PREVIEW
A secret meeting in Zurich between US President Donald Trump’s envoy and SAF Commander Burhan may cut across the regional rivalries blocking negotiations
A three-hour meeting in Zurich between Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) commander General Abdel Fattah al Burhan and United States President Donald Trump’s Senior Africa Advisor Massad Boulos on 11 August was the first sign of serious movement in Sudan peace negotiations for a year. It was arranged by Qatar, a key adjunct to US diplomacy under Trump, and all sides tried to keep the meeting secret. It was significant enough to prompt the Vice-President of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan to fly to Zurich to see Boulos the following day. Mansour is the UAE’s National Security Advisor and his government is the main foreign backer of General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo ‘Hemeti’ and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) which are trying, at horrendous human cost, to wrest control of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur.
The Boulos meetings in Zurich followed a failed meeting in early June with ambassadors from the Quad countries – the United States, United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Then US diplomats told their Sudanese counterparts they were working on new policy proposals to end the war (AC Vol 66 No 14, Would-be mediators mull a new initiative).
Conditions in Sudan have deteriorated sharply over the past year, worsened by ferocious attacks on civilians by rival military factions and chronic underfunding of United Nations relief efforts, driven by western governments – including the US – slashing aid budgets (Dispatches 28/7/25, Africa faces the brunt of Whitehall’s aid cuts, AC Vol 66 No 5, Western aid cuts reshape the geopolitical landscape & Vol 66 No 13, Development finance implodes with rich countries shifting to military budgets).
Western diplomacy has faltered. Britain’s Sudan summit in April ended in deadlock over the final communiqué (AC Vol 66 No 8, Cash, platitudes but no peace & Dispatches 22/4/25, Arab proxy war in Sudan laid bare as London summit fails). The last US-led initiative, held in Geneva a year ago, also failed. President Joe Biden’s energetic special envoy, Tom Perriello, left the post soon after. When Trump returned to the presidency on 20 January, his Senior Advisor for Africa – and father-in-law to presidential daughter Tiffany – Boulos pushed for renewed engagement. But his efforts were sidelined as he was drawn into the Congo-Kinshasa and Rwanda dossiers with proposals for minerals-for-security deals.
Few details have emerged about who will join Boulos’s Sudan team. Many established regional experts have left the State Department and the National Security Council. Nor is it clear what analysis has been commissioned on the latest developments in the war. Boulos was determined to convene a Quad meeting – if only to show the US-led format was still functioning – and to keep the UN and African Union away from any high-stakes military negotiations, in the unlikely event they chose to engage.
A Quad meeting in Washington DC on 30 July rehearsed familiar arguments and ended in the same stalemate. Egypt insisted the SAF and its newly appointed government should lead the transition. But the US draft statement excluded both the SAF and the RSF from any direct role.
When Egypt pressed its case, the UAE strongly opposed it – as it did in London in April and again in Washington in June. The meeting ended on that impasse. Most of the regional sponsors of Sudan’s war – Egypt, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, though not Turkey or Iran – are close US allies. The meeting at least clarified positions.
Egypt does not want to restrict the SAF or its civilian government in Port Sudan. President Abdel Fattah el Sisi and SAF leader Gen Burhan maintain cordial ties – shaped by decades of military cooperation, shared strategic interests and their training at the Cairo military academy. Their countries’ military-industrial networks are entrenched and interlocking.
Senior officers in both states hold stakes in each other’s defence firms. Along with that, Sisi backs Burhan’s forces, calculating they can preclude any democratic resolution to Sudan’s crisis, and certainly any plan that could threaten Egypt’s autocracy.
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, due to be inaugurated for the Ethiopian New Year in September, is another pressure point. Sisi sees it as threatening Egypt’s economy so Cairo needs allies. That explains the warm reception for Sudan’s SAF-aligned Prime Minister Kamil Idris, who met Sisi at the Presidential Palace on 7 August for a long session.
The UAE, under President Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan (MBZ), is Egypt’s largest foreign investor – with a US$35 billion commitment on the Mediterranean coast and shares Sisi’s detestation of the Ikhwan al Muslimun (Muslim Brotherhood). But MBZ staunchly opposes Egypt’s Sudan policy. UAE officials insist the war must end via a civilian transition, excluding the military factions that instigated it.
