Donald Trump and Sudan: what to expect from the returning US president

SudanThe fighting generals were quick to offer their congratulations.

Not long after Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election was confirmed, Sudanese army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said announced that he looked forward to “developing relations between our two countries for the benefit of both countries during his presidency.”

Burhan’s ally-turned-enemy, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), better known as Hemeti, was not far behind. extend his congratulations through the paramilitary group’s media office.

For more than 18 months, a war has broken out that has turned Sudan into the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe in terms of scale almost 30 percent of the population having fled their homes, tens of thousands of deaths and famine, both Hemeti and Burhan see an opportunity to gain the upper hand.

But this is not because the returning president is expected to have any real interest in Sudan.

“I’m pretty sure Trump can’t find Sudan on a map,” a diplomat in the region told Middle East Eye.

‘And of course he’s not a details guy. He likes to transfer all that to the people around him. But he likes to take sides.”

Biden absent in Sudan

A lack of interest in Sudan would hardly be a change for an American president. As the war has dragged on and the crisis has worsened, the absence of any real involvement from Washington has become increasingly stark.

While Joe Biden came to power promising not only to restore but to deepen US relations with Africa after Trump’s first term, the outgoing president only set foot on the continent last month.

He has barely mentioned Sudan in public and has not been diplomatic about it. He focused instead on his country’s support for Ukraine and Israel.

“Like Biden, I don’t think Sudan will be on Trump’s desk… Sudan will continue to be seen through the prism of Arab countries that are US allies.”

– Kholood Khair, Sudanese analyst

“Sudan never actually reached Biden’s desk. Very little has come out of the higher levels of the Biden administration on Sudan,” Kholood Khair, a Sudanese analyst and founder and director of Confluence Advisory, a Khartoum-based “think-and-do tank,” told MEE.

Khair pointed out that in the months leading up to the start of the war in Sudan in April 2023, the US had been deeply involved in the framework agreement intended to pave the way for a return to civilian rule in Sudan.

One of the major bottlenecks that deal included the reincorporation of the RSF into the army: how that would happen, when it would happen, how long it would last. This was never resolved, but the US – and Molly Phee, the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs – missed the signals that war was coming and that this would be the spark.

“The Americans had such a big influence on the framework agreement, so their lack of responsibility when the war broke out was even more egregious,” Khair said.

After the outbreak of war, the US and Saudi Arabia sponsored the Jeddah talks, aimed at finding a diplomatic solution to end the war. When they resumed in August last year, neither the army nor the RSF showed up.

In February, in response to pressure from civil society, the US appointed a special envoy to Sudan, Tom Perriello. Described as energetic and committed, Perriello is on a new tour of Egypt, Kenya and Uganda this week.

But he has not been to Sudan, where the war is taking place, or to the United Arab Emiratesthat’s the main patron of the RSFby providing the country with weapons, money and diplomatic support. Senior Emirati officials will not meet Perriello and senior figures in the Biden administration are unwilling to seriously pressure Abu Dhabi over its role in fueling the war.

Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow in the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former chief of staff to successive presidential special envoys to Sudan, said the problem with Biden’s approach “to Africa broadly” was that he then raised expectations. did nothing to meet them.

“Africans didn’t ask for it, Biden offered it and then didn’t deliver. If you limit yourself to Sudan, then that argument holds,” Hudson said, noting that Perriello, who answers to Phee and only occasionally to top U.S. diplomat Antony Blinken, “is completely disconnected from the kind of high-level support that is needed is’. to really move the needle.”

Donald Trump and Sudan

While Trump’s return to the White House is momentous, some analysts argue that US policy in Sudan and the Middle East may not change much in the short term.

“Trump’s return to the US presidency is marked by an even stronger anti-liberal stance than in 2017, supported by a more robust popular mandate and a more ideologically aligned, self-consistent team of policymakers,” said Jalel Harchaoui, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told MEE.

‘Sudan will be seen as a bargaining chip that can be offered to exchange for something else’

– Cameron Hudson, former State Department official

“Theoretically, this seems to benefit authoritarian figures like Sudan’s Hemeti, the UAE’s Mohammed bin Zayed and Libya’s Khalifa Haftar. But in real life, the Biden administration had already given up on any form of liberal idealism in Sudan,” Harchaoui added.

“So the transition may only adjust the rhetoric, but not action. American pressure on Sudan no longer exists under Biden. Therefore, the forces already in play will likely continue to operate while U.S. involvement remains insignificant.”

For Harchaoui, this continuity will be seen elsewhere. “It’s just like in Israel. Can you be more pro-Netanyahu? Of course not… Biden was a fanatical Zionist. You can’t match him… In Ukraine the war will continue for at least another year or two because the arms industry has become addicted to it.”

During Trump’s first term as president, when it came to Sudan, the priority was Israel, despite it being a momentous time in the country. In 2019, after three decades as ruler, Burhan and Hemeti removed longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir from power following a rolling, months-long democratic revolution.

Together, the army chief and his RSF