Subscribe to our Lens on Sudan newsletter here. After days of fierce lobbying in New York, the United States backed away on Thursday from a vote at the United Nations Security Council on a sweeping arms embargo covering all of Sudan. Washington had spent the preceding hours trying to line up nine votes to pass the resolution while working to keep Russia and China from vetoing it, according to four UN sources, an Arab diplomat, two Sudanese diplomats and a Sudanese former diplomatic advisor who spoke to Mada Masr in the leadup to the vote. But by Thursday, the Americans had concluded that putting the draft as it is to a vote would end with a Russian veto, one of the UN sources told Mada Masr. The US resolution would replace the current Darfur embargo, which expires on September 12. The proposal brings weapons supplied to all parties to the war, including the Sudanese military, under international restrictions. That would include drones and related technologies, which have come to dominate the fighting. The Security Council is now expected to vote on a rollover of the existing sanctions for one month, during which the US would try to lobby members and negotiate changes to its proposal on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in late September, a second UN source said. The diplomatic battle over the embargo is playing out alongside a war that continues to draw in outside powers and take on a broader regional dimension. With states on both sides stepping in to shore up their respective allies, attention has recently shifted to Ethiopia, where an unprecedented arms buildup has been observed at the Ethiopian Asosa base used by the Rapid Support Forces and its allies to operate an increasingly critical front in the Sudanese Blue Nile. The buildup comes as Ethiopia’s internal conflict is threatening to boil over and its tensions with Eritrea rise, creating a fast-approaching possibility of several conflicts converging along Sudan’s eastern border. That was the backdrop of Transitional Sovereignty Council Chair Abdel Fattah al-Burhan September 4 visit to Asmara, where he met Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki. An Eritrean security source informed of the talks told Mada Masr that the two leaders discussed how to prevent Sudan’s war from spilling into Eritrea. Asmara wants a clearer picture of how eastern Sudan and the border areas are being used, particularly as the Sudan-Ethiopia border is a point of overlap between Sudan’s war and Ethiopia’s internal conflict. Neither side was ready, however, to say what it would do if that overlap develops into a broader regional confrontation, despite the meeting being about working out where the other might stand, according to the source. For now, Sudan and Eritrea have agreed to maintain high-level coordination and information sharing, according to the source and a Sudanese political source. Within Sudan, the RSF is trying to give its political project a more institutional face and enough weight to avoid being sidelined from diplomacy around the war. Over five days in Nyala, the capital of the RSF-led parallel government, Tasis’s leadership body agreed to complete and activate the government’s institutions and form a “national military.” What was left unannounced last week though was that RSF Deputy Commander Abdel Rahim Dagalo has been selected to head the unified general command, according to a source close to him and a Tasis official. The arrangement gives Tasis a clearer division between its political and military leadership. Abdel Rahim would head the military institution while Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo remains commander of the RSF and heads Tasis’s political institutions, the two sources said. But bringing forces that entered the war from different positions, with their own commanders and military traditions, under one command will be a highly complex process. Doing that while those forces are fighting on multiple fronts is a delicate balancing act. The risks of that balancing act are already evident within the alliance’s main military and political partner, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North led by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu. The group is facing growing resentment and violent pushback to what some of its constituencies see as the leadership’s increasingly blurred position inside Tasis, a leadership figure in the SPLM-N said. Establishing a unified command under Abdel Rahim without resolving those tensions could alienate the constituencies that sustain the movement and send fighters to the battlefields, the source said. Whether the “national military” amounts to a genuine overhaul of the RSF-led alliance remains to be seen. For now, Tasis is already using it as part of its diplomatic pitch. A delegation took the project to Burundi on Sunday, seeking President Evariste Ndayishimiye’s support for securing Tasis a place in any African Union-led mediation process. Ndayishimiye currently chairs the AU. Khartoum, meanwhile, saw an opening to build an international connection around its own intra-Sudanese political dialogue, which it is moving quickly to launch inside the country. The Quintet — comprising the United Nations, African Union, European Union, Arab League and Intergovernmental Authority on Development — arrived in Khartoum this week and met with the dialogue’s preparatory committee, according to a committee source. The committee hopes the visit will help bring in groups that are skeptical of a dialogue launched by the state. But the visit does not resolve the problem of several major political forces who remain opposed to the dialogue’s entire premise. *** US push to expand arms embargo to all of Sudan at UN Security Council postponed at last minute US Senior Advisor for Arab and African Affairs Massad Boulos proposes the expansion of the UN arms embargo on Sudan during a Security Council meeting on August 26. Photo: UN Web TV. After days of fierce politicking in New York, a United Nations Security Council vote scheduled for Thursday to apply an arms embargo to the whole of Sudan was postponed. Despite the United States’s last minute attempts to flip UNSC non-permanent members Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo and to persuade China and Russia to defer from using their veto powers, the Americans felt that if they pushed the resolution the way it was, the Russians