“Trump and Peace in Sudan: An Assessment”
Recent remarkable statements from the Trump administration—committing itself to bringing peace to Sudan—are both unexpected and inevitably occasion skepticism, given past Trump priorities. Assessing this commitment and what it yields should be continuous—the goal of this ongoing chronicle (https://wp.me/p45rOG-2Uw):
Trump and Peace in Sudan: A Continuing Assessment (Part 4) [December 7, 2025]
https://sudanreeves.org/2025/11/25/an-assessment-trump-and-peace-in-sudan/
Since Trump announced that the U.S. was “going to start working in Sudan” (November 19, 2025), there has been no progress of any kind in halting Sudan’s massively destructive war—or in the alleviation of the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis. Indeed, the war has become much more intense in the Kordofans (North, South, West), with civilians paying an ever greater price. In one widely reported incident, a kindergarten and hospital:
Al Jazeera (December 7): “A drone attack by the RSF and its allied al-Hilou group on a preschool in Kalogi in Sudan has killed more than 100 people, dozens of whom were children. It sparked international condemnation amid worsening violence as the RSF fights Sudan’s Armed Forces in South Kordofan state.”
Sudan Tribune (December 6): “A drone fired three missiles at the town in the eastern part of the state on Thursday. The first missile struck a kindergarten, causing initial casualties, Angalo said. A second missile was fired as residents gathered to rescue the wounded. A third strike hit the rural hospital where victims were being transported, killing and wounding more people and destroying large sections of the facility.
Those waiting for the Trump administration to do something useful, the dispatch from The Guardian makes for discouraging reading. Nowhere here—or in any other news reporting—is there a suggestion that for all its claimed commitment to Sudan, Trump and his minions are prepared to call out the UAE, whose support for the Rapid Support Forces is all that allows the genocidal militia to continue its military campaigns—now focused on the Kordofans following the capture of El Fasher (North Darfur) and the ensuing massacre.
Indeed, given Trump’s deep financial, commercial, and other economic interests in the UAE, and his effusive celebration of Mohamed bin Zayed, we may be sure that if sanctions are imposed by the US, they will be on the belligerents in Sudan’s war, not those enabling the RSF and SAF. Given the gross disparity in the atrocity crimes committed by the two parties, and indeed RSF actions amounting to genocide, such limited sanctions will do nothing to stop the fighting. Moral equivalence here gives the RSF génocidaires the benefit of undeserved doubt. The UAE must stop militarily supporting the men responsible for killing—one example—“at least 60,000 people” in the slaughter of El Fasher:
The Guardian, December 5, 2025
RSF massacres left Sudanese city ‘a slaughterhouse’, satellite images show
Up to 150,000 residents of El Fasher are missing since North Darfur capital fell to paramilitary Rapid Support Forces
Sarah Champion, chair of the Commons international development select committee, said: “Members received a private briefing on Sudan, at which one of the academics stated: ‘Our low estimate is 60,000 people have been killed there in the last three weeks.’”
The Guardian has led the way in reporting on what Trump’s “commitment” to Sudan really entails:
US considers wider sanctions on Sudanese army and RSF as ceasefire efforts falter
Trump envoy fails to secure deal as Norway prepares to host talks on how to restore civilian government in Sudan
The Guardian, December 7, 2025
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/05/us-sanctions-sudan-army-rsf-ceasefire
The US is considering a much broader range of sanctions on the belligerents in the war in Sudan, in a tacit acknowledgment of the inability of the US envoy Massad Boulos to persuade the parties to accept a ceasefire. [On November 19] Donald Trump announced that work had begun to end the war after a personal request for his direct intervention from the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. But Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany, has in fact been trying for months to persuade the Sudanese army and its rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, to back a ceasefire, to little end.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told a cabinet meeting at the White House on Wednesday [December 3] that Trump was “the only leader in the world capable of resolving the Sudan crisis.” An Arab diplomat said: “Trump injects momentum into peace processes. It’s what we do with it that matters.”
The Guardian understands that the warring parties have been told it is highly likely that Trump will use a far broader range of punitive sanctions on groups that he regards as standing in the way of a ceasefire. Saudi Arabia and Egypt have broadly supported the army, while the RSF has been backed by the United Arab Emirates.
The effectiveness of Trump’s intervention may lie in privately persuading the UAE that its position – which it denies, despite evidence compiled by the UN, independent experts and reporters – is counterproductive. It may also require the Saudis to weaken their insistence on the continuance of Sudan’s “legitimate institutions” – diplomatic code for preserving the existing Islamist-influenced army.