On that basis, neither the RSF nor the SAF should be part of the transition. MBZ’s stance is disingenuous: the UAE remains the RSF’s main foreign financier and supplier of materiel. It has also underwritten a parallel civilian government in western Sudan – led by RSF commander Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as ‘Hemeti’ – effectively partitioning the country.
Privately, UAE officials argue that Burhan’s SAF must be countered, given the dominance of Islamist factions in its ranks. Abu Dhabi equates the SAF with the ousted National Congress Party/National Islamic Front (NCP/NIF) regime led by Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir, who was toppled in April 2019. Opinion is divided on the power of the Islamist factions over the SAF and many see Hemeti’s RSF as the greater danger. A leading secularist and democracy activist in eastern Sudan told Africa Confidential he saw Hemeti’s forces as more threatening to a civilian transition than the Islamists ‘whose organisations and tactics we know’.
When Boulos met Burhan in Zurich on 11 August, no details of the conversation were released. But we hear two key issues were discussed: humanitarian access and ending the war. Qatar’s role was pivotal. Doha persuaded Burhan to attend, lent him an aircraft to fly to Geneva and ensured the meeting’s secrecy. It will continue to play a role – as it has for the Trump administration in Afghanistan, Gaza, Syria, Congo-Kinshasa and Rwanda. Doha is more flexible than Washington, maintaining ties with both the Islamists and the SAF.
US policy – excluding hardline militarists and Islamists – faces resistance on the ground. Humanitarian aid cannot be delivered without negotiating with militias under Hemeti or Burhan. Commanders use their veto on aid distribution to stake claims in negotiations and the resources on tap. They may also use their ability to rein in allied militias as leverage. So far, US efforts to end the war have met little opposition from regional backers of the military factions – because they agree with the tactics or believe they will fail, or they have no practical alternative.
The next step for the US is to identify civilians with which it can work. Its veto on engaging with Islamists is shared by the UAE and some European Union officials – but not by Doha. Sudanese Islamists are now as factionalised as other political tendencies. Some claim to have demonstrated against Beshir in April 2019, citing his betrayal of Hassan el Turabi’s legacy. Others, like Tunisia’s Ennahda Islamist party, claim to support pluralism.
But the core group around Ali Ahmed Karti still seeks a restoration of Ingaz – authoritarian rule under the NCP/NIF, with full enforcement of the harshest variant of sharia (Islamic law) (AC Vol 50 No 13, Coup anniversary – 20 years of Islamist rule, Vol 42 No 16, Delusions of peace & Vol 66 No 1, Region will be key in bid to end war). Many of today’s hardliners began as militia leaders. Ahead of Idris’s visit to Cairo, Egyptian security arrested the commander of the Al Baraa Ibn Malik Brigade, Almesbah Abu Zeid Talha. He had arrived in Alexandria weeks earlier for medical tests.
Neither side in the Boulos-Burhan meeting has disclosed details but the US team appears set on a new strategy: speak first to the Sudanese commanders, then to the regional sponsors. Hemeti may be next on the list. That looks more likely after the UAE Vice-President Sheikh Mansour’s meeting with Boulos in Zurich on 12 August.
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BURHAN’S DIKTAT TO THE MILITIAS
We hear that a Gulf State – likely to be Saudi Arabia – is underwriting the Sudan Armed Forces’ US$1.5 billion purchase of advanced weapons systems. Political as well as financial conditions may have been attached. The deal was signed by the SAF’s Air Force Commander, Lieutenant General Al Tahir Mohamed al Awad al Amin, says our source.
On 14 August – Sudan’s Army Day – SAF Commander General Abdel Fattah al Burhan delivered one of his harshest speeches against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – ‘Hemeti’ – reiterating his refusal to negotiate and calling for their destruction. He omitted any mention of his meeting with United States envoy Massad Boulos just three days earlier.