would veto it, according to an informed UN source. The delay comes as the existing arms embargo, which applied only to Darfur, is set to expire on September 12. That embargo, which has been in effect since 2004, has been systematically flouted by the United Arab Emirates, Chad, the Libyan National Army and the Rapid Support Forces, who have secured the flow of heaps of advanced weaponry into the western Sudanese region to be used by the RSF over the course of the three and half years of war. The UNSC voted on Friday to extend the Darfur embargo until October 9. A second UN source told Mada Masr that the month extension is designed to allow for consultations on the more far-reaching resolution on the sidelines of the upcoming high-level UN General Assembly meetings set for the last week of September. With the resolution, the US is trying to have the arms embargo apply to the Sudanese state’s sourcing of weapons, including drones, which have come to dominate the civil war. A former advisor at the Sudanese embassy in Washington told Mada Masr that US discussions in the lead up to Thursday’s postponed vote had moved beyond the issue of the geographical arms embargo on Darfur to examine the networks supplying weapons, technology and funding, as well as the logistics of transport and recruitment associated with both warring parties. The US is thus trying, the source added, to shift the arms issue from a domestic Sudanese matter to an international file involving regional and global networks. The advisor explained that Washington intended for the new resolution to broaden the scope of international obligations, subjecting the supply of arms and military equipment to any party in the conflict to UN restrictions, and including drones, their components, and related technologies within the embargo’s purview. Before the vote was put aside, fierce backdoor politicking has gripped the meeting rooms and diplomatic corridors in New York over the last 36 hours, four informed UN sources, an Arab diplomat informed of the talks on Sudan, two Sudanese diplomats in New York and the former advisor at the Sudanese embassy in Washington told Mada Masr in the leadup to the vote. As of Wednesday night, the second UN source, who is focused on contact with African countries at the UN, said that the three African non-permanent members on the UNSC — Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Somalia — firmly opposed the expansion of the embargo on Sudan. With those three countries, the informed Arab official put the count of those opposed to the resolution at seven: Russia, China, Bahrain, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Somalia and Pakistan. For a resolution to pass in the security council, a proposal must secure at least nine affirmative votes from the 15 member states while avoiding a veto from any of the five permanent members. With these seven countries in hand, the second UN source described talks on the resolution as having reached a point of “non-agreement.” The source expected there to be a “rollover” of the Darfur arms embargo without any further talk about a country-wide expansion. The first UN source said that at a meeting of the Arab Group in recent days, opposition marked most of the opinions expressed by permanent representatives. “Yes, it is true that the UAE worked with the US on this draft resolution behind closed doors, but this is not the position of the majority of Arab countries as expressed during our consultations,” the source said. The informed Arab diplomat explains Bahrain’s opposition to the resolution despite being diplomatically close to the UAE by pointing to counter pressure from Saudi Arabia. “There are Saudi red lines that Bahrain cannot overlook,” the source said. “The Saudis are opposed to the embargo because they rightly think it will work in favor of the UAE-supported RSF and against the Saudi-supported Sudanese military.” According to a third UN diplomat, the prevailing assessment of the US mission in New York since Massad Boulos, the US envoy on Africa, presented the UNSC with the draft resolution a little over a month ago has been that the Americans could put pressure on the three African countries and get the resolution through. However, “things did not work out this way due to the counter lobbying.” And the representatives of the DRC and Liberia were the subject of fierce lobbying in the last twelve hours. The first UN source said that while the Americans believed they had flipped the two countries to vote in favor of the vote in the early hours of Thursday morning EDT, that confidence began to wane as the day progressed. The permanent representative of Saudi Arabia held a separate counter lobbying effort with the DRC on Thursday morning, the source added. The second UN source told Mada Masr that the three African members proposed amendments to the resolution including a limited expansion of the Darfur sanctions to specific parts of Sudan, but the Americans declined. Even if the Americans were able to flip two of the African representatives on the security council, they would still have had to deal with the possibility of a veto from China and Russia. According to the first UN source, the permanent representatives of China, the US and Russia held a meeting in the early hours of Thursday EDT to discuss a pathway to avoid Beijing and Moscow blocking the resolution. The US was discussing concessions on Iran and Ukraine, the first and second UN sources said, in exchange for an abstention on the Sudan resolution. However, the US was not prepared to meet Russia and China’s ask on either front. According to the second source, the two countries proposed a return to the basic principles of the 60-day ceasefire between the US and Iran. And for Ukraine, the Russians wanted the US to suspend specific elements of US military support to Ukraine. The US declined, the source said. Thus, according to the first source, Russia was prepared to veto the resolution if it was not amended. Amid this diplomatic standoff, France proposed to delay the session pending an agreement to either amend the resolution and secure support or to allow for further consultations, the first UN source added. Amendments to the resolution are precisely what Sudan has been aiming to achieve. According to the former Sudanese advisor to the embassy in Washington, Khartoum is attempting to capitalize on the division within the security