The belated move of Sudan up the US agenda came as the UN human rights chief warned that since 25 October, when the RSF captured the city of Bara in North Kordofan, there had been at least 269 civilian deaths from aerial strikes, artillery shelling and summary executions.
After the intervention of the Saudi crown prince, it is likely the US will be willing to broaden sanctions against the warring parties, as well as take steps to enforce and extend the widely abused UN arms embargo on Darfur. So far US sanctions have been confined to the RSF and army leaderships, a small group of Sudanese Islamists linked to the army, and some UAE-based firms.
The RSF pretended to accept, but continued fighting, and the army angrily rejected the roadmap, accusing the quad of bias and in the process infuriating Boulos. The army said the proposal entailed the disbandment of the army, the cornerstone of its power base.
[It’s hardly surprising that Boulos has failed in securing a “roadmap” agreement between the RSF and the SAF: his main qualification for his title of “Senior Advisor for Africa” is his marriage to Trump’s daughter Tiffany. He has no diplomatic experience and no real knowledge of Sudan. His presence in Africa has been entirely as a businessman—ER]
Speaking at the Chatham House think tank this week, Lana Nusseibeh, the UAE minister of state, said the solution to the conflict laid in returning Sudan to a broad-based civilian government. “We cannot see the political rehabilitation of either warring party,” she said. “Both the RSF and the Port Sudan Authority [her term for the army] have committed grave violations, disgraced themselves, and in the views of the international community neither has a legitimate claim to shape Sudan’s future.”
[Notable that Nusseibeh makes no distinction between the scale of atrocities committed by the RSF and SAF, even as the UAE continues to support the RSF in military actions that amount to genocide, crimes against humanity, and an extraordinary range of war crimes.
Elsewhere UAE officials refer to the importance of “civilian governance,” even as the UAE is a vicious autocracy in which civilians have no real freedom or opportunity for political opposition to the absolute power of Mohamed bin Zayed—ER]
The blood from these bodies, in a mass grave in El Fasher, is on the hands of Mohamed bin Zayed and the UAE
Trump and Peace in Sudan: A Continuing Assessment (Part 3)
[December 3, 2025]
The UAE mounted more than 70 cargo flights to Libya and Chad in November, all containing military equipment and supplies for the RSF–and the activity continues apace in the first days of December. This hardly suggests that Trump’s bluster (see below) has had–or will have–any effect on the ground in Darfur or the Kordofans, now the site of fiercest fighting. Certainly there is no evidence in the two weeks that have passed since he declared “we’re going to start working in Sudan.” Given the desperate urgency of the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, it’s not too early to ask just what form this “work” is taking. There are no encouraging signs.
Like the Europeans, he is much more interested in the UAE’s commercial and diplomatic offerings. Talk about Sudan shows no signs of being matched by any diplomatic or other action. In this, the U.S. makes a perfect partner for the feckless Europeans:
See Ayin Network: https://3ayin.com/en/uae-eu-/
Trump and Peace in Sudan: A Continuing Assessment (Part 2)
[November 26, 2025]
The chief Emirati diplomatic adviser on Sudan, Answar Gargash, engages in a series of specious claims and characterizations in an extensive, if often ineptly conducted, interview with a CNN correspondent (November 25, 2025).
https://x.com/BeckyCNN/status/1993361874466095612
Most notably, Gargash does nothing to acknowledge the extent of UAE military support for the RSF, or the consequences of that support for the countless civilians who have been subject to atrocity crimes by the RSF for years. Indeed, although the issue of this military support is the focus of the first question posed by the CNN interviewer, Gargash dodges it completely. Elsewhere, the Emiratis have simply engaged in a repetitive and utterly untenable claim that they provide no such assistance to the RSF.
Gargash attempts in arguing for a truce to equate fully the combatants in Sudan’s war, and indeed to suggest that the primary obstacle to its realization is refusal by the SAF. We must certainly wish for a much more accommodating attitude toward humanitarian access and truces by al-Burhan; but Gargash does nothing to acknowledge that while hardly enthusiastic in their support for al-Burhan and the SAF, the Sudanese civilians he professes to care about truly hate the RSF, and have typically rapturously greeted the SAF when it liberates towns and areas previously controlled by the RSF. The RSF could not possibly prevail in any sense in truly representative expressions of popular wishes.
