Africa usually does not rank highly on an incoming U.S. president’s list of foreign-policy priorities. But, in a rare twist of fate, Sudan now stands out as one country where the need for U.S. engagement is high and where Washington’s leverage under U.S. President Donald Trump could be the critical missing ingredient to ending Sudan’s current civil war.

Unlike most countries in Africa, Trump has a history with Sudan. In 2019, the popular revolution that led to the ousting of Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir and resulted in a hopeful, albeit brief, period of civilian rule took place on his watch. At the time, U.S. support for pro-democracy forces was modest, owing to the complex web of legacy sanctions and restrictions that constrained U.S. support. Chief among those obstacles was Sudan’s continued designation as a state sponsor of terrorism—a notorious distinction the country held since the days it played host to Osama bin Laden in the mid-1990s.

The Trump administration initiated the complicated and time-consuming process of removing Sudan from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in an effort to put the country onto a path toward debt relief and economic recovery; its removal became official in December 2020. The effort involved a certification by the intelligence community, negotiating a $335 million restitution agreement for the U.S. victims of terror attacks, and gaining the support of Congress. It also promised to normalize relations between Washington and Khartoum with the first exchange of ambassadors in 25 years.

Then, in a move that was unsurprising in retrospect, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made an eleventh-hour visit to Khartoum to suggest that making peace with Israel, by signing the recently announced Abraham Accords, would also be necessary to help secure Sudan’s removal from the terror list. In the moment, Sudan’s military and civilian leaders balked, with both sides arguing that the transitional nature of their government and lack of a sitting parliament gave neither side the mandate to engage in new treaty commitments.

Ultimately, Sudan had no leverage to resist and was forced to acquiesce if it harbored any hope of ridding itself of the remaining U.S. sanctions. After Sudan agreed to the U.S. Justice Department’s terms for being removed from the terrorism list, Trump triumphantly announced, in October 2020, Sudan’s normalization of relations with Israel as one of only three Arab nations to sign the Abraham Accords.

It was a transaction. And it was prescient.

As Trump returns to office, he inherits a Sudan file substantially different from the one he turned over to Joe Biden four years ago. The hope and optimism of Sudan’s transitional civilian government and popular uprising today lays buried beneath the smoldering ruins of a country ravaged by almost two years of war. Sudan is now the world’s largest humanitarian and displacement crisis in the world; at the start of 2025, more than 30 million people in Sudan are in need of humanitarian aid, while more than 12 million have been displaced from their homes since the current war began in April 2023.

The moral case for responding to Sudan’s mass suffering may not resonate with an administration dedicated to advancing an America First foreign policy. But Washington has strategic interests and untapped leverage in Sudan that go well beyond the conflict’s human toll that makes Trump uniquely positioned to advance solutions to end the war.

The Trump administration inadvertently tied itself to Sudan’s fate when Pompeo touted his historic first flight from Tel Aviv to Khartoum back in 2020, with the singular goal of advancing peace with Israel. Today, Trump’s team appears to be picking up where it left off, articulating its plans for reviving and expanding its historic normalization deal; as an example, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz declared last month, “Our core interests are ISIS, Israel and Arab Gulf allies.” But what is abundantly clear is that the administration cannot simultaneously revive the Abraham Accords while observing the collapse and disintegration of one of its five signatories.

That’s because Sudan’s conflict is more than just a war between two competing generals fighting over the country. It animates a deeper battle among the United States’ Arab Gulf allies for power, prestige, wealth, and influence across the Red Sea and Horn of Africa. It is the cost of that competition that is borne by the people of Sudan.

This regional contest includes neighboring countries like Egypt, whose fate and history remain tied to Sudan’s, as the nations share existential Nile River and Red Sea water resources. It also involves Saudi Arabia, which has long sought a compliant regime in Khartoum to guarantee friendly ties and ready access to the kinds of agricultural and livestock exports that the country needs. Qatar is also a player; Doha’s previous hosting of Darfur peace talks and quiet support to the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) is burnishing its reputation as a trusted partner and potential peacemaker.