council, viewing the reservations expressed by Russia and China regarding the proposal as an opportunity to redraft the draft resolution. One potential area for negotiation involves establishing clear exceptions for government institutions while tightening restrictions on armed groups and the external entities that supply them with weapons, the source said. A source at Sudan’s Foreign Ministry said the Sudanese government wants the discussion to arrive at a formula distinguishing between the state and irregular forces, with a focus on the external sources of support for the RSF. Khartoum believes any resolution placing the military and the RSF under a single embargo would be politically difficult to explain domestically and would hand the RSF an opportunity to present itself as an equal party to the state within the international system. A senior Sudanese diplomatic source in New York notes that the coming days will focus more on the drafting of the resolution than on the principle of expansion itself. The possibility of amending the draft remains open until the last moment, particularly regarding exemptions, implementation mechanisms and the issue of drones. A fourth source at the UN told Mada Masr that UNSC member states will hold meetings with the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan in the coming weeks to assess the practical implications of the measures proposed by the US and make a decision on whether or not this scheme would actually end the war or just keep the status-quo. The source added that the majority of the UNSC favors targeted measures against individuals and officials who are known to be contributing to the prolonged conflict rather than to go for an embargo across the full country. For Khartoum, the current diplomatic battle is unfolding alongside a broad military conflict on the ground. Sudanese military Chief-of-Staff Yasser al-Atta stated on September 1 — days after Washington proposed expanding the embargo — that the Security Council would be unable to halt the army’s movements. The war in Sudan has increasingly taken on an international dimension. In response to the heavy supply of weapons and mercenaries that the UAE has poured in via Libya, Chad, Somaliland and Ethiopia, the Sudanese military has turned to Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt for support. Turkey and Egypt upscaled their support after the fall of Fasher to the RSF at the close of 2025, with Egypt allowing airbases in the south of the country to be used by Turkish drones to target RSF supply lines. In the last two weeks of August, the flow of weapons has turned to Ethiopia, where an unprecedented arms buildup has been observed at the Asosa base in Ethiopia that the RSF and Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement-North have used to launch attacks into Blue Nile State. Media attention in recent weeks on the Sudanese military’s use of chemical weapons has been a rallying cry for those looking to see the arms embargo enforced, while civilian groups continue to assert that there can be no military resolution to the war and that there must be a halt in fighting. The Sudanese military continues to refuse a settlement that would see a de-facto partition of Sudan or a power-sharing agreement with the Tasis government. *** Amid unprecedented arms build-up at RSF base in Ethiopia, Burhan, Isaias probe elusive mutual guarantees Transitional Sovereignty Council leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan meets with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki in the Eritrean capital of Asmara, September 4. Photo: Transitional Sovereignty Council via X. With the possibility of the internal conflicts in Sudan and Ethiopia merging into a larger regional conflict seemingly closer than ever, Transitional Sovereignty Council leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan traveled to the Eritrean capital of Asmara on September 4 to hold talks with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki. The Eritrean Information Ministry described the trip as a “short working visit” as part of a “periodic consultative framework between the two countries.” Sudan’s TSC described it as a “brotherly visit” where the two leaders discussed “enhancing Sudanese-Eritrean relations.” However scant on details the official statements were, the timing of the visit made its import clear. Over the past month, the slowly simmering Ethiopian internal conflict, the war of words between Eritrea and Ethiopia and fighting in Sudan’s Blue Nile state have begun to fuse. This reality was the subject of Burhan and Isaias’s talks, Eritrean and Sudanese sources informed of the meeting told Mada Masr. However, as much as the two sides share a worry about Addis Ababa’s regional ambitions and the escalation a larger multi-front war could entail, both sides remained hesitant to make direct pledges of cooperation in the Asmara meeting, the informed sources said. In early August, a contingent of Tigray People’s Liberation Front stationed in Sudan crossed over into northern Ethiopia to launch attacks on the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, prompting a harsh response from the federal government. A few weeks later, the talks between Ethiopian opposition groups that have played out over the last six months finally bore fruit when the leader of the Amhara umbrella group Fano announced it would join a practical alliance with other opposition groups, including its one-time fierce enemy, the TPLF. And in the last two weeks of August, northern Ethiopia was the site of an unprecedented airbridge, pouring in weapons to the Asosa base that the RSF operates out of. When Burhan and Afwerki sat down in Ethiopia, an Eritrean security source told Mada Masr, they discussed ways of ensuring that the Sudanese conflict does not spill over into Eritrean territory. Talks focused on the status of the Sudan-Ethiopia border, particularly the stretch running from the Fashaga triangle to Blue Nile, the Eritrea source said. With fighting intensifying in Blue Nile, Isaias wanted to know whether Khartoum expected it to spread into other border areas and whether the military planned to reinforce its presence in eastern and southeastern Sudan. Eritrea’s concern, the source said, is to avoid being caught off guard by military developments near its own borders. Asmara views this area as the zone where Sudan’s war could turn into a