What could be more challenging than negotiating peace between two distrustful competing warlords? Negotiating peace between three distrustful competing warlords.
For the past year, a fierce battle between two Sudanese armed groups has ripped the country apart: the Sudanese Armed Forces led by Abdel Fattah Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces led by Mohamad Dagalo, also known as Hemedti. The two sides have shown little interest in a peace agreement despite diplomatic initiatives. Failed talks have led to public calls for escalating sanctions to disrupt Sudan’s main armed groups, but that policy risks breaking up the two coalitions into a more anarchic multipolar conflict.
Sudan’s many armed groups usually are fractious, but the two largest armed groups, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, are too strong for their smaller rivals to challenge alone. Most mid-sized armed groups have decided to join a coalition or maintain neutrality. However, as the conflict has dragged on, there have been increasing calls for muscular sanctions and diplomacy to cut off the financing and resupply of the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces to punish them for fighting. However, if the United States successfully isolates the large armed groups, it will inadvertently empower smaller groups and breakaways. That risks transforming a two-sided war into a multipolar conflict. Once Sudan enters anarchy like the Central African Republic and Somalia, U.S. peace and security goals will become even more difficult to achieve.
How can the United States use its threat of sanctions and international isolation to limit the damage from the Sudanese civil war without destroying the prospects for post-war peacebuilding? The key is to avoid conditioning sanctions on maximalist demands like ceasing offensive operations. These demands will be rejected, forcing the United States to escalate sanctions or lose face. Instead, the United States should condition sanctions on how the parties conduct the conflict, as these conditions are more likely to be acquiesced to. The United States cannot stop cities from being conquered, but it can reduce the ensuing violence against their inhabitants.
The Benefits of Coordination Among Bad Men
The behavior of armed groups within a nation depends on their degree of coordination. In developed states, force is concentrated in cohesive state bodies (army, police). In other states, violence capacity is decentralized across multiple groups like militias, rebel movements, mercenaries, and criminal gangs. Countries like Lebanon and Iraq sit in an intermediate state where armed groups can act independently but are constrained by internal rules and coordination mechanisms. Sudan in 2022 was an intermediate state where the Sudanese Armed Forces, Rapid Support Forces, and others retained independent action but coordinated under the Sovereignty Council. In failed states like Somalia, competing armed groups rule their private fiefdoms without mutual constraint.
Anarchy leads to a race to the bottom that makes all society worse off, even in comparison with the rule of armed groups that are greedy and uncaring. Take road tolls as an example. Under anarchy, every well-trafficked road presents a lucrative opportunity; just a few armed men can quickly establish a roadblock and extort travelers and merchants. However, roadblocks impose high costs on the rest of society: They divide the national economy into small autarkic zones. As roadblocks multiply, goods cannot move. Factories, ports, and companies fail. Soon, the value of goods flowing through the country declines, and even the armed men by the road are impoverished. However, when an armed group controls only a small area, the impoverishment of distant factory workers is someone else’s problem. In divided states like Somalia, roadblocks are ubiquitous, and their taxes are onerous, but even those who run them are impoverished. Well-coordinated governments, even those run by evil men, recognize this and organize taxation less destructively.
The roadblock anecdote also shows that peace is not simply the absence of conflict. If the large armed groups were to disappear, smaller armed groups would quickly form to replace them. Real peace requires thousands of soldiers to enforce the new order against holdouts or challengers.
The 2023 Sudan war is not one of all against all; violence has remained polarized between the Sudanese Armed Forces coalition and the Rapid Support Forces. This is surprising given Sudan’s diverse cast of armed groups. Sudan’s armed groups can be divided into three tiers: the large, the midsized warlords who command between 5,000 and 20,000 professional soldiers, and the small, local militias or gangs of a few hundred to a thousand men. The Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces are in a tier of their own, with armed personnel near or above 100,000. They alone can project power across the entire country and have access to more sophisticated weapons systems, particularly the Sudanese Armed Forces’ armored and air wings.
The mid-sized armed groups primarily represent ethnic minority groups like the Zaghawa, associated with the Sudan Liberation Movement–Minni Minnawi faction. They fought against the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces on and off throughout 2000–2022, primarily in Sudan’s southern and western states. The small armed groups include a myriad of local defensive militias and semi-autonomous splinter factions. They rarely make the news, but a deep dive into any region quickly reveals a patchwork of groups with their own interests, agendas, and grudges.
