{"id":60001,"date":"2026-01-15T17:07:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T14:07:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=60001"},"modified":"2026-01-15T17:07:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T14:07:19","slug":"why-peace-with-the-rapid-support-forces-is-impossible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/15\/why-peace-with-the-rapid-support-forces-is-impossible\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Peace with the Rapid Support Forces Is Impossible"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amjad Farid Al-Tayeb<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The armed conflict that has engulfed Sudan since April 15, 2023, between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia has increasingly evolved from a clash between two military actors into a system of structural violence. This system seeks to redraw political geography through force of arms, reshape communities through coercion, and hijack politics under the weight of collective threats.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the war enters its third year, it has become evident that most previous initiatives\u2014such as international mediation efforts in Jeddah, the Geneva talks, and more recently the Quadrilateral Initiative\u2014have failed because they ignored, or attempted to bypass, a fundamental reality: when an armed militia controls civilians and uses them as instruments of political and military blackmail, any negotiation becomes merely an extension and legitimization of violence rather than a means to end it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps the clearest example of this was the RSF\u2019s exploitation of successive ceasefires brokered through the Jeddah platform. These truces were intended primarily to facilitate humanitarian access and protect civilians, yet the militia used them to expand its military presence in densely populated civilian areas\u2014such as Khartoum and several cities in Darfur\u2014by occupying private homes and public facilities, including hospitals and schools. Periods of calm were used to redeploy and resupply forces without direct confrontation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The militia later refused to withdraw from these sites, as stipulated in the Jeddah Agreement, leading to the collapse of mediation efforts. Ceasefires thus became tools to entrench violations rather than steps toward genuine peace.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this context, the new Sudanese peace plan\u2014formally presented by Prime Minister Dr. Kamil Idris to the UN Security Council on December 23, 2025\u2014stands out as the most realistic initiative to date. It represents a systematic development of the roadmap adopted by the Sudanese government earlier that year. Its significance lies not in promising quick or idealized peace, but in correctly diagnosing the war as a form of internal occupation and placing civilian protection at the core of any solution\u2014a factor long neglected by previous initiatives.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The plan rests on a fundamental principle: the withdrawal of militias from civilian areas is a necessary precondition for any peace process or political dialogue. This separation between military control and political legitimacy is essential to breaking the cycle of violence.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Real Dilemma: The Futility of Negotiation Under the Gun<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

No negotiation conducted while the RSF controls populated cities and continues to commit abuses against civilians can be considered a genuine peace process. Such talks amount to negotiations under duress, or collective hostage-taking, where civilians are used as leverage under constant threats of killing, displacement, or starvation whenever talks falter or the balance of power shifts.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is not a theoretical concern, but one grounded in the RSF\u2019s documented conduct during the war. What occurred in El Fasher is a stark illustration. The city was besieged for more than 18 months, from May 2024 until its fall on October 26, 2025. During this period, the militia rejected negotiations and refused a humanitarian truce proposed by UN Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres in June 2025\u2014an offer accepted by Sudan\u2019s Sovereignty Council Chairman Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and later reintroduced by Prime Minister Idris in August 2025.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Civilians\u2019 suffering was transformed into a tool of military blackmail. The RSF imposed starvation sieges, restricted civilian movement, and effectively took residents hostage inside El Fasher, even constructing a wall around the city to prevent escape.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When El Fasher fell, it did so under a wave of brutal violence, accompanied by mass atrocities documented by organizations such as Human Rights Watch and M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res. Even hospital patients were not spared: the militia massacred 460 patients, caregivers, and medical staff at the Saudi Hospital upon storming the city.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Civilians were not parties to the battle; they became its fuel. Reports indicate tens of thousands killed and hundreds of thousands displaced. After the city\u2019s fall, the crime extended beyond military action to an organized disinformation campaign aimed at denying the scale of atrocities, recasting the tragedy as \u201cliberation,\u201d and cloaking crimes in the language of stability.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Within this context emerged the figure known as Abu Lulu\u2014also called Al-Fateh Abdullah Idris, an RSF fighter\u2014who publicly boasted in documented social media videos, including on TikTok, of killing more than 1,000 people, including field executions of civilians in El Fasher after its fall. He epitomizes how the war has devolved into a spectacle of personalized, filmed violence, where killing and sadism become propaganda tools to terrorize communities and consolidate control.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This phenomenon is not isolated. It echoes what occurred in El Geneina, Ardamata, Khartoum, and villages across Al-Jazira\u2014from Wad Al-Noura to Al-Hilaliya.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Such violence reflects a fascistic ideological structure embedded in the RSF\u2019s behavior. Civilians are not treated as citizens, but as instruments of coercion, subjected to terror as a means of domination. Under these conditions, peace is impossible without dismantling this system of blackmail. Disinformation, moreover, is not a marginal media tactic but a defining feature of the militia\u2019s violent ideology and a structural component of the war\u2019s continuation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A recent study by academic Marc Owen Jones of Northwestern University revealed a vast disinformation network of approximately 19,000 accounts on X (formerly Twitter) that became active immediately after El Fasher\u2019s fall on October 26, 2025. The network sought to reshape reality by dominating hashtags, promoting \u201cliberation\u201d narratives, and flooding social media with misleading content.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jones described the network\u2014linked to regional states\u2014as the largest known digital disinformation operation in the world to date. It relies on fake accounts and automated tools to distort public discourse, obstructing the formation of an objective local and global public opinion capable of supporting genuine peace, and instead turning peace efforts into cover for reproducing violence.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Regrettably, some Sudanese political forces participate in this distortion by promoting the acceptance of falsehood as a basis for political action.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here, the practical application of Antonio Gramsci\u2019s concept of hegemony becomes evident. Control is not limited to physical repression, but extends to shaping collective consciousness through ideological dominance over public discourse, leading people to accept an imposed reality as natural and unquestionable.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Gramsci described in Prison Notebooks<\/em>, such hegemony\u2014originally analyzed in response to crises of capitalism\u2014today manifests in the RSF\u2019s digital disinformation campaigns, which seek to transform falsehood into manufactured consensus, thereby legitimizing violence as a means of reshaping Sudan\u2019s social and political reality.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why the New Sudanese Peace Plan Is More Realistic<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The realism of the Sudanese peace plan presented on December 23, 2025, lies in its methodical, sequential logic. It reflects a core principle of modern political philosophy articulated by John Rawls: no just and stable political order can be built without first removing primary coercion.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The plan does not leap into politics before addressing military realities, nor does it ask victims to negotiate with their tormentors while guns remain inside their homes. It seeks to prevent the recurrence of genocidal violence witnessed in El Geneina, El Fasher, Khartoum, and Al-Jazira, before politicians don their ties and sit at negotiation tables.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It begins where any sustainable peace must begin:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n