direct extension of Ethiopia’s internal conflict, the source said. With Sudanese forces, Ethiopian troops, Ethiopian armed groups and cross-border supply networks all in a narrow geographic space, any shift in the balance of power could rapidly spill over to the next front. Isaias wanted assurances from Burhan that Sudanese territory would remain out of the control of forces that Ethiopia or its allies could exploit to pressure Eritrea, the source said. Toward that end, the Eritrean head of state pushed Burhan to ensure the Sudanese military is monitoring the border, controlling transit corridors, exchanging intelligence on the movements of troops and armed groups and maintaining direct political communication so that any border incident can be dealt with before it escalates into a wider crisis. Asmara was also trying to understand how much room Sudan was giving Ethiopian opposition groups to operate and coordinate with its military leadership from its territory in eastern Sudan, according to the source, for as much as these opposition groups can help Eritrea in its anti-Abiy position of today, there is a fear that, given too much leeway, they can turn their sights on Eritrea. Beyond these efforts at intelligence sharing and containment, the conversation in Asmara tested out the possibility of deeper political alignment, but neither side was willing to take firmer stances in this direction. For Asmara, Burhan’s insistence on a military solution to the war is open to question. According to the Eritrean source, Isaias asked how long Khartoum expected operations to continue and whether its leadership still believed a military path could produce a decisive outcome or would eventually give way to political arrangements. Isaias told Burhan that Asmara was paying close attention to the external arrangements taking shape around the Sudan war, whether through military assistance or political initiatives, the source added. The central question for Asmara, the source said, is which side will emerge with leverage to impose its terms. The outcome would shape Sudan’s political order and consequently its relations with neighboring states for years to come, they added. Burhan and the Sudanese military have taken repeatedly firm positions on the continuation of the war, refusing to sit down for discussions until the RSF withdraws from areas it has taken control of and to enter into any diplomatic arena that would acknowledge any equivalence between the Sudanese state and any parallel actor. And if a larger conflict involving Ethiopia were to break out, neither Sudan nor Eritrea were able to pledge what their response would be, despite such a response being the topic of discussion in Asmara. Eritrea wants to know whether Sudan is moving toward a political and military confrontation with Addis Ababa or leaving room for a future arrangement, according to the source. Asmara does not want the Sudan war to become a pretext for a new regional confrontation, but neither does it want a future settlement to produce security arrangements that leave it facing a new reality along its borders, they added. A Sudanese political source informed of the talks and of the Asmara-Khartoum political and security coordination said that the Sudanese response was that its position would depend on how far Ethiopian intervention and logistical support to the RSF continue. Burhan also wanted to know how far Eritrea would be willing to take its coordination with Sudan in the event that a larger war with Ethiopia were to break out, the Eritrean source said. Khartoum needs to know whether Asmara would limit itself to a political stance or take broader action if its border interests or national security came under direct threat. Any new confrontation involving Ethiopia and Eritrea would immediately reshape the military environment around eastern Sudan, making Eritrea’s position a consequential part of Khartoum’s calculations. While the Eritrean source did not comment on Isaias’s response in the meeting, they underlined that Asmara favors flexible arrangements via Sudan and Ethiopian opposition groups because it enables the regime to exert pressure on Addis Ababa while maintaining enough political leeway to deny direct involvement if necessary. For now, the two sides have agreed to continue high-level direct coordination and information sharing, the Sudanese political source and Eritrean source said. *** Tasis unified general command to be led by Abdel Rahim Dagalo, sources say Deputy RSF leader Abdel Rahim Dagalo during a meeting for the planned signing, later postponed, of a political charter that would provide for a “Government of Peace and Unity” to govern the territories the force controls in Nairobi, Kenya, February 18. Photo: REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi. Tasis, the RSF-led alliance heading the parallel government in western Sudan, announced last week it is forming a new unified military. Leading it will be RSF Deputy Commander Abdel Rahim Dagalo, according to a source close to him and an official in Tasis. The announcement of a new general command to bring all forces fighting under a unified hierarchy was made at the conclusion of a five-day leadership meeting in Nyala, where Tasis also agreed to establish a political mechanism to serve as a reference point for negotiations and advance plans to form the institutions that will make up its Government of Peace. Abdel Rahim’s selection during the meetings as the military’s commander has not been publicly announced. The plan for a unified armed force was first made public in June when Tasis’s presidential council issued a decree establishing a Security and Defense Council headed by RSF Commander Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, with Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North leader Abdel Aziz al-Hilu serving as his deputy. Alongside its broader mandate over security policy, the council was tasked with overseeing plans to create a “national army” bringing together the RSF, Hilu’s movement and other signatories to the founding charter of the parallel government. The decisions in Nyala put clearer institutional scaffolding around Tasis’s effort to build a government and a unified military command at the same time. Abdel Rahim’s selection separates the military and political leaderships, with Hemedti commanding the RSF and chairing the alliance’s political institutions, the