Of course, no one can be against a humanitarian truce—which is quite different from a peace agreement—and this fact is at the heart of Gargash’s rhetorical strategy. But the obstacles to securing a truly effective truce—one in which humanitarians enjoy unfettered and secure access to the millions of Sudanese in need of relief—are left unaddressed. And we have only to look at the fate of Darfur over more than two years to see how relentlessly the RSF has obstructed, harassed, even attacked humanitarian missions.
Indeed, the shelling and destruction of medical facilities has been a hallmark of RSF assaults on urban areas since the beginning of conflict in April 2023. The Saudi Hospital in El Fasher was repeatedly attacked before being overrun on October 28, 2025 with ensuing slaughter by the RSF:
“On 28 October, six health workers, four doctors, a nurse and a pharmacist, were abducted,” from the hospital, the World Health Organization said in a statement Wednesday. “On the same day, more than 460 patients and their companions were reportedly shot and killed in the hospital.” (NPR, October 30, 2025)
Gargash acknowledges none of this; indeed, the UAE is actively funding a campaign of deceit, misrepresentation, and cover-up on behalf of Hemedti’s RSF. It takes no great insight to realize that any announcement by Hemedti of a “unilateral humanitarian truce” is merely a tactic, either for regrouping and re-supplying his forces—or to generate “PR” for international consumption. Again, Gargash nowhere comes close to acknowledging the extraordinary history of lies promulgated by Hemedti and his henchmen since creation of the RSF in 2013 (we might highlight Hemedti’s denial of a RSF role in the “Khartoum Massacre” of June 3, 2019).
In short, Gargash is claiming a benign interest in the people of Sudan even as the UAE is directly funding the sort of massive human suffering and destruction so horrifically on display with the RSF seizure of El Fasher in October.
Moreover, the apparently calm and deliberative performance by Gargash in the CNN interview is continually undermined by a spectacular hypocrisy: while claiming the UAE is interested in a “transition to civilian governance” in Sudan, he speaks for and at the behest of an authoritarian monarchy which has no respect for civil liberties and freedom of expression.
Gargash is joined in his equating of the RSF and SAF by Trump’s Senior Advisor on Africa, Massad Boulos (Reuters, November 25, 2025). Boulos claims to have presented on Trump’s behalf “a strong text for a truce.” Notably, Boulos made his announcement in Abu Dhabi, having conferred with Gargash. While al-Burhan’s response to the proposal has shifted over the past few days, there can be little doubt that to the extent any proposal—for a truce, a ceasefire, or a peace agreement—reflects the ambitions and views of the UAE, it will receive a cold shoulder in Khartoum.
It is of course a diplomatic absurdity that the UAE, given its indisputable backing of the RSF, is involved in Sudan’s peace negotiations at all. And to the extent that the Trump team does not understand this absurdity, and how it is received in Khartoum, it is badly handicapped in moving forward on any diplomatic front.
The most basic fact of the military situation on the ground in Sudan remains what it has been for over two years. That the RSF—despite a total lack of popular support—continues to fight on, with a number of striking successes as well as significant losses, only highlights further the significance of UAE military assistance. The Emiratis have still not been called out for this outrageous assistance by the Trump team—a fact certainly not lost on Mohamed bin Zayed, the ultimate decision-maker in the UAE. And until the Trump team realizes this, no progress toward real peace will be made.
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CONTEXT (November 25, 2025)
On November 12: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared in Canada:
“I think something needs to be done to cut off the weapons and the support that the RSF is getting as they continue with their advances.”
No one doubted the clear reference to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), although no name was mentioned, something bin Zayed and his Emirati advisers certainly noted. Rubio went on to characterize the scale and danger of the humanitarian catastrophe being engineered by the RSF.
On November 19: Trump himself made various comments about Sudan at the apparent behest of visiting Prince Mohamed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia:
“[bin Salman] mentioned Sudan yesterday, and he said, ‘Sir, you’re talking about a lot of wars, but there’s a place on Earth called Sudan, and it’s horrible what’s happening.'”
Sudan was adduced as something that had been of no previous concern or priority for Trump:
“His majesty would like me to do something very powerful having to do with Sudan. It was not on my charts to be involved in that,” he said. “I thought it was just something that was crazy and out of control. But I just see how important that is to you and to a lot of your friends in the room, Sudan and we’re going to start working in Sudan.”