After the war began, some Sudan watchers speculated that as the Rapid Support Forces and Sudanese Armed Forces exhausted themselves, the mid-sized and small armed groups would seize the opportunity to take territory and continue their blood feuds, pushing the country further into anarchy. This scenario occurred in Kordofan, where Abdelaziz al-Hilu’s faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement North attacked both Sudanese Armed Forces garrisons and Rapid Support Forces troops.
However, the combat power of the large armed groups prevented most mid-sized and smaller groups from carving out independent territories. After the war began, several Darfur-based armed groups joined to form the Darfur Joint Protection Force, including the former rebel groups the Justice and Equality Movement and the Minni Minnawi faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement. Initially, the Darfur Joint Protection Force proclaimed neutrality between the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces and provided an independent protection service for commercial convoys. The Darfur Joint Protection Force strategy caused fighting with the Rapid Support Forces, and they realized fighting independently was impractical. In November 2023, the Justice and Equality Movement and Minni Minnawi renounced their neutrality and declared they would fight alongside the Sudanese Armed Forces. With support, the Darfur Joint Protection Force has held off attacks against el-Fasher from the Rapid Support Forces despite fierce fighting.
For now, it is a brute fact that most mid-sized and small armed groups cannot contest the large armed groups on the battlefield alone. That has forced most mid-sized groups to declare neutrality or become junior partners in a coalition with a large group, most often the Sudanese Armed Forces. Due to their junior status, none can independently spoil a potential agreement between the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces. Despite their complaints, Minni Minnawi and the Justice and Equality Movement were not invited to peace talks in Switzerland.
It was not inevitable that the strength of the Rapid Support Forces and Sudanese Armed Forces would keep mid-sized armed groups in line. However, this outcome was contingent on a surprisingly strong battlefield performance, particularly on the Rapid Support Forces’ part. In previous wars in Darfur, the Rapid Support Forces and Sudanese Armed Forces jointly struggled for years to dominate these same groups. Also, in neighboring Central African Republic, mid-sized armed groups have achieved de facto independence.
Being Smart with Sanctions
U.S. sanctions strategy in Sudan operates in three steps. First, the United States identifies potential sanctionable targets that provide leverage over an armed group, such as a holding company selling gold, an arms manufacturer, or a politically connected bank. Next, U.S. diplomats communicate a list of demands to the group’s leaders. As the armed group crosses red lines, the U.S. sanctions increasingly important firms and individuals, moving from small symbolic targets like ideologues to revenue-generating activities and arms suppliers and finally to sanctioning the leaders themselves.
The United States initially hoped that modest, targeted sanctions would drive the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces into a peace deal. On June 1, 2023, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned a mining and export conglomerate and a vehicle importer owned by Hemedti and the Sudanese Armed Forces Defense Industries Systems (Sudan’s largest arms producer) and one subsidiary. This round of sanctions did not result in serious negotiations, so the United States launched additional packages on Sept. 28, 2023, and Jan. 31, 2024. These rounds were substantively similar in targeting arms suppliers and revenue generators. Targets included part of the Sudanese Armed Forces’ social security fund and the largest Sudanese bank affiliated with the Rapid Support Forces.
This strategy has not altered the primary belligerents’ calculus on peace talks. The main problem is that war policy is existential to the group’s core objectives. To the Sudanese Armed Forces, not only is the Rapid Support Forces occupying its homeland in Khartoum, but it also has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted. They see the only path to security as monopolizing violence for themselves in Khartoum. For the Rapid Support Forces, withdrawing from Khartoum would allow their enemies to stabilize and eventually isolate them to the poorer periphery. Both sides see the other’s minimal conditions leading to their political demise.
The United States has found its threats insufficient and can either back down or escalate. As a recent essay by the Center for Strategic and International Studies argues, the United States has plenty of room to escalate. The Rapid Support Forces depends on markets in the United Arab Emirates to market gold exports and purchase arms. The United States could condition arms sales or military protection to the United Arab Emirates on stopping those activities. The United States could enforce independent monitoring of gold markets like the Kimberley Process for diamonds. While the Sudanese Armed Forces’ arms manufacturers are sanctioned, the ministry of defense is not and can purchase arms freely on the international market. But how should the United States deploy that leverage?