two sources said. Left unresolved is the far-tougher work of absorbing the RSF’s fighting units — by far Tasis’s largest armed movement — under a shared command with other movements and groups, each with its own commanders, units and areas of influence, according to the source close to Abdel Rahim, a source in his office and a source on Tasis’s leadership body. That process will redistribute authority across the alliance and settle which forms of autonomy hold and which give way to the new hierarchy. For the SPLM-N, the RSF’s main ally, deeper integration with the RSF and its project risks driving some of its own constituencies already critical of the alliance away at a time when it needs their support to extend its influence in the war’s most critical battlefields, a leadership figure in the movement told Mada Masr. Chaired by Hemedti, Tasis’s leadership body held its fourth session in Nyala from August 26 to 30. The meeting produced a set of decisions around the alliance’s next phase, including a “vision for just and sustainable peace,” the creation of a political mechanism to serve as its negotiating reference point and the formation of the new “national military,” according to the alliance. The leadership also called for the completion of the Tasis-led Government of Peace and the activation of its committees and institutions. RSF Commander Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo during the five-day Tasis leadership meeting in Nyala. Photo: Tasis via Facebook. The military decision came out of lengthy discussions over how to manage the different centers of power within the alliance, according to a political source on its leadership body. The forces under the Tasis umbrella entered the war from different positions and brought with them distinct military and organizational traditions. Creating a joint command therefore involves more than simply coordinating existing forces, the source said. It means establishing a new military institution and redistributing authority within the system led by the Dagalos, they added. That was less urgent when Tasis was primarily a wartime coalition. Its initial purpose was to gather forces opposed to the military under one political and military umbrella, according to a senior source in Abdel Rahim’s office. Now that the alliance has built a government, political institutions and a negotiating position, the continued separation of military commands has become an institutional problem rather than merely a matter of battlefield coordination, the source added. The decisions taken in Nyala represent an attempt to address that problem at the highest level, the source said. The leadership body did not only announce the new military. It also decided to activate the executive committee and specialized committees and complete the government’s institutions. The military establishment was thus placed on the same institutional track as the bodies being built for governance and negotiation, according to the source. The first step will be to establish a common command structure, followed by work on the general staff, operations, administration, the geographic distribution of forces and the army’s constituent units, according to a source informed of the military arrangements and the source close to Abdel Rahim. By placing Abdel Rahim at the head of the new army while Hemedti chairs Tasis’s leadership body and its government’s presidential council, the arrangement is meant to draw a clearer line between the alliance’s military and political leadership — the military would operate through its own command structure, while political authority would remain with Tasis’s civilian and political institutions, the source close to Abdel Rahim said. The Dagalo brothers now have formalized their roles in this overarching body, on top of their existing positions within the RSF itself. According to the source, the RSF’s restructuring is going to be a central file in the next phase. The integration process will run through the organization at every level. It will have to settle military ranks, the chain of command, lines of authority, access to resources, areas of deployment and the way individual units are managed, the source said. It will also have to accommodate the armed movements that have joined Tasis, many of which retain their own military structures and commanders, as well as long histories of armed struggle. Their place in the new army will depend on how the joint command is organized and which parts of their existing structures are allowed to remain, the source added. The RSF and its allies are also spread across a large and changing battlefield, something the source said would further complicate the restructuring process. Tasis-linked units operate across Darfur and into parts of Kordofan and Blue Nile, using mobile formations, drones and extended supply networks. Unifying them will require common systems for command, communications, logistics and deployment that can function across those fronts. The success of the new arrangement, the source said, will depend on whether Tasis can turn these separate formations into a military institution without losing the balance that holds its different forces and movements together, the source said — an especially delicate task given that the restructuring would unfold on active frontlines. A leadership figure in the SPLM-N said Abdel Rahim’s selection as commander of Tasis changes more than the alliance’s military hierarchy. It shifts the center of gravity in the whole military project toward the RSF’s own command at a time when the SPLM-N is already struggling to reconcile its partnership with the RSF with constituencies in the Nuba Mountains that reject it. For the Nuba blocs that see the alliance with the RSF as a threat to the independence of their own military and political decision making, the move gives the SPLM-N’s rivals a stronger case for portraying the movement as an arm of a military project controlled by the Dagalos, rather than as a movement pursuing its own historical agenda, the source said. The central problem is going to be with the Otoro tribe, one of the movement’s oldest constituencies. Abdel Rahim’s selection comes at an especially delicate moment in the Nuba Mountains, where political and military disputes have already hardened into direct clashes between SPLM-N forces and Otoro groups. Any military command tied so directly to the RSF, the