Trump’s self-celebration in pursuit of a Nobel Peace Prize made almost obligatory his declaration that he was indispensable:
“Arab Leaders from all over the World, in particular the highly respected Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, who has just left the United States, have asked me to use the power and influence of the Presidency to bring an immediate halt to what is taking place in Sudan.”
“Trump speak” was on full display and should put us on guard (“I thought it was just something that was crazy and out of control”). Moreover, he nowhere mentioned the UAE by name, despite Rubio’s unambiguous singling out the Emirates as a military supplier of the RSF just a week prior.
On November 21: in a State Department readout of a call between Rubio and Emirati Deputy Prime Minister/Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed, there was again no mention of the UAE. The readout, in its entirety, declared only:
The US intelligence community is of course well aware of the extent of UAE military assistance to the RSF. This knowledge is also fully available by way of UN and non-governmental reporting, human rights investigations, and OSINT that reveals the precise air transport of military equipment by the UAE to various locations.
So, we arrive at the first critical question in determining the significance of Trump declaring, “we’re going to start working in Sudan”: will the Trump admin confront the Emirati leadership over what is so widely and fully known—and yet still completely and repeatedly denied by that leadership? Certainly bin Zayed knows full well the cards he has to play in pushing back against any U.S. pressure:
• The UAE is an original signatory to the Abraham Accords (along with Israel and Bahrain)
• The UAE is nominally part of the regional negotiating effort to end the war in Gaza
• The UAE hosts one of the most important US military air bases is in the region:
The Al Dhafra Air Base is located near Abu Dhabi; it hosts the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing, a large number of US military personnel, and a variety of aircraft used for reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, and combat air operations.
• The UAE has truly vast petro-wealth, and is determined to create for itself—using that wealth—a place for itself in Africa, pursuing control of gold exports, arable land, and political sway.
Notable also is the widely acknowledged rivalry between the UAE and Saudi Arabia: that Trump’s new focus on Sudan comes following a plea by Saudi Prince Mohamed bin Salman does not make it more likely Trump or his team will be able to persuade the UAE to end its support for the RSF, no matter how outrageous and destructive the military actions of this genocidal militia force.
April 2025: We should also ask about the quality and stature of the negotiating team Trump has at his disposal. Revealingly, his “Senior Advisor for Africa” is Massad Boulos. (He had originally been tapped by Trump to be “Advisor for Arab and Middle Eastern Affairs.”) Boulos is not a diplomat by training, nor does he have diplomatic experience in Africa beyond what he has acquired during his six months as “Senior Advisor for Africa” (primarily in desultory negotiations focused on the Rwanda and DRC—both representing an immensely complex set of issues for which Boulos has no experience or background).
His experience in Africa is as a businessman, which has defined his career to date. Although he has a law degree, and applied to take the Texas Bar Exam, there is no evidence he passed the bar or has worked as a lawyer (Trump has nonetheless described him as “an accomplished lawyer”). We do know that Boulos has been involved in U.S. Republican politics, including helping to organize Arab-American and Muslim voters for Trump’s election campaign. We also know that his son is married to Tiffany Trump, and that this is but another example of Trump’s penchant for nepotism and family ties in his political world.
These are hardly auspicious features of an American effort to end the war in Sudan, but optimists were surprisingly easy to find. Alan Boswell, Horn of Africa director at the International Crisis Group, declared: “This could well be a turning point in ending this devastating war” (New York Times, November 20, 2025).
But a more sober view will take account of the many and deep obstacles that are all too clear. A Reuters dispatch of November 25 reports:
Neither of Sudan’s warring factions has formally accepted a “strong” plan for a truce put forward by the United States, senior U.S. envoy Massad Boulos said on [November 25]. While there were no objections to the content of the plan, Boulos told reporters in Abu Dhabi, the Sudanese army had come back with “preconditions” he described as impossible to achieve.
As for the RSF, they are all too willing to give nominal assent to almost any document, any agreement, any cease-fire, since they have repeatedly demonstrated that they have no intention of being bound by any commitments they may contain. The continuing denial of humanitarian access in and around El Fasher is the most conspicuous evidence of the RSF attitude toward humanitarian assistance; instead of allowing unfettered and secure access to the city, what we see are continuing executions, the digging of mass graves, and the continual burying of thousands of dead bodies, the grim aftermath of the RSF genocidal assault on the city. The fighting continues; re-supply by the UAE continues, if with greater effort at concealment; an RSF self-declared humanitarian truce (November 24, 2025) has already proved meaningless, as Babanusa was attacked the following day.
