How to Bring Peace to Sudan

How to Bring Peace to Sudan

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Argument: How to Bring Peace to Sudan

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Argument

An expert’s point of view on a current event.

How to Bring Peace to Sudan

The president of the country’s Transitional Sovereignty Council argues that any solution must be homemade.

By **Abdalfatah Alburhan**, the president of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council.

!A wide shot of a group of children and adults walking across a dry, rocky outdoor landscape under a clear blue sky. Many of the children are wearing backpacks. In the center, a tall flagpole displays a tattered flag with red, white, black, and green colors.

*A wide shot of a group of children and adults walking across a dry, rocky outdoor landscape under a clear blue sky. Many of the children are wearing backpacks. In the center, a tall flagpole displays a tattered flag with red, white, black, and green colors.*

Students pass a tattered Sudan flag as they leave a school south of Port Sudan on April 26. Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images

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September 21, 2026, 5:03 PM

Well into its fourth year, the war in Sudan is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. At least 59,000 people have been killed and more than 14 million displaced, while famine and widespread sexual violence have left millions in urgent need of food, medicine, and mental health support.

Sudanese people know the war must end—and, God willing, it will. But after more than a dozen failed cease-fires brokered by international parties, it is time to put a lasting end to this war so the guns do not return when the world looks away. That is what Sudanese civilians ask of me, as president of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council, and of others entrusted with governing: that the war is ended for good and that the foreign meddling that has fractured our nation and profited from our suffering ceases completely.

Well into its fourth year, the war in Sudan is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. At least 59,000 people have been killed and more than 14 million displaced, while famine and widespread sexual violence have left millions in urgent need of food, medicine, and mental health support.

Sudanese people know the war must end—and, God willing, it will. But after more than a dozen failed cease-fires brokered by international parties, it is time to put a lasting end to this war so the guns do not return when the world looks away. That is what Sudanese civilians ask of me, as president of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council, and of others entrusted with governing: that the war is ended for good and that the foreign meddling that has fractured our nation and profited from our suffering ceases completely.

The war in Sudan is not a fight between two “factions” or a “civil war”; our sovereign state and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia do not sit on equal moral and legal ground. Rather, this is an assault on a United Nations member state by a paramilitary group that survives on looting, killing, and ethnic cleansing. The RSF must not be legitimized or treated as an equal partner. After all, the RSF’s leaders—Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and his top deputies—are the same commanders who ordered the Janjaweed militia to rape and massacre non-Arab communities in Darfur in the early 2000s.

Last year, the 30-month siege of El Fasher ended in mass slaughter. Neighborhoods were decimated, families were murdered in their homes, and bodies rotted in the streets with no one to bury them. Before the assault, the U.N. counted more than 260,000 civilians trapped in the city, half of them children. Since El Fasher fell in October 2025, the U.N. has recorded some 127,000 people displaced from the city and the villages around it. Although independent investigators have not been able to enter the city, Yale University’s satellite analysts found evidence of mass graves—which suggests the deliberate targeting of civilians—while a U.N. fact-finding mission found the atrocities to bear the “hallmarks of genocide.”

A militia cannot sustain a war of this scale alone. Hundreds of foreign fighters have reinforced the RSF since 2024, recruited through networks funded by transnational entities operating across several countries. This has been widely recognized: In June, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned eight individuals and entities linked to those networks. Last month, drones struck Khartoum and other cities in the largest coordinated barrage in months, demonstrating the increasingly sophisticated military capabilities enabled by foreign interference.

Read More

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*A Sudanese flag is held by a machine gun covered with an ammunition belt in Abraq, Sudan, on June 22, 2019.*

Peace in Sudan Can Only Flower After a Weapons Embargo

The case for the White House’s Security Council resolution on Sudan, made by two senior administration officials. !This article has an audio recording

Argument

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Michael Waltz, Massad Boulos

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*Around a dozen trucks painted with green camouflage are seen across a dusty stretch of land beneath a hazy sky. Fighters in matching khaki uniforms and hats perch on the trucks, most of them carrying rifles.*

Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces Are Terrorists

Designating the group as such could help bring an end to Sudan’s civil war. !This article has an audio recording

Argument

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Cameron Hudson

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*Students leave a school south of Port Sudan on April