But the chief foreign actor in Sudan’s war is the Abraham Accords’ anchor state: the United Arab Emirates. As the principal military and political backer of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia that the Biden administration declared is carrying out a genocide across Sudan, the UAE has positioned itself as the biggest external enabler of the war.

Since 2015, when Abu Dhabi first engaged the services of the RSF and its leader, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemeti” Dagalo, to serve as its fighting force against Yemen’s Houthi rebels and to support Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army, the RSF has emerged as the tip of an Emirati spear deployed from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, giving firepower to a country that lacks its own sizable army.

But despite the atrocities being committed and news coverage of its obvious military support to the RSF, Abu Dhabi continues to deny any responsibility for the calamity befalling Sudan. That isn’t sitting well with many in Congress, who have called for suspending U.S. arms sales to the UAE and cracking down on Abu Dhabi’s illicit gold trade with the RSF. Even new U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in his confirmation hearing last week, referred to the UAE, noting that “as part of our engagement, we also need to raise the fact that they are openly supporting an entity that is carrying out a genocide.”

Within this caustic mix of regional ambitions and destructive competition, there’s an opportunity for an elite bargain to be struck that silences Sudan’s guns, avoids a worst-case humanitarian scenario, and lays the groundwork for an eventual return to civilian rule. Indeed, Sudan’s military leaders see Trump’s return to office, with his personal relationships, shared respect of regional protagonists, and his penchant for dealmaking as the opportunity to forge an agreement that brings about a stable Sudan and broader Middle East peace.

Beyond the political win of burnishing Trump’s credentials as a peacemaker, there are other strategic reasons for the administration to dedicate attention to Sudan. Trump’s team worked hard in his first term to finally sever Sudan’s ties to its terrorist past; it would be embarrassing if, in his second term, Trump was forced to contemplate adding Sudan back to the list of state sponsors of terrorism. And that is precisely what the administration could be forced to do if Sudan’s war continues unchecked.

Sudan’s army alleges that more than 200,000 foreign mercenaries have already been recruited into the ranks of the RSF, risking a spread of the jihadist violence that’s currently engulfing Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, into neighboring Chad and Sudan. Given the weakness of state institutions, porous borders, and overextended militaries across the region, this scenario is entirely plausible if no action is taken to stop these metastasizing conflicts from converging in an arc of instability that runs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.

Another embarrassing setback the Trump administration faces is a return of Sudan’s former Islamist regime, which many hoped was gone forever. But as its civil war drags on, Sudanese Islamists—who have taken refuge in Turkey, Egypt, and Qatar—are working furiously to reactivate their political, financial, and security networks, in the hopes of making themselves indispensable to Sudan’s isolated and overextended army while avoiding accountability for their past offenses by returning to power. Trump should know that a reinvigorated Islamist party would be a pox on the country and an obstruction to his regional agenda.

Indeed, if there is one thing that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE can agree on, it is that the return of political Islam in Sudan would be a threat to all their strategic interests. Avoiding that outcome by playing peacemaker and denying Islamists the ability to mount a comeback would avoid an embarrassing political setback for Trump in Sudan and secure even greater goodwill from regional partners he relies on for achieving his grander objectives in the region.

Finally, ending Sudan’s war and its need for weapons would deny two of Washington’s greatest adversaries the opening they have been using to gain a strategic foothold in the region. Russia and Iran have benefited more than any other countries in using Sudan’s war to resuscitate their diplomatic relevance, profit from weapons sales and gold exports, and revive their hopes of establishing a naval presence on Sudan’s Red Sea coast. But according to senior Sudanese officials, their engagement with Tehran and Moscow stems more from their rejection by Western officials, who have publicly declared their view of Sudan’s army as an illegitimate state authority.

The Sudanese people are on the brink of starvation, and the state itself is on the brink of collapse. If the former doesn’t compel the Trump administration to act, the latter most definitely should. Fortunately, Trump is positioned to emerge as the peacemaker the Sudanese have been searching for. Seizing that role will not only serve U.S. strategic interests in Africa, it is necessary for advancing Trump’s own political interests in the Middle East.

Source: Foreignpolicy.com

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