Sudan Will Not Accept the Rebranding of the RSF Militia Under the Banner of a Humanitarian Truce

Amid the immense suffering endured by the Sudanese people—millions displaced within their country or forced to seek refuge abroad—and in the midst of a devastating humanitarian crisis, no reasonable person rejects a ceasefire or humanitarian truce in principle. Peace is a universal aspiration, and ending the suffering of civilians remains an unquestionable national and humanitarian priority.

It is from this perspective that the Government of Sudan has consistently engaged positively and responsibly with every genuine initiative aimed at ending the war and restoring peace and stability, including the recent U.S. initiative.

However, the success of any ceasefire cannot be measured by its announcement alone. Rather, it depends on the guarantees and enforcement mechanisms it provides to avoid the failures of previous initiatives and to respond to the legitimate aspirations of the Sudanese people.

The Sudanese people's vision is clear and unambiguous. They seek a ceasefire that leads to ending the militia's control over the remaining towns and cities still under its grip, where civilians continue to live as hostages to fear and are subjected to horrific acts of killing, intimidation, and abuse in cities such as Nyala, El Daein, and elsewhere.

Moreover, for any ceasefire to be sustainable, it must first be preceded by subjecting the UAE to repeated international demands to completely halt its arms supply corridors to the militias via Sudan’s neighboring countries.

This should then be followed by the relocation of its fighters to agreed assembly areas as a prelude to dismantling the force, disarming it, and subjecting its members to internationally recognized Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) programs, as befits an armed group operating outside the authority of the state.

This is by no means an unprecedented approach. On the contrary, it reflects a methodology that has proven successful in resolving armed conflicts and rebuilding state institutions in countries such as Colombia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nepal. Sudan's position, therefore, is neither exceptional nor unreasonable, but rather consistent with internationally tested peacebuilding practices.

At the same time, Sudan cannot accept a ceasefire that merely grants the militia an opportunity to regroup after the recent battlefield gains achieved by the Sudanese Armed Forces.

Instead, any cessation of hostilities must preserve Sudan's sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national unity while preventing any attempt to create conditions that could lead to a Libya-class fragmentation of the country.

Sudan is fully aware of attempts to exploit a humanitarian truce to create a new reality on the ground—one that freezes the advances of the Sudanese Armed Forces while simultaneously providing the militia with safe areas to recover, reorganize, recruit additional mercenaries, and secure a renewed flow of weapons and military supplies before resuming its campaign against the Sudanese state in pursuit of well-known external agendas.

Nor will Sudan succumb to politically motivated media narratives suggesting that the militia is on the verge of capturing El Obeid or that the city faces the same fate as El Fasher.

Such narratives are designed to pressure Sudan into accepting a ceasefire whose humanitarian appearance conceals fundamentally different political and military objectives.

The facts on the ground tell a different story. El Obeid is not under siege as claimed, while the Sudanese Armed Forces have recently expanded their operations across northern and western Darfur into areas that had previously been inaccessible, undermining such claims.

Like El Fasher before it, El Obeid has been subjected to repeated drone attacks deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure—including water facilities, electricity networks, schools, and hospitals—for political purposes that have become increasingly evident to observers.

These realities underscore legitimate concerns that a ceasefire lacking credible guarantees and effective monitoring could become an opportunity for the militia to reorganize, replenish its military capabilities, and resume hostilities at a later stage.

The credibility of any peace initiative therefore depends on its ability to address these concerns through practical and enforceable measures rather than political rhetoric.

The central issue today is not the declaration of a ceasefire in itself, but the nature of that ceasefire and the political outcome it is intended to produce.

Sudan rejects any arrangement that would effectively recreate the militia under a different name or integrate it into the country's future political and military order without addressing the root causes of the conflict and ensuring accountability.

From this perspective, any attempt to reintroduce the militia under new political labels or grant it renewed legitimacy while bypassing responsibility for the grave violations associated with it during the conflict will not produce a durable peace. It will merely postpone the conflict and lay the foundations for future instability.

True peace is not achieved by freezing a war, but by removing its causes. It cannot be secured simply through a ceasefire, but through the restoration of a state that alone holds the legitimate monopoly over the use of force, where all armed groups are subject to the rule of law, thereby safeguarding Sudan's unity and stability and preventing the crisis from being reproduced under new names or different political banners.

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