source said, makes it far easier for this confrontation to slide from a local dispute over land and authority into a fight over the very identity of the political and military project in the Nuba region. Some Otoro groups have already begun demanding Hilu’s ouster amid the recent clashes, while Hemedti’s mediation bid in August was seen by critics of the growing RSF-SPLM-N alliance as blatant interference. Other Nuba blocs rejected a military alliance with the RSF from the outset, drawing a distinction between the SPLM-N’s longstanding “New Sudan” project and military cooperation with a force commanded by the Dagalos. What they accepted as a temporary wartime arrangement to rebalance the war against the military could instead begin to look like the foundations of a lasting military and political structure. That raises broader concerns over Nuba political autonomy and the role of local communities in any eventual settlement, according to the source. Within South Kordofan, the source said, the paradoxical result of the unified general command could be what looks like a strong, centralized military force that steadily loses the social acceptance it actually needs to recruit, mobilize and hold ground. The source explained that the RSF needs the SPLM-N and its constituencies to extend its reach in Kordofan and Blue Nile. The SPLM-N needs the RSF to shift the balance of power against the military. And both need the acceptance of local communities to convert military control into stable influence. Appointing Abdel Rahim addresses the military command side of that equation, the source said, but it puts pressure on the weakest link: local acceptance. Within the SPLM-N, entrenching the military alliance without addressing local objections risks opening fronts within the movement itself. Abdel Rahim’s selection, in the source’s view, is likely to push more of the Otoro and the anti-alliance blocs away from, and against, the SPLM-N. *** Tasis delegations arrives in Burundi to court AU Tasis Cabinet Affairs Minister Ibrahim al-Mirghani meets with Burundian President Evariste Ndayishimiye in Gitega, September 6. Photo: Office of the Prime Minister for the Government of Peace via Facebook. Days after its leadership in Nyala moved to build a unified general command and strengthen its political institutions, a delegation from Tasis’s Government of Peace travelled to Burundi to seek a direct channel with the African Union leadership. The delegation met with Burundian President Evariste Ndayishimiye in Gitega on Sunday. Headed by Cabinet Affairs Minister Ibrahim al-Mirghani and including Al-Goni Mustafa, whom the government has appointed as its United Nations representative, the delegation delivered a message from Hemedti and laid out Tasis’s position on the war and its vision for a political settlement, according to a source who traveled with the delegation. The goal, they said, was to open a direct line to Ndayishimiye, who currently chairs the AU, and to establish the alliance’s political and military weight as a factor that any future Sudan process will have to account for. Its immediate aim is to secure a seat in whatever AU-led process takes shape. Tasis wants the AU to see the war as a crisis of the state itself, its political and military order, rather than simply a battle between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF, according to a Tasis official who handles AU affairs. But the AU remains committed to Sudan’s territorial and state unity and opposes parallel governments, the official said. So Tasis is treading carefully. It wants engagement with its political project without pushing AU actors to formally recognize the Government of Peace as an alternative to the authorities in Khartoum, they added. The source who accompanied the delegation described the Gitega talks and the political restructuring in Nyala as two connected tracks of the same project — one reorganizing military and political power in areas under the alliance’s influence, the other working to create space for those arrangements in the regional political environment. Tasis wants to enter any future negotiations with a unified military command, a government with defined structures and a political reference point capable of negotiating, the source said. The delegation presented the Government of Peace and the planned new army as components of a broader effort to end the war and reorganize political authority, according to the source. The new army is central to the leverage Tasis is trying to build. Bringing the RSF and Tasis’s other military components under one command gives the alliance a unified force that would be difficult for any future settlement to write out of the picture, according to the official responsible for the AU file. Whether it eventually folds into a national military or operates under transitional security arrangements would become a question the settlement itself has to answer. According to the source who accompanied the delegation, Tasis’s leadership also sees Burundi’s experience in conflict and state reconstruction as a useful setting in which to discuss political and security transition arrangements with a government that has been through one itself. That comparison only goes so far, though. After Burundi’s civil war came to an end in 2005, it rebuilt a state that had already existed before the conflict. Tasis is trying to build political and military institutions alongside those already standing in Khartoum, the official responsible for the AU file said. That is what makes external legitimacy such a difficult problem for the alliance. Recognition of any new government or military institution would require support extending well beyond a single bilateral relationship. The next test for Tasis is turning its contacts with the Burundian presidency and AU institutions into a real role in any negotiating process, without letting its parallel institutions read to regional actors as a step toward partitioning Sudan, the official said. As the official put it, Gitega tests the external side of the project while Nyala tests the internal one. How those two tracks play out will determine whether Tasis enters the next phase as a military and political alliance, or as a more fully formed power project vying for a seat in Sudan’s postwar order. *** Quintet arrives in Khartoum, meets domestic dialogue’s preparatory committee, source says From the Quintet’s