The war in Sudan has caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with an estimated 150,000 people dead and millions displaced since the conflict broke out in 2023. The Rapid Security Forces (RSF)’s takeover of al-Fasher, capital of the North Darfur State in the west, in October 2025 has exacerbated the horrific situation. Although certain members of the international community have tried to engage in diplomacy to stop the carnage, others are part of the problem because of their military and financial support to the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the two principal belligerents. These foreign players have been involved in the Sudan conflict because of the country’s strategic location, its substantial mineral deposits such as gold, and its agricultural potential. As a retired US diplomat has stated, “Whoever controls Sudan is in a position to have influence in the broader region, in the Horn of Africa, as well as sub-Saharan Africa.”
Such external involvement has transformed Sudan’s war from a domestic power struggle into a regionalized conflict in which international actors are underwriting atrocities and obstructing diplomacy. For Washington’s diplomacy to matter, it must translate its considerable political, economic, and security leverage into decisive pressure—particularly on the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—to cut off lifelines to the RSF, while pressing other regional actors to cease their assistance to the SAF.
Foreign Involvement
Sudan’s warring parties have become deeply entangled in the regional and geopolitical ambitions of the UAE, Libya, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.
The RSF appears to have exported gold from Sudan through Chad and other neighboring countries, which reaches the UAE and is sold there. In return, the UAE has provided the RSF with both financial assistance and substantial arms, including drones. Although UAE officials have denied that furnishing such military aid, even calling it “fake news,” reliable reports, including from the United Nations (UN), indicate otherwise. The UAE also relied in part on RSF mercenary forces in its military campaign against the Houthi movement in Yemen. The UAE is worried about the prospect of an SAF government that includes elements from the Muslim Brotherhood, which it designated a terrorist organization in 2014.
Egypt and Saudi Arabia are the main regional benefactors of the SAF.
The RSF also has reportedly received assistance from Libyan strongman and self-declared Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, whose forces control eastern and southern Libya. Earlier in 2025 Haftar’s forces were accused of assisting the RSF in taking over the so-called triangle area of Sudan (where the borders of Sudan, Libya, and Egypt meet), prompting criticism from the SAF. This territorial control has made it easier for the RSF to engage in smuggling of gold, drugs, and people from western and northern Sudan into Libya. RSF gains in this area may lead to the breaking off of the western region of the country, with its significant gold deposits, and the lucrative illicit trade may enhance Haftar’s ambitions in Libya. Although Haftar undoubtedly wants to take control over all of Libya, his connections to the RSF, at a minimum, will work to keep Libya divided for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are the main regional benefactors of the SAF, largely because they see it as trying to bring stability to the country. As the International Crisis Group (ICG) has noted, despite Cairo’s and Riyadh’s discomfort with SAF Commander in Chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s reliance on Islamist factions, more important is their view that the SAF “is a state institution and, therefore, the only legitimate claimant to sovereign authority in the current contest.”
Regional Impact
Sudan’s civil war has become a destabilizing regional crisis, with mass refugee flows, cross-border crime, and militia entanglements straining the fragile economies and overall stability of Chad, Egypt, and South Sudan.
According to November 2025 data from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, some 4.3 million Sudanese refugees now live in neighboring countries, with Chad and Egypt hosting 890,000 and 1.5 million refugees, respectively. The UN says that neighboring countries are struggling to cope with this refugee influx, which has reportedly “overwhelmed health facilities in Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, where medicines, supplies and personnel are in short supply.”
As an ICG analyst noted, Sudan’s civil war “has triggered not just a humanitarian disaster, but deep economic and social transformations in eastern Chad.” The recent RSF assault on al-Fasher caused nearly 90,000 people to flee that area, and likely increased the number of Sudanese refugees in Chad. The influx has driven up demand for housing as well as basic necessities like cooking oil, firewood and water. Crime and ethnic tensions have also increased. Traffickers linked to the RSF are reportedly transporting fuel tanker trucks from Libya, transferring the oil into barrels in eastern Chad, and then selling them locally or in western Darfur.
The large influx of Sudanese refugees (with more likely to come) into Egypt may strain some of the economic gains the country has seen in recent years, including an inflation rate decrease from 38 percent in September 2023 to 11.7 percent in September 2025, and a projected GDP growth rate of 4.6 percent this fiscal year. Although refugee populations may also contribute to the economy, the Egyptian government has imposed border restrictions to prevent more Sudanese refugees from entering but this has caused a sharp drop in cross-border economic activity.
