September 21, 2026 – Foreign Policy

The president of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council (TSC): Any sustainable solution must be forged by Sudanese themselves.

By Abdel-Fattah Al-Burhan, President of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council
Well into its fourth year, the war in Sudan has become 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 that this war must end—and, Allah willing, it will. But after more than a dozen failed cease-fires brokered by international parties, it is time to bring this war to a genuine and lasting end, so that the guns do not return the moment the world looks away.

That is what Sudanese civilians are asking of me, as president of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council, and of everyone entrusted with governing the country: that the war end for good and that the foreign meddling that has fractured our nation and turned our people’s suffering into a field for influence, interests, and gains cease completely.

The war in Sudan is not a fight between two “factions,” nor is it a “civil war.” Our sovereign state and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia do not stand on equal moral or 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 to the state. Its leaders—Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and his senior deputies—are the same commanders whose names are associated with the Janjaweed militias that committed rape and massacres against 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 were left in the streets with no one to bury them. Before the assault, the United Nations counted more than 260,000 civilians trapped in the city, half of them children.

Since El-Fasher fell in October 2025, the United Nations has recorded around 127,000 people displaced from the city and surrounding villages. Although independent investigators have been unable to enter the city, satellite analysis by Yale University found evidence of mass graves, suggesting the deliberate targeting of civilians. A UN fact-finding mission also found that the atrocities committed there bore 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 become 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 Sudanese cities in the largest coordinated barrage in months, demonstrating the increasingly sophisticated military capabilities enabled by foreign interference.

The government I lead is transitional and imperfect. We accept the standards of international law, and we will be measured by them. But unlike the RSF, this government is the lawful authority of a sovereign UN member state and is answerable to its people.

The UN Security Council has reaffirmed Sudan’s “sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity” and rejected the authority of the RSF in the territory it holds.

Our people recognize this distinction as well. Where the RSF advances, people flee; where the state is restored to power, people come home. Almost 4 million Sudanese have returned to Khartoum, Al-Gezira, and Sennar following the RSF’s retreat from those areas.

I have put forward a plan before the Security Council to establish a lasting cease-fire and a transition to civilian-inclusive rule. With UN oversight and assistance, fighters and weapons would be removed from civilian areas, creating a clear path toward a settlement that would allow the state to govern in peace and stability.

Following a cease-fire, security must rest on a single national army under civilian supervision, rather than parallel armed forces with competing loyalties and multiple paymasters.

A political settlement must be reached through Sudanese dialogue, and the next constitution must be written by Sudanese hands—not drafted abroad. Free, fair, and internationally supervised elections, followed by a smooth transition of power, would return agency to the people.

Peace must therefore be homemade—by Sudanese, for Sudanese, in Sudan.

Partnership is welcome, and credible monitors can—and should—add restraint, oversight, and legitimacy to any agreement. But peace dictated from the outside does not last.

Cease-fires have repeatedly collapsed during this war because they were written about Sudan without Sudan, and because their sponsors knew they would not have to pay the price if those negotiations failed. A “pause” became an opportunity for the RSF and its backers to regroup, while the world’s attention drifted away once again. The massacre in El-Fasher made the consequences of this cycle tragically clear.

Sudan has lived through this cycle before, and it will not accept it again.
While our lawful government is putting forward a plan to end the war, the leader of a militia has vowed to fight for 40 years if necessary.

For the international community, the choice is clear: support a settlement anchored in sovereignty and the rule of law, rather than legitimizing RSF leaders and allowing Sudan’s war to continue indefinitely.

As the UN General Assembly convenes this week, I call on the international community to commit to four priorities:

First, support the plan I have submitted to the Security Council.
Second, cut funding and supply lines that enable the RSF to continue killing Sudanese civilians.
Third, provide assistance and support to the UN as it monitors any future cease-fire.
Fourth, give Sudanese politics the space to decide what comes next.

My request is simple: trust our nation to write its own peace, and use your influence to help sustain it.

Sudan has repeatedly been urged to accept far less than it deserves through terms convenient to distant capitals and pauses mislabeled as peace.

Those who have endured the horrors of this war have earned the right to define the peace that ends it.

Let these principles guide any settlement:
Peace that is homemade, not imposed.
Peace that is built on law and strong institutions.
Peace that is worthy of those who have given everything for it.
That is the peace Sudan can build—with the world’s help.