visit to Khartoum. Photo: @EUSR_Weber via X. The Quintet international mediation group on Sudan arrived in Khartoum on Tuesday for a three-day visit as the preparatory committee for Burhan’s intra-Sudanese dialogue began reaching out directly to political forces this week. On its first evening in the capital, the delegation held an unannounced meeting with the dialogue’s preparatory committee at the Rotana Hotel, according to a source on the committee. The Quintet comprises the United Nations, African Union, European Union, Arab League and Intergovernmental Authority on Development. It works closely with the Quad on Sudan — the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE — and other international partners. In a joint statement, the five members said the purpose of the visit is to “pursue direct political consultations with Sudanese stakeholders on the ground.” The delegation’s first official meeting was with Burhan at the Presidential Palace in Khartoum on Tuesday. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the head of the AU High-Level Panel on Sudan, described the meeting as “constructive” and said the visit aims to connect the Quintet’s efforts outside Sudan with Sudanese initiatives inside the country, according to a TSC statement on the meeting. In recent months, the Quintet has been bringing Sudanese political and civilian stakeholders together in Addis Ababa in an effort to establish a roadmap for a political process and form a preparatory committee to launch it, ultimately paving the way for a transition to civilian-led government. But attempts to bring the rival forces around the same table have repeatedly broken down into separate meetings, with little to no movement toward an agreed process. The stalemate in Addis has given Khartoum room to push its own track forward — one that Burhan has been laying the groundwork for for months — before the international efforts reach their own conclusions. Despite deep disagreements with major political forces over the process itself, the dialogue’s preparatory committee is now trying to secure enough participation to get it off the ground. An AU diplomatic source previously told Mada Masr that the two tracks would eventually have to connect. Even a dialogue organized domestically by Khartoum, the source said, would need acceptance from the regional and international tracks to have a chance of succeeding. And with the Quintet delegation visiting, Khartoum sees an opening. The source on the preparatory committee said the board’s formation last week and the start of its work from Khartoum gave the Quintet a point of contact inside Sudan with which to coordinate. The committee saw the delegation’s presence as an opportunity to coordinate international efforts with a Sudanese-led process inside the country, rather than allow the international actors to develop a parallel track detached from the consultations taking place in Sudan, they added. The committee used its meeting on Tuesday evening with the Quintet to set out its mandate, the limits of its role at this stage and what it believes regional and international actors should provide in support of the dialogue, according to the source. During the meeting, committee members emphasized that they are now reaching out to political forces and listening to their positions, while leaving decisions on the dialogue’s final form, agenda and tracks to the Sudanese parties themselves, the source said. Committee spokesperson Osman Mirghani told Mada Masr that the body has entered an intensive working phase, with members inside and outside Khartoum working around the clock to organize its tasks. The committee has agreed to contact all political parties and draw on their previous experience, he said. But disputes over the committee’s independence — given that Burhan initiated the process himself — as well as the fact that the talks will be held in military-controlled territory and the question of who gets a seat at the table remain major obstacles to securing participation, opposition sources previously told Mada Masr. The committee is nevertheless trying to draw a clear line around its role in its current outreach: it is preparing the dialogue, not determining its agenda or the process itself, according to a journalist who attended the committee’s meetings with Sudanese journalists this week. The distinction is meant to avoid a problem with previous initiatives, in which agreement on a broad premise quickly gave way to disputes over participants, political reference points and who should organize the process. For a state-aligned political source involved in the dialogue discussions, the Quintet’s presence in Khartoum gave the process a measure of political acknowledgment — something the committee could take into its outreach to skeptical political forces. But the visit does not settle the central problem facing the committee: whether it can persuade groups that remain opposed to the dialogue or reject the formula currently being proposed to take part, the source said. The committee has explicitly said its outreach will include those opposed to the dialogue. The Quintet’s visit also overlapped with that of Pekka Haavisto, the UN secretary general’s special envoy for Sudan, who arrived on September 4 for a series of meetings with Burhan, Prime Minister Kamel Idris, the foreign minister and senior government officials, as well as civil society representatives and other political leaders. The meetings covered developments in the war, efforts to de-escalate the fighting and ongoing consultations over dialogue, as well as the UN-brokered initiative for a detainee exchange. Haavisto joined the Quintet’s meetings on Tuesday. He called for an inclusive political process alongside concrete steps to reduce violence, saying that a negotiated settlement remained the only viable path to a comprehensive ceasefire agreement and a sustainable end to the conflict. *** Military launches surprise attack in North Kordofan, captures more ground From footage taken by military forces after capturing Hamra al-Waz in North Kordofan. September 6. Source: Sudan Tribune. The Sudanese Armed Forces has expanded its control in North Kordofan after a surprise attack on RSF positions in preparation for what a military source said was a wider push to retake areas still held by the paramilitary group. The attack began on Sunday at Hamra al-Waz, west of military-held