After reaffirming his hardline stance, Burhan took two further steps. On 17 August, he retired several senior officers – including those who led the battles against the RSF and retook Khartoum earlier this year. It was the first time since the war began in April 2023 that he felt confident enough to reshuffle the high command. His meeting with Boulos may have prompted the move, signalling a fresh leadership to manage a shift in US policy.
Secondly, Burhan ordered all allied militias to obey the SAF command, reclassifying them as surrogate fighters rather than autonomous allies. This marked a break with the policies of ousted President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir, who had deliberately created and financed several semi-autonomous militias – including Hemeti’s RSF, formerly the Janjaweed in Darfur.
The SAF’s consolidation of control over Khartoum and its suburbs may have triggered this shift. As SAF units and their allied militias withdrew from central Khartoum to the outskirts, local militias asserted their authority. In Omdurman and Bahri (North Khartoum), some have reinstated Islamist rules – banning mixed-gender schooling and requiring women to wear the veil.
These developments – and the tensions they provoke – raise concerns about the Islamists’ return to power in Khartoum. They may also set off alarms in the Boulos camp. Burhan’s attempt to assert control over allied militias met resistance from the Joint Forces – SAF-aligned armed groups in Darfur – who insisted they were already under SAF orders.
This points to a broader fragmentation of military groupings across the country – not only the de facto partition between Burhan’s SAF and Hemeti’s RSF, but also a weakening of command structures within each camp. For now, the allied militias will stay with the SAF and Hemeti and his brother will hold together the RSF as a confederation of armed groups.
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ISLAMISTS REGROUP AS UAE TRADES THE GOLD
Sudan’s veteran spymaster Salah Abdallah 'Gosh' met key Islamist figures in Asmara on 20 August, signalling another shift in political alliances in Khartoum. We hear the talks, hosted by Eritrean President Issayas Afewerki’s Saudi Arabia-aligned government, focused on the Islamists’ prospects of returning to power.
Gosh – former Director General of the National Intelligence and Security Service under President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir – presided over the meeting. It concluded that Islamists must call for the primacy of ‘national interests’ over partisan agendas as they try to regain legitimacy. Discussions centred on strengthening the Islamist military component to influence the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) under General Abdel Fattah al Burhan, ‘without appearing divisive’ – a difficult balance while the war against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo ‘Hemeti’ remains deadlocked.
Recent United States initiatives have prompted leadership reshuffles but made no impact on the ground or on either side’s pursuit of military dominance. Conditions are dire in contested regions – notably northern Kordofan and North Darfur – where the RSF’s assault on El Fasher shows no restraint (AC Vol 66 No 14, Brussels is flailing as Sudan’s expanding war triggers new wave of migration).
Civilian killings are routine, while the SAF attacks humanitarian convoys near Mellit with little regard for Darfur’s population. Whichever side prevails will have alienated most of the region. Famine and cholera are widespread. Aid workers face threats from militias and armed individuals dissatisfied with relief operations.
As conditions in Darfur deteriorate and Islamists regroup in Khartoum, the United Arab Emirates continues to back the RSF militarily. Regardless of the US-led talks in Switzerland, the UAE and its allies are preparing for a prolonged conflict. The RSF has built a base in southern Libya near al Kufra – a strategic move to consolidate control over Darfur and much of western Sudan. This expansion follows the failure of President Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno’s government in Chad – weakened by internal divisions – to maintain its role as the RSF’s logistical hub.
The war is also being waged online, with both sides using digital tactics to obscure accurate reporting of the conflict. The SAF recently circulated a fabricated report claiming an Emirati aircraft was bombed while landing at Nyala airport, killing over 40 Colombian mercenaries. RSF recruitment of Colombian fighters was confirmed months ago but this false report caused uproar in Abu Dhabi.
Within hours, the UAE banned flights to SAF-controlled areas such as Khartoum and Port Sudan. Ships bound for Sudan were also said to have been barred from docking in the Emirates. Days later, UAE officials denied the first decision. But not the second one. UAE is Sudan's main supplier, therefore this embargo could have a deep impact.
They were keen to ensure that gold consignments from SAF-held areas to Dubai continued – another example of the ethical flexibility of Burhan’s forces. Amid the devastation and human misery, the gold smugglers working for both sides are resilient.
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