and the poverty rate has deepened, with now 70% of the population living at or below the World Bank's poverty threshold of $2/day.
The one bright spot - the courageous mutual aid societies delivering assistance and hope - are being extinguished.
Even the one bright spot to emerge from the war, the courageous mutual aid societies that sprung up across the country to deliver assistance - and hope - in the absence of international involvement are being slowly extinguished. More than 40% of 844 community groups recently surveyed have had to disband in recent months due to a lack of support from the international community.
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The international conference in Berlin, Germany today, sponsored by the U.S., UK, Germany, France, along with the EU and African Union, is intended to if not reverse, then to at least slow down Sudan's descent into failed state status and, hopefully, inject new resources into assistance programs and offer some indication as to where the country might go from here. But if today's meeting is anything like the previous iterations held in Paris and London, then we are unlikely to see much actual change for the people of Sudan.
As the country and its people enter a fourth year of war, it is not enough for Berlin to simply raise a passing awareness that Sudan's war is still going on. But with neither the SAF nor RSF invited to participate, even in some form of marginal executive session; and most international donors already feeling dramatically new fiscal pressure from the after effects of America and Israel's costly escapade in Iran, on top of already reduced aid budgets, the likelihood of a political breakthrough in support of a ceasefire or substantial new assistance funds to make up for the massive lacuna seems a distant hope.
With so many concurrent challenges playing out as part of the war, from internal political disunity to humanitarian gaps to regional meddling to the return of the former regime, it is impossible to see the forest through the trees. The lack of a comprehensive diplomatic approach has meant that attempts to resolve any of these individual crises in some rough sequence, as U.S. Advisor for African and Arab Affairs Massad Boulos laid out to the UN Security Council in February, has been easily undermined by overlapping issues and competing mediations. There is no solution to increasing humanitarian access without first agreeing on a ceasefire and withdrawal mechanism. But neither side is interested in a ceasefire without a clearer understanding of the political process that will follow and their role in it. And around and around Sudan's cycle of conflict and talking goes.
Washington's Myopic Motivations
The motor for talks to alleviate the current suffering remains the United States, but its pursuit of peace in Sudan is being done for all the wrong reasons. Instead of a vision for what should and could be achieved, and a resourced strategy (both financial and diplomatic) for achieving it, Washington's motivation in Sudan appears to be threefold.
First, it is simply an effort to prevent something worse from happening, not for achieving something better than what existed before the war. Conceived, no doubt, by U.S. military and intelligence interests, Washington's posture is largely defensive and meant to avoid Sudan sliding back toward a failed state, terrorist state or becoming part of the wider "axis of upheaval" with another Islamist autocrat at its head.
A defensive policy to deter a terrorist state is unsustainable.
But a policy conceived purely in pursuit of a least bad outcome neither adequately reflects the hopes of Sudan's people, nor addresses the interests of the powerful regional states fueling the conflict. Ultimately, such an approach will not only prove unsustainable in the long run, but it fails to guard against the inevitable unintended consequences of such a myopic goal.
The Administration's second motivation comes as a direct response to a request from Trump financial and political ally Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who sought the White House's good offices in November of last year to find an end to the conflict. Trump himself made explicit to the world that "it was not on my charts to be involved [in Sudan]" because the conflict was "so crazy and out of control, but now I see how important that is to you [MBS]…so we are going to start working on Sudan."
Hardly the vision President Bush offered in his 2001 Rose Garden address kicking off his Administration's efforts to end Sudan's North-South civil war, when he pledged that "we're committed to pursuing a just peace [in Sudan], which will spare that land from more years of sorrow." Here again, a motivation that is devoid of either core convictions or core interests is unlikely to produce much of lasting value.
Trump's third motivation, like so many of his Presidency, appears entirely self-interested and part of a now-spectacularly hard-to-swallow White House narrative that Trump's is a "presidency of peace." Leaving aside the calamitous conflict in Iran he initiated with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Trump's claim to have already ended eight separate world conflicts, along with his seeming obsession for a Nobel Peace Prize, appear sufficient motivation for his involvement in Sudan now.
But the conflict he has dipped his toe into is neither ripe for resolution, nor particularly critical to near-term U.S. national security interests. This means that it won't benefit from the kind of deep expertise, financial resources, or high-level political involvement necessary to sustain the kind of tireless commitment required to achieve an actual peace. Nor is there a proverbial pot of gold (or critical minerals) awaiting Trump and his business allies as they labor to the end of an improbably successful peace effort.
Washington Benefits From Sudan's Partition
With no clear vision for Sudan's future, undergirded by a set of morally questionable and short-term motivations, the Administration is continuing to push forward with a peace proposal for Sudan which even its authors (Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt) now appear only vaguely in support of.
More importantly, none seem particularly concerned that in the unlikely event that the belligerents decide by themselves to accept a ceasefire that such an agreement would formalize Sudan's partition, a condition that both Egypt and Saudi Arabia have said would constitute crossing a redline, and would most certainly further imperil the already fraught humanitarian situation all have committed to alleviating.
