The Risks of a Short Truce in Sudan

Osman Mirghani

The stories emerging from El Fasher would make children’s hair turn grey. According to the Yale School of Public Health, satellite imagery shows that the massacres are ongoing. The eye-witness accounts of those who managed to escape indicate that a genocide is underway: bodies scattered across the streets and ethnic purges.

After its long slumber, the world has finally woken up to the magnitude of the suffering in the city. Many are now calling for accountability and for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to be designated a terrorist organization. At the same time, schemes are being cooked up behind the scenes, in conjunction with an organized media campaign intended to divert attention from the militia’s crimes in El Fasher and Bara, even to allow the RSF to turn those crimes into political capital. There are competing visions and considerations among various actors, with some seeking to keep the RSF as a bargaining chip they can use to undermine Sudan’s stability today, and perhaps again tomorrow.

We find a striking double standard here. The world insists on disarming militias and imposing a state monopoly on arms in other countries, but when it comes to Sudan, some seem keen on allowing the RSF to maintain its arms, even placing it on par with the national army.

How can one condemn the RSF for its atrocities (like its torture and genocide in El Fasher) and then, in the same breath, call for a truce that grants the RSF the same recognition as the Sudanese army?

The RSF has a very long record of war crimes. Anyone who believes it will suddenly change after signing a short-term truce is gravely mistaken. Brutality and ethnic violence have been part of its DNA since its inception.

Serious measures to hold the RSF accountable are needed: classifying its acts as terrorism, genocide, and crimes against humanity. Rewarding the RSF for what it has done in El Fasher by offering it a so-called “humanitarian” truce would be indefensible.

Who starved El Fasher in the first place? The city was besieged for more than 18 months and relentlessly shelled in attacks that spared neither hospitals, nor mosques, nor refugee camps. According to the United Nations and humanitarian organizations, the RSF has not allowed food and medicine to reach civilians, who were ultimately forced to eat animal feed as hunger became unbearable.

Throughout this period, the RSF obstructed relief convoys, looted and destroyed their trucks, and killed anyone who tried to leave the city to feed their family. It defied a UN Security Council resolution issued in June 2024, refusing to lift the siege and allow aid to reach the population. It also ignored subsequent calls by the UN for a brief humanitarian pause (which the army had accepted) so that aid could reach civilians facing dire conditions.

Now that the city has fallen, the calls for a “humanitarian” truce are growing louder, and the RSF is rushing to engage in talks!

The truth is that El Fasher has suffered, and continues to suffer, at the hands of the RSF. Most residents have fled; those who remain are being subjected to a genocide and war crimes that have been extensively documented in videos taken by the militia fighters themselves. A truce would do nothing but give the RSF a chance to take its breath, regroup, rearm, and prepare to attack other cities. Since the Jeddah talks began soon after the war broke out, the RSF has repeatedly exploited such opportunities, violating truce agreements and using them to plan new offensives.

Opening humanitarian corridors is a fundamental principle that must always be respected; it cannot be a goodwill gesture.

Humanitarian aid is a right. It should never have been acceptable for any party to use starvation as a weapon of war. Talk of these routes should not be tied to political negotiations or temporary arrangements. These corridors should remain everywhere: in El Fasher, Bara, El Obeid, Babanusa, En Nahud, and others.

As for negotiations to end the war, that is a separate issue. The objectives and terms must be clear; ambiguity would only deepen the crisis.

Sudan cannot afford another round of flawed agreements and negotiations that have, time and again, empowered armed militias, rewarding them with positions, power, and privileges. That policy has completely failed; Sudan is currently paying the price of that failure.

No real solution can overlook the need to dismantle and demobilize the RSF, hold them accountable for war crimes, and establish firm military and security foundations that lay the groundwork for future integration. Only then can Sudan overcome the scourge of competing armies, restore security and stability, create the conditions for lasting peace, and allow civilian and democratic rule to resume.