Gabra al-Sheikh, according to the source. The military seized the area after limited fighting, taking military equipment as RSF fighters withdrew in large numbers, the source said. The military then moved west in pursuit of the retreating forces. By Tuesday, it had recaptured Tandab, Um Surra and Kibash al-Nour, all west of Gabra al-Sheikh, along with Safiya in northeastern Sodary locality, the source said. The source described the operations as preparatory, aimed at securing positions before a broader advance akin to the surprise offensive in July, when the military recaptured Bara, Gabra al-Sheikh, Um Girfa and Um Sayala and brought the Khartoum-Kordofan Saderat Road under its control. An RSF reconnaissance force tried to move back toward Hamra al-Waz on Wednesday, but military forces repelled the attack, killing and wounding fighters and destroying several vehicles, the source said. Retired Major General Mohamed Khalil al-Saem told Mada Masr that an RSF unit surrendered in Hamra al-Waz with its combat equipment after the military took control of the area. Hamra al-Waz had served as a forward base for RSF attacks and flanking operations against military positions in Gabra al-Sheikh and along the Saderat Road following the July offensive. Its loss would leave the RSF operating from farther away and from more exposed positions, making future attacks more costly, the source said. A second military source told Mada Masr that the military completed military and logistical preparations for wider operations along its fronts in North Kordofan. Additional troops and supplies arrived on Wednesday, the source said. The military’s Special Operations Forces in West Kordofan warned residents across the Kordofan region on Tuesday of “complex military conditions.” It urged people in RSF-held areas to stay away from RSF positions, bases and gatherings, remain at home and refrain from contact with combatants until the areas around their control were secured. *** At least 14 killed in RSF drone attacks in North Kordofan RSF drones struck a courthouse in North Kordofan’s Um Rawaba and a college in the state capital Obeid on Tuesday, killing at least 14 people, according to sources in both cities. The deadliest attack, with 13 killed and 22 injured, took place around midday at the courthouse in Um Rawaba. One drone struck the main building, while another hit a group of civilians gathered outside the entrance and beneath nearby trees where they were seeking shade, a resident of the city told Mada Masr. The area was crowded with people who had just left a nearby military graduation ceremony. After the attack, the courthouse carried on with its normal work, with litigants and others gathering around the building, the resident said. Lawyers, petition writers, street vendors, tea servers and courthouse employees were among those killed and wounded, they said. The wounded were transported to the Ibn Malik Specialized Hospital. Repeated RSF drone attacks have left residents of Um Rawaba and surrounding areas in a constant state of fear and worsened humanitarian conditions, the resident added. The Emergency Lawyers, a rights group, condemned the attack on judicial facilities and called for an independent investigation to identify and hold those responsible accountable, while safeguarding the judicial institutions. Later Tuesday evening, the RSF launched another attack with four suicide drones on the College of Development and Technological Sciences in Obeid, an official in the city told Mada Masr. The attack wounded a security guard who later succumbed to his injuries and caused extensive damage to the college’s buildings, classrooms and other facilities, the official said. *** Military appoints new commander of operations control in Blue Nile Fourth Infantry Division in Damazin commander Ismail al-Tayeb Hussein (left) receives Major General Al-Waleed Abdel Kader Agabna (right) at the division’s headquarters after his appointment as commander of operations. Photo: Fourth Infantry Division in Damazin via Facebook. The military appointed Major General Al-Waleed Abdel Kader Agabna as a commander of operations control in the Blue Nile region. The Fourth Infantry Division in Blue Nile’s capital Damazin said on Sunday that its commander, Ismail al-Tayeb Hussein, received Agabna at the division’s headquarters. Agabna has held several senior military posts, including command of Sudanese troops deployed to Saudi Arabia as part of Operation Decisive Storm, the Saudi-led campaign against the Houthis in Yemen launched in 2015. His combat experience includes operations in mountainous terrain and against guerrilla-style armed groups. Blue Nile has become one of the war’s most geopolitically sensitive battlefields, with implications for relations with Ethiopia and the wider region. Agabna’s appointment comes as the front has been elevated to a strategic priority, a military source informed of command arrangements in Blue Nile said. The military leadership, they added, wants to manage the front proactively rather than reactively. This includes monitoring potential axes of attack before they escalate, securing Damazin’s operational depth and maintaining a continuous intelligence picture of RSF and SPLM-N movements and supply routes across the borders with South Sudan and Ethiopia. The challenge involves coordinating forces across a massive and more fluid battlefield, including regular military units, allied forces and formations that have arrived in the region in recent months, all of which the new command will need to coordinate their deployment and set priorities across different parts of the front, according to the source. The immediate test will be whether the new command can turn greater coordination into a battlefield advantage, particularly along the increasingly pressured Damazin-Kurmuk axis, while preventing the border areas from becoming a sustained operational corridor for the RSF and SPLM-N, according to the source. *** Subscribe to our Lens on Sudan newsletter here.The post Sudan Nashra: US push to expand arms embargo to all of Sudan at UNSC postponed at last minute | Amid unprecedented arms build-up at RSF base in Ethiopia, Burhan, Isaias probe elusive mutual guarantees | Tasis’s unified general command to be led by Abdel Rahim Dagalo, sources say | Quintet meets domestic dialogue’s preparatory committee on Khartoum visit, source says first appeared on Mada Masr.
