Securing a lasting ceasefire in Sudan is essential in order to limit the opportunity for malign outside actors to intervene in the fighting on a greater scale, former diplomats and analysts have said.
Foreign leaders including the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Israeli officials have offered to help mediate in Sudan, while the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said he had engaged the African Union in an attempt to ensure a long-term ceasefire.
Foreign powers in the Gulf, the US and Europe swept into Sudan after the 2019 uprising that overthrew the former dictator Omar al-Bashir, eager to deepen their own financial interests or engage politically with the two men now at war with each other: Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto ruler, and the former warlord Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, Burhan’s deputy on the ruling council established in the aftermath of the uprising.
“The longer this goes on, the more likely it is that outside actors will start trying to back one general or another, hyper-charging this fight and turning it into a similar struggle to the situation in Libya or Syria,” said Jeffrey Feltman, a longtime diplomat and former US special envoy for the Horn of Africa.
After Bashir’s overthrow, Saudi Arabia was eager to invest in verdant land on the banks of the Blue and White Nile rivers where prized alfalfa crops run for miles, as a way to exploit Sudan’s water resources and preserve what little water remains in the Gulf.
The United Arab Emirates fostered a close connection with Hemedti, whose Rapid Support Forces control most of Sudan’s goldmines and are involved in the export of Sudanese gold to Dubai. A consortium of Emirati companies including one connected to its sovereign wealth fund signed a $6bn agreement late last year to build a new industrial zone and port facility north of Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast.
“Sudan for many years was seen as a key area for food security in different Gulf states, without any regard for the civilian population who live there,” said Kristian Ulrichsen of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
“Yet it’s seen as ripe for dealmaking at the very top level, so we’ve seen the empowerment and enrichment of state and non-state actors like Hemedti who have grown rich on these connections; in Hemedti’s case goldmining, with much of that gold shipped to the UAE for refining and then onward sales. It’s another critical node in the economic network that enabled him to become so influential.”
As tensions simmered between Burhan and Hemedti in the opening months of this year, Sudan’s international partners did little to intervene. A readout from a visit by the Emirati minister of state to Khartoum in February said Burhan stressed a commitment to forming a civilian government, despite the reality on the ground. Burhan also conducted a “working visit” to the UAE in mid-February where he met with the president, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. A month later he embarked on a four-day official visit to both the UAE and Saudi Arabia, where he met the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
Sudan’s northern neighbour Egypt was also eager to engage with Burhan after he and Hemedti collaborated on a military coup in 2021 intended to stall a planned handover to civilian rule. Burhan received a warm welcome in Cairo from Gen Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, whose security forces have targeted exiled Sudanese activists including with violence and deportations. Egypt’s military and intelligence service evacuated at least 177 soldiers from Sudan with the help of Emirati mediation after the outbreak of fighting, saying the soldiers were there to train the Sudanese armed forces.
The UAE publicly called on both parties in Sudan “to exercise restraint, and to de-escalate and work towards ending this crisis through dialogue”. Kristin Smith Diwan of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington said both Saudi Arabia and the UAE were likely to be eager to protect their newfound commercial interests in Sudan by promoting diplomacy.
“The UAE in particular has deeper ties with Hemedti, both in terms of using him for manpower to execute their war in south Yemen, and it’s also known that Gen Hamdan keeps a lot of his wealth and commercial activities in Dubai. For the UAE in particular, this gives them a certain amount of influence and leverage over Hemedti, so the question is whether they’re willing to use that,” she said.
Diwan added: “I have some skepticism that the UAE in particular would prefer a full democratic transition [in Sudan], but in terms of the current situation where you have the two military actors openly fighting, that’s in none of their interests.”
The UAE’s partners nearby, particularly in Libya, appear eager to intervene in Sudan to protect their interests. Gen Khalifa Haftar in Libya helped train RSF forces in readiness for the battle, while his partners in the Russian private military force the Wagner group reportedly offered weapons to the RSF, according to American officials. The US defence department concluded that the UAE “may provide some financing” for Wagner’s operations in Libya.
Wagner already boasted longstanding ties to the RSF and Hemedti due to its involvement in the gold trade across Sudan, and surrounding nations. Marat Gabidullin, a former Wagner commander and aide to its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, told the Guardian: “Wagner has been present in Sudan country since the end of 2017. They sent about 200 people from the first assault unit there. The unit was mostly engaged in training the Rapid Support Forces and the local police. The soldiers were transferred to Libya and the Central African Republic afterwards.”
The former US special envoy for Libya Jonathan M Winer described the risk of Wagner intervening in Sudan as part of Russia’s “playbook” across Africa that Moscow already demonstrated with its support of Haftar in Libya. “It’s what they did with Haftar: provide military support to a warlord with a decent chance of taking over the whole country,” he said. “They’re seeking to shape events by any means possible to wind up with a government that’s beholden to them, seeking to extend Russian influence.”
Feltman said the opportunities available for malign forces underscored the importance of a swift end to the fighting. “This is why a humanitarian ceasefire is the No 1 priority, meaning the welfare of the Sudanese people, the second being preventing outside actors from starting to think they need to intervene on behalf of their preferred victor in this fight,” he said. “That’s the key thing: if you stop the fighting, you basically eliminate the breeding ground for this outside interference.”
