Sudan Rejects US Truce Plan, Fears Libya-style Partition

By Al Mayadeen English

26 Jul 2026 21:01

A senior Sudanese official affirms that Khartoum will not accept a US-backed truce that risks legitimizing RSF control or partitioning the country.

Sudan's political leadership has rejected a US-backed proposal for a 90-day ceasefire, warning that any deal built around freezing the current front lines risks entrenching Rapid Support Forces control over Sudanese territory and setting the stage for the country's partition.

"We cannot hand over our people to the political ambitions of the RSF. At the same time, we cannot accept partition like the Libya scenario," Amgad Fareid Eltayeb, political and foreign affairs adviser to the chairman of Sudan's Sovereignty Council, told Anadolu Agency.

What Washington is proposing

The plan, presented by Massad Boulos, the US president's senior advisor for Arab and African affairs, calls for an immediate 90-day humanitarian truce accompanied by a UN-led mechanism for limited withdrawals by the Rapid Support Forces, prioritized in North Darfur and North Kordofan.

Broader military arrangements, including a full RSF pullback and disarmament, would be negotiated later as part of a permanent ceasefire. The proposal also envisions a civilian-led political transition toward elections and a unified national military.

Khartoum has consistently rejected that sequencing. The Sudanese government insists any truce must begin with a complete RSF withdrawal from all cities and areas under its control, along with enforceable guarantees, before political or security arrangements are even discussed.

Officials view the alternative, RSF forces relocating into defined zones during a truce, as a step toward legitimizing the group's territorial gains rather than a step toward ending the war.

El Obeid, the new flashpoint

Eltayeb pointed to El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, as the current center of gravity in the conflict, three times the size of El Fasher, the North Darfur capital the RSF seized in October 2025 amid mass killings that, according to the United Nations, amounted to acts of genocide. He accused the RSF of attempting a similar campaign against El Obeid and said government forces had repelled the group's attacks and retained control of the city.

He rejected framing the war as a civil conflict between two equal parties, describing it instead as an assault by "fascist militias" on the Sudanese state, its government, and its people. He also accused the RSF of using drones supplied by unnamed regional backers to target civilians and called on the international community to designate the group a "terrorist organization".

Why 'freezing' the lines is the real dispute

For Khartoum, the core objection to the US proposal is not the idea of a truce itself but what would happen during it. Eltayeb said Sudan would not accept proposals that "freeze" the current military situation, arguing that doing so would effectively legitimize RSF control over civilian areas and leave the Sudanese people hostage to the group.

That concern echoes what has driven the government's position throughout the negotiations. If the RSF retains control over large parts of Darfur and Kordofan during a truce period, officials fear, today's battle lines could evolve into tomorrow's political boundaries, producing a Sudan that resembles other conflict states where an internationally recognized government coexists with a de facto authority controlling its own territory.

The absence of a binding timetable for ending any redeployment and restoring full state authority only deepens that fear.

Washington, for its part, has framed the proposal around three narrower goals: halting hostilities, enabling humanitarian access, and creating conditions to restart a political process. Analysts tracking the talks acknowledge that both sides suspect a ceasefire would simply let their opponent regroup, and that any credible agreement would need enforceable monitoring mechanisms that remain, at this stage, poorly defined.

Tensions between Khartoum, Washington

The dispute is unfolding against a backdrop of wider friction between Khartoum and Washington. The United States imposed a new round of sanctions on Sudan in July over allegations that government forces used chemical weapons during the war, a charge Khartoum has repeatedly denied as baseless and politically timed to coincide with battlefield setbacks for the RSF.

At the same time, Sudan has been deepening ties elsewhere, with Khartoum and Saudi Arabia moving to activate a Supreme Council for Strategic Cooperation and Coordination, part of a broader reassessment of foreign relations based on how other countries have positioned themselves during the conflict.

An unresolved initiative

Analysts following the negotiations read the latest US proposal as a recognition in Washington that neither side is likely to achieve a decisive military victory, pushing the mediation effort from seeking an outright end to the war toward managing it through phased arrangements. But that approach carries its own risk. An agreement that lets both sides hold stable territorial zones could turn a temporary military reality into a lasting political one, the very outcome Khartoum says it will not accept.

Whether the initiative survives will depend on whether mediators can offer credible guarantees on the duration of any redeployment, a workable monitoring mechanism, and a clear path back to full state authority. Absent that, Eltayeb's own framing suggests Khartoum sees only one outcome on offer, a ceasefire that quietly draws a new map of the country rather than ending the war that produced it.