But absent a political roadmap that quickly transitions Sudan to a civilian-led administration, that at the same time requires both belligerents to surrender any claims to power, a ceasefire would create the very infringement on Sudan's sovereignty and unity that regional states claim to oppose.
Perhaps that is the intent. The Trump Administration has been comfortable working with and advancing its strategic interests with both sides in Libya's bifurcated state. From Washington's view, a Sudan divided yet at relative peace creates the opportunity for aid to be delivered, livelihoods to be restored, and for political talks to occur. But Sudan isn't Libya, just like Iran wasn't Venezuela. But these are lessons U.S. leaders appear disinterested in learning.
Indeed, a ceasefire that results in Sudan's current de facto partition between SAF and RSF forces becoming the de jure boundary between two new political entities serves almost no one's interests - except Washington's. The UAE, which has shown a dogged determination to sustain its support to the RSF over multiple years and growing public opprobrium, would not achieve the economic and political benefits it bet on obtaining by having the RSF hold Sudan's actual political capital, Khartoum, along with its valuable and strategic Red Sea coast. An RSF holding sway over the western Darfur region and parts of south and central Sudan might offer modest new gold mining profits, but none of the strategic gains UAE has invested in obtaining.
A partition would also see both Egypt and Saudi Arabia's redline over Sudan's unity breached, along with their contention that a non-state actor like the RSF should not hold political power. This would open the door for similar forces across the region.
A relatively peaceful but divided Sudan serves what Washington sees as its financial interests, leaving a powerful genocidal militia in place.
For Cairo, the breach hits closer to home as a genocidal militia that sustains itself through illicit cross-border trade and the hiring of bandits from across the region would now control a porous stretch of shared border, presenting innumerable security threats to Egyptian authorities. In response, Cairo has already reportedly increased its drone surveillance of the border area and even taken kinetic action against RSF supply lines in the region. What more might they do if Nyala, the RSF's current Darfuri headquarters, becomes its political capital?
Moreover, leaving the RSF in control over roughly one-third of Sudan would devastate a neighboring region already on the brink of internal political and economic crises. Chad, Central African Republic, and South Sudan are three of the world's weakest, poorest, and most fragmented states that would now share a border with an RSF political entity. This would undoubtedly only increase the kind of illicit cross-border trade, recruitment, and instability that the RSF survives off of, but which could prove devastating to the already weak and enervated region.
But worst off will be the millions of Sudanese civilians living under RSF control. Past incidents of ceasefires, and even ceasefire talks, have been used by the RSF to commit some of the worst atrocities of the war. In May 2023, just after a 7-day ceasefire was signed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the RSF launched its most gruesome assault on the city of El Geneina in western Darfur, in a bout of violence so intense that the Biden Administration termed it a genocide.
Similarly, as RSF officials luxuriated in Washington last October to engage the SAF and Quad officials in ceasefire talks, RSF ground troops were planning and carrying out their largest assault to date on the capital of Darfur, El Fasher, in another episode of premeditated, genocidal violence. Since their consolidation of control over Darfur, the RSF has not stopped carrying out arrests, summary executions, drone strikes, rapes and forced displacements in areas under their control. It is hard to imagine that changing when the RSF is given freer reign over these lands.
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In Berlin, Others Must Step Forward
The biggest winner in this asymmetry of interests is Washington. A ceasefire deal on the cheap, that lets others worry about boorish issues like political structures and accountability, gets the Trump Administration another peacemaking "victory" to add its resumé and allows it to transform a favor paid to Saudi Arabia's leader into a debt owed to President Trump. Herein lies the problem. The country with the least skin in the game also has the most political leverage to help bring about a deal. The country with the shortest time horizon, motivated by its own tactical concerns, is the current engine for talks that will produce strategic ripple effects across the entire Red Sea and Horn of Africa regions if mishandled. Squaring these asymmetries of Washington's mediation is the challenge that must be addressed if there is any hope of achieving lasting peace in Sudan.
Today's Berlin conference is not going to do that. At best, it can signal that regional actors and institutions are now willing to step up to play a more determinative role in charting a peaceful outcome in Sudan. The AU, UN, EU, IGAD and other regional states have shown Washington too much deference and enabled its primacy in talks even though it has presented no unifying vision for Sudan's future nor sought to build real consensus outside the narrow interests of the Quad.
Civilian Sudanese voices are desperately needed.
Berlin is also a moment for the Sudanese themselves to take more ownership over their own political future. Like the proverbial sapling in the Redwood forest, in the absence of the warring parties, civilian voices will benefit from the sunlight that they need to take root and flourish. A Sudanese-owned roadmap for the way forward will be harder to dispute and ignore and might be the best tool available to inoculate the country from the short-term motivations fueling Washington's involvement.
On this anniversary of the conflict, Sudan is in desperate need of new thinking, new leaders, new motivations, and new outcomes. That which has been attempted before to bring this conflict to heel has not worked. New thinking and new actors are required. With any hope, Berlin can help deliver on this modest, yet essential objective
Cameron Hudson is a former Director of African Affairs at the U.S. National Security Council and former Chief of Staff to consecutive U.S. Special Envoys for Sudan. He is an independent political analyst and consultant on African peace, security, and governance.