South Sudan, a relatively new country that has been wracked by violence between its own warring factions, has received nearly 410,000 million Sudanese refugees. One militia group in South Sudan is reported to have allied itself with the RSF, which not only helps to sustain the militia but also prolongs South Sudan’s own political instability. South Sudan provides an additional export route for the RSF to smuggle gold out of Sudan. Meanwhile, the SAF reportedly wants to establish itself in the Upper Nile, near the South Sudan border, to prevent the RSF from moving eastward from its positions.
US Diplomatic Engagement
In its final days in office in January 2025, the Biden administration imposed sanctions on the RSF and SAF commanders and their close associates. Biden also placed sanctions on several UAE-based companies linked to the RSF chief, Hemedti, and on his family members for reportedly supplying and financing the militia.
For its part, the Trump administration has tried to bring about a political solution to the crisis, but with little effect. In September 2025, the administration, working through the “Quad” (the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt) released a roadmap calling for a humanitarian truce, followed by a permanent ceasefire and the establishment of a transitional civilian-led government. As a first step, in September US officials gathered Quad members and representatives from the Sudanese warring factions in Washington to explore a truce. The US delegation included Massad Boulos, the administration’s senior advisor on Arab and African affairs and the father-in-law of President Donald Trump’s daughter Tiffany. But the meeting failed to make any progress—the SAF and RSF representatives refused to speak directly to each other—and the UAE-backed RSF stormed al-Fasher soon after.
The atrocities in al-Fasher have put the UAE on the defensive over its support to the RSF.
While RSF’s capture of al-Fasher was a major military victory for the group, the atrocities that its fighters committed there have made Hemedti vulnerable to international pressure. On November 6, 2025, the RSF agreed to a humanitarian truce, although it did not stop its military offensives. SAF leader Burhan at first seemed equivocal, with some reports suggesting Burhan was personally in favor of halting the fighting, but faced opposition from his top defense and security officials. The fact that Burhan has now rejected a truce gives Hemedti leeway to continue his military operations.
The atrocities in al-Fasher have put the UAE on the defensive over its support to the RSF. Anwar Gargash, a top foreign policy advisor to the UAE president, admitted recently that the international community, including the UAE, should have opposed the Sudanese military coup of 2021, marking a partial acknowledgement of UAE’s culpability in Sudan’s crisis. Although the RSF’s recent gains in Darfur may tempt the UAE to support the separatist government there (similar to its approach to Yemen, where it is supporting the separatist-leaning Southern Transitional Council), in doing so Abu Dhabi risks international condemnation.
Recommendations for US Policy
President Trump seems to be unusually moved by images. In 2017 and 2018, for example, images of Syrian children suffering from chemical weapons attacks reportedly prompted him to order US strikes against the Assad regime. Trump was reportedly “appalled” by the footage of recent violence in al-Fasher. Trump’s reaction likely led Secretary of State Marco Rubio to nearly call out the UAE by name. “Someone’s giving them the money and someone’s giving them the weapons, and it’s coming through some country,” Rubio said on November 13, 2025. “We know who they are and we’re going to talk to them about it and make them understand that this is going to reflect poorly on them and poorly on the world if we can’t stop this.”
International human rights watchdogs have called for the international community, especially the United States, to publicly condemn the UAE for backing the RSF, but it appears that the Trump administration would rather raise the issue behind closed doors. Trump values his relations with the UAE for political and economic reasons (and maybe also for family business reasons) and likely does not want to cause a rift in these ties by naming and shaming the UAE. But the president could use the introduction of legislation proposed by congressional Democrats that would halt US arms sales to the UAE over its Sudan policy to send a message to Abu Dhabi that opposition in Congress to the UAE is growing and that the UAE must desist from sending arms to the RSF to halt such pushback. Similarly, Trump can use his friendships with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia to discourage them from supporting the SAF.
To be sure, such diplomacy would require some behind-the-scenes bipartisan cooperation with Democrats in Congress, something that is in short supply these days. Nonetheless, without strong pressure from both the White House and Congress on key international players in Sudan, the terrible war there will likely continue.
The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
Featured image credit: Rashed Al-Mansoori / Ministry of Presidential Affairs – Abu Dhabi
