Sudan’s Elusive Peace: Distrust Runs Deeper Than the Battlefield

By Fidel Amakye Owusu

Efforts to broker peace in Sudan are faltering once again. Despite renewed pledges to revive the stalled Jeddah talks, violence continues to escalate, civilian casualties mount, and displacement reaches catastrophic levels.

The war shows no sign of abating – not because the parties lack opportunities to negotiate, but because they are locked in a conflict rooted in decades of institutional rivalry, economic competition, and mutual distrust.

In many armed conflicts, peace becomes viable only when belligerents reach a stalemate – when the costs of continued fighting outweigh any plausible path to victory. The Cold War doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” exemplifies this logic: when both sides possess devastating capabilities, restraint becomes rational.

In Africa, too, some of the continent’s most intractable wars have ended only when exhaustion, operational limits, or external pressure left combatants with no better alternative than dialogue.

Sudan, however, defies this pattern. Even as humanitarian conditions deteriorate and international calls for a ceasefire grow louder, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) remain entrenched – not just on the battlefield, but in their zero-sum worldview.

Their conflict is not merely about territory or political power; it is a struggle over the very architecture of state authority and control over the economy.

A Legacy of Institutional Rivalry

The origins of this rupture trace back to the regime of Omar al-Bashir. In the early 2000s, seeking a pliable instrument to prosecute the brutal counterinsurgency in Darfur, Bashir elevated Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – better known as Hemedti – and his militia into a formalized force: the RSF.

This move deliberately sidelined the traditional military hierarchy, sowing deep resentment within the SAF’s command structure. Over time, the RSF grew not only in military capability but in economic clout – seizing control of gold mines, agricultural assets, and cross-border trade routes.

It became a parallel power center, rivaling the army not just in arms, but in wealth and influence.

For a brief moment in 2019, the SAF and RSF appeared aligned – united in ousting Bashir, whose survival had become a liability to both. But that alliance was always transactional.

Once the common enemy was gone, the underlying competition resurfaced with renewed intensity. Today’s war is less a sudden explosion than the inevitable climax of years of silent rivalry.

War as an Economic Enterprise

Each side now fights not just to win, but to survive. The SAF seeks to reassert its monopoly on legitimate force – a cornerstone of any sovereign state.

The RSF, having built an empire of illicit and semi-legal enterprises, refuses to relinquish its autonomy. Neither is willing to compromise, because compromise would mean existential loss.

This is why repeated ceasefire announcements and diplomatic overtures – from Jeddah to Geneva – have yielded little more than temporary pauses in the violence. Without addressing the structural drivers of distrust – particularly the RSF’s hybrid status as both a security actor and an economic conglomerate – any peace deal will remain fragile at best.

Beyond Ceasefires: Rebuilding the Foundations of Peace

The international community must move beyond procedural diplomacy. Mediators should condition support on concrete steps toward demilitarizing the economy, integrating or disbanding parallel forces, and establishing transparent oversight of Sudan’s natural resources.

Most importantly, civilians must be placed at the heart of any settlement – not as passive victims, but as stakeholders with legitimate claims to security, justice, and governance.

Peace in Sudan will not come from another round of talks alone. It will require dismantling the very incentives that make war profitable – and power permanent – for those who wield it.

Fidel Amakye Owusu is an International Relations and Security Analyst. He is an Associate at the Conflict Research Consortium for Africa and has previously hosted an International Affairs program with the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC). He is passionate about Diplomacy and realizing Africa’s global potential and how the continent should be viewed as part of the global collective.