The United States has four competing options. It can try to disrupt the supply of both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, target only the Sudanese Armed Forces, or target only the Rapid Support Forces and leave the Sudanese Armed Forces alone. Finally, the United States can announce it will target the side with egregious war crimes. Let’s consider each of these options in turn.
Sanctioning both sides for a ceasefire
Can the United States use leverage from sanctions and diplomatic isolation to drive both large armed groups to seriously negotiate and agree to a ceasefire and a return to power-sharing, as suggested by John Prendergast? Doing so would require considerable leverage because the war is existential for both the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces, which was not true of the Sudanese Armed Forces in earlier conflicts.
Supply lines alone would offer sufficient leverage. Going after the personal holdings of Rapid Support Forces and Sudanese Armed Forces leadership is not viable; they have long anticipated sanctions given past U.S. policy and have likely protected their assets in havens like the United Arab Emirates. The war has already devastated Sudan’s non-gold economy, so the economic sanctions that worked in 2007–9 are unlikely to work again. With the oil economy disrupted, gold remains the primary cash source for armed groups. Gold-based financing could be reduced, but gold is too easily smuggled to stop entirely.
However, the threat of cutting off arms imports encounters a strategic problem when applied to both sides. Combat ability is relative in a civil war. To the extent that the embargo weakens one side, giving an incentive to negotiate, it also weakens the other side and undoes its own effect. If neither side can access drones, the effort required to take a square kilometer of Gedarref stays roughly constant. The incentive to create peace is unchanged.
To make matters worse, the United States cannot equally affect the rearmament capacity of both parties. One side will almost certainly prove better at evading restrictions, building their material, or operating without sophisticated equipment. Predicting which side will benefit is tricky. Would evasion be easier for the Sudanese Armed Forces’ supply lines into Egypt or the Rapid Support Forces’ air supply route from the United Arab Emirates to Chad and into Darfur? Heavy sanctions on both sides would be more similar to supporting one at random than its intended effect.
At the same time, sanctioning both sides risks fragmenting the war. A major sanctions escalation would succeed only by destroying the benefits of fighting in a large armed group. Success means breaking down the centralized supply system and financial infrastructure that large armed groups provide. Centralized supply via the licit international market offers access to more sophisticated weapons, bulk price discounts, and more consistent supply than the regional black market. For the Rapid Support Forces, following Hemedti’s commands would no longer provide artillery, drones, and vehicles flown in from the United Arab Emirates or efficient access to the global gold market in Dubai. Similarly, the Sudanese Armed Forces would no longer be able to support their worn-down air fleet and legacy Soviet armor and artillery.
Removing access to the licit arms market would even the playing field between the larger and small armed groups. The United States cannot disrupt the supply of low-tech and low-quality arms like Kalashnikovs and mortars through the regional black market. It also reduces the leverage of high command over junior officers. Listening to Hemedti and Burhan’s orders is sensible when high command controls the allocation of otherwise unavailable weapons and financial connections. Battalion commanders and mid-sized groups would be more able to seize strategic assets like roads, gold mines, and cities for themselves.
Sanctioning the Sudanese Armed Forces
This policy is unlikely; siding with the Rapid Support Forces would not be politically popular in the United States. While the Sudanese Armed Forces has committed some abuses, they are difficult to compare with the Rapid Support Forces’ massacres in Darfur.
The best argument for targeting the Sudanese Armed Forces is that the Rapid Support Forces could become preeminent in Sudan if the Sudanese Armed Forces were disrupted enough. The Rapid Support Forces have a proven ability to take and hold territory. It has made a string of successful offensives, seizing hundreds of kilometers of territory and major cities, including Wad Madani, Sinjah, and most of Darfur.
But can the Rapid Support Forces turn military victory into a stable peace? When mid-sized armed groups fought, they mainly sided with the Sudanese Armed Forces over the Rapid Support Forces. Armed group leaders who support the Sudanese Armed Forces include Malik Agar (a Sudan People’s Liberation Movement–North faction leader), most members of the Darfur Joint Force, and even Musa Hilal, who is a coethnic of Rapid Support Forces leader Hemedti. Abdelaziz al-Hilu’s faction continues to fight both large armed groups. Commanders and fighters of some mid-sized groups have defected to join the Rapid Support Forces, but generally, the Rapid Support Forces have struggled to coopt mid-sized armed groups.
Would Sudan’s mid-sized armed groups respond to a Rapid Support Forces victory by making peace on Hemedti’s terms? Or would a victorious Rapid Support Forces be overextended, challenged by regional powers on multiple fronts? It is difficult to say with confidence.
Sanctioning the Rapid Support Forces
As discussed above, the Sudanese Armed Forces have convinced more mid-sized armed groups to join it than have the Rapid Support Forces. It has also been the primary negotiator for Sudan’s previous peace deals. Siding with the Sudanese Armed Forces presents little risk of fracturing the conflict. A militarily victorious Sudanese Armed Forces would be well positioned to return Sudan to the status quo from 2011 to 2023, where antistate violence occurred occasionally, but the economy and society could function. However, the Sudanese Armed Forces lost more territory than they gained in the first year of the war, so it is unclear if damaging the Rapid Support Forces would be sufficient for them to achieve military victory.
A Better Option: Tying Sanctions to Severe War Crimes
The alternative to sanctions for fighting is to condition sanctions on how the war is conducted. The United States has already launched several sanctions packages in retaliation for severe abuse of civilians. On Sept. 6, 2023, the United States sanctioned Rapid Support Forces commander Abdelrahim Hamdan Dagalo in retaliation for Rapid Support Forces massacres in Geneina, Darfur. On May 15, 2023, the United States sanctioned two more Rapid Support Forces commanders involved in the siege of el Fasher, a city in Darfur with a large refugee population.
Sanctions cannot be used twice. Once an asset is sanctioned because the Rapid Support Forces continue fighting, it cannot be sanctioned for war crimes. This means a sanctions strategy focused on war crimes would have to replace one intended to totally stop fighting.
If the United States commits to tying its leverage to war crimes, it should emphasize only severe, unusual, and conspicuous violations. Trying to sanction acts both sides regularly commit would lead to the same strategic problem as the both-sides strategy discussed above.
The best war crimes to sanction, then, would be large massacres carried out following the conquest of cities, like the one that occurred in Geneina in June 2023. The Sudanese Armed Forces have not been caught committing one-sided violence on a comparable scale. And large massacres cannot be hidden due to cell phone and forensic evidence.
If the United States takes this option, there are two possible outcomes. If the Rapid Support Forces respect the limits and avoid large-scale massacres, this would give the United States a modest but valuable win. If the Rapid Support Forces reject the limits and commit a massacre the United States would end up targeting that group alone. This would not necessarily lead to fragmentation, as it would leave the Sudanese Armed Forces in a position to fill the power vacuum.
War crimes–based sanctions against the Ethiopian government led to backlash and failed to change its policies. This does not imply that sanctions for war crimes never work. Sanctions work by deterring action, not by reversing it ex post facto. Sanctions are applied when the threats fail because the target values the action more than it fears the sanction. As a result, failures are high-profile, and successes are scarcely reported. The failure in Ethiopia should remind policymakers to carefully calibrate the leverage that the United States has against the perceived benefits of war crimes for their perpetrators. In general, the demand to cease massacres is more commensurate with U.S. leverage than the demand to cease offensive operations. Moreover, the Ethiopian government was in a much stronger position militarily than the Sudanese armed groups, which allowed it to reject U.S. demands.
Sanctioning any group in the war will likely create a backlash from that group, even with the strongest moral justifications. This could become a significant problem if the Rapid Support Forces were sanctioned for another massacre and later won the war by conquest. In that case, rebuilding bilateral relations with Sudan would take time. Also, the probability of the Rapid Support Forces eliminating the Sudanese Armed Forces remains modest, given the Sudanese Armed Forces’ resources and remaining territory.
The 2023–24 Sudanese civil war is a severe tragedy that the international community must respond to. However, the severity of the crisis may lead policymakers and advocates to leap to action without considering the second-order effects of interventions. The United States should resist the urge to sanction bad guys and carefully consider how its actions shape the broader strategic context. The strategy of isolating both large armed groups for fighting has serious flaws. If both are equally damaged, it does not influence the peace process. In practice, one group will benefit in relative terms. Most importantly, isolating both armed groups would improve the independence of small armed groups and commanders, potentially pushing Sudan further toward fragmentation and state failure.
Tim Liptrot is a PhD candidate at Georgetown University.
Image: AFRICOM Public Affairs Office via Wikimedia Commons
