Sudan’s Option in Confronting the Sponsors of War

Dr. Mohamed Hasab Al-Rasoul

At the UN Security Council session held last Monday, the Sudanese government—through Prime Minister Kamil Idris—presented a comprehensive national initiative aimed at ending the war in Sudan, now ongoing for more than a thousand days, and opening a new political track rooted in a Sudanese national reference. The initiative deliberately distances itself from external proposals through which the United States and the international and regional powers backing the war have sought to manage the conflict rather than end it.

Idris stressed that the initiative represents a purely Sudanese option for exiting the crisis, warning that the continuation of the war has become an existential threat to the state, leading to the dismantling of its institutions and compounding the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe.

Components of the Initiative

The Sudanese government’s initiative is built on an integrated set of core elements—political, security, humanitarian, and societal—aimed at ending the war, restoring national sovereignty, and ensuring a smooth transition toward stable national governance, as follows:

An immediate and comprehensive nationwide ceasefire, accompanied by the withdrawal of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) from cities, civilian facilities, and vital infrastructure, under international and regional supervision to ensure security and stability, protect civilians, and create conditions conducive to a multidimensional national process.

The regrouping of RSF elements in agreed-upon camps, their disarmament, and the termination of their military and political role, thereby ending the existence of any force parallel to the state and its institutions, and paving the way for the professional and orderly implementation of Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) programs.

The establishment of a unified framework for the armed forces that guarantees their cohesion, confines weapons exclusively to them, and strengthens their role in protecting the country, its sovereignty, and the independence of national decision-making.

Facilitating humanitarian access and the voluntary, safe return of internally displaced persons and refugees to their places of origin, alongside the implementation of reconstruction programs in affected areas to ensure the stability of indigenous communities and restore demographic balance.

Launching an inclusive national dialogue involving all political and societal forces, excluding only those implicated in war crimes and grave violations, with the aim of reaching consensus on transitional arrangements that lay the foundations for popular rule and electoral legitimacy through free and fair general elections under international supervision.

Ensuring the national ownership of solutions and consolidating an independent Sudanese will, free from guardianship or external agendas, so that the country’s present and future are shaped in accordance with Sudanese interests and choices.

The Four Most Sensitive Pillars

The government’s initiative rests on four core pillars that represent the most serious points of confrontation with the external forces behind the war, while simultaneously exposing a central dimension of the true nature of the conflict in Sudan:

First: The regrouping and disarmament of the RSF and the termination of its military and political role—an approach aimed at dismantling the armed structure upon which the war has been built and preventing militias from continuing as functional tools serving foreign projects and guaranteeing external influence within Sudan.

Second: The return of indigenous populations to their homes after being displaced by the RSF. This return constitutes an antidote to the demographic engineering project that forms a core objective of the war strategy against Sudan. Just as Western powers opposed the right of Palestinians to return to Palestine, these same forces oppose the return of indigenous Sudanese to their lands and the restoration of their historical rights, and resist any effort to secure demographic balance—particularly in Darfur.

Third: Democratic transformation and the return of authority to the people through free elections—a path likewise rejected externally, as it directly undermines the interests of foreign powers that are well aware that fair elections would bring to power national forces committed to sovereignty and independence, while leaving groups aligned with external actors with no realistic chance of electoral victory.

Fourth: The national character of the solution itself, which is also rejected by both external and internal war actors, as nationally driven solutions based on Sudanese interests fundamentally contradict projects of guardianship, domination, and “neo-colonialism.”

Through this initiative, the Sudanese government effectively transcends all international and regional agendas and initiatives, rendering the so-called Quartet mechanism devoid of legitimacy and relevance—particularly since those initiatives were designed to manage and prolong the war in order to secure dominance over Sudan after exhausting it and dismantling its sources of strength.

The Hard Questions

The Sudanese initiative was presented at a decisive moment, when the continuation of the war had become an existential threat to the state and to a nation called Sudan—through the exhaustion of its people, the depletion of its capacities, the weakening of its institutions, and the imposition of demographic and political realities by force of military aggression and external pressure.

In this context of deep exhaustion, the government’s initiative represents an advanced political step toward reclaiming national decision-making and shifting the country away from a model of externally managed conflict toward a path of ending the war through an independent national vision—one in which halting foreign interference is a foundational condition for shaping the present and building the future in line with the will of the Sudanese people.

By presenting the initiative before the Security Council, the Sudanese government has placed the international community—regional and global actors alike—before a genuine test of credibility: will external actors stand with nationally driven solutions that uphold independence, sovereignty, and stability, or will they remain captive to their colonial projects?

At the same time, the most pressing question remains internal: will the Sudanese state adhere to this initiative as a sovereign, unifying option to end the war, or will it yield to regional and international pressures that seek to manage the war rather than resolve it?