It had become all too clear soon after war broke out in April 2023 that both Hemedti and his RSF and General al-Burhan and the RSF were locked in a battle to the death: neither side could imagine a Sudan in which the other would have primary political power. This failure of imagination continues to be the primary obstacle to peace.
Despite this grim symmetry, we must not lose sight of who the RSF are—and have long been. They are in no way representative of the civilian aspirations that were so powerfully on display in 2019, and which the RSF played the bloodiest role in crushing. The vast majority of Sudanese, while certainly dismayed at the prospect of a junta in which al-Burhan simply replaces al-Bashir, simply hate the RSF—seeing them as mercenaries, and in large part foreign mercenaries. The RSF has no political vision, no economic plans, nor even ideological commitments. People in towns that have been captured by the RSF and which were later liberated by the SAF make clear just how appallingly cruel, even sadistic RSF governance is: the citizens typically rapturously greeted the army liberating them and providing chilling narratives of RSF atrocities.
There is simply no place for the RSF in a stable future Sudan. Hemedti and his militiamen are motivated only by the lust for wealth and power, for them interchangeable commodities. And for precisely this reason, they make for the perfect instrument for Emirati ambitions in Sudan, and represent the archetype for future UAE adventurism elsewhere in Africa. The Emirati presence in Bosaso, the port city in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region, shows just how ruthless they will be.
IMPERATIVES
Given the stark military ambitions of both Hemedti and al-Burhan, there may be no negotiating of a meaningful cease-fire for the foreseeable future. But there are possibilities for humanitarian truces (plural). In areas controlled by either side, the combatants must be put on notice that failure to provide unfettered and secure humanitarian access will be regarded as defining of any future standing within the international community. In North Darfur, the most distressed region in Sudan, many hundreds of thousands of lives are in imminent peril. The RSF must be told that if they do not allow humanitarian access, they will be defining themselves in ways that make any future accommodation of any claims impossible.
The same is true of the SAF, particularly in areas that they do not control and yet invoke “national sovereignty” as justification for dictating terms to humanitarians. The SAF must also eliminate the terrible bureaucratic burdens being placed on UN and non-governmental organizations, all too reminiscent of the restrictions that eventually crippled humanitarian efforts during the first phase of the Darfur genocide (2002 – 2009).
RECENT U.S. PEACE EFFORTS IN SUDAN
Neither of the Obama terms in office, nor the first Trump admin, made any progress toward addressing the violence that defined Sudan following al-Bashir’s humanitarian expulsions of March 2009 and his creation of the Rapid Support Forces (2013) as a successor militia force to the Janjaweed—to be led by Hemedti. The failures are too numerous and disturbing to chronicle here (scores of contemporaneous critiques may be found here).
I see little evidence to date that the second Trump administration will do any better. We should recall that as President he once referred to African countries as “shit holes.” His Secretary of State (Rubio) declared, in an outrageous lie during Congressional testimony (May 21, 2025): “No one has died because of USAID [cuts].” At a subsequent congressional hearing, he said, “No children are dying on my watch” (NPR, May 28, 2025).
In fact, many tens of thousands—including children, especially in Africa—had died by the time Rubio indulged in this spectacular mendacity—a mendacity entirely in character with the Trump administration. Given this mendacity—and at this point in Trump’s presidency, mendacity is a defining feature—we must wonder if there is a shred of honesty in his declaration: “we’re going to start working in Sudan.”
We must also wonder if the inexperienced Massad Boulos will be able to address a problem that has defied all diplomatic efforts to date in dealing with the ruthless men defining Sudan’s war.
Will Trump or Rubio have the nerve to call out the UAE for its shameless, unstinting support for a genocidal militia?
Will a Trump admin that has gutted USAID provide the kind of humanitarian assistance needed?
“There’s a place on Earth called Sudan, and it’s horrible what’s happening.”
Trump wrote in a Truth Social post: “It has become the most violent place on Earth and, likewise, the single biggest Humanitarian Crisis. Food, doctors, and everything else are desperately needed.”
All too true…but does it really matter to the obdurately “Transactional Trump”? Will he undo some of the terrible damage he has already done to humanitarian assistance around the world, and especially Africa?
Given the stakes in Sudan, given the consequences of allowing the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis to spiral further out of control, we should continually assess what Trump’s words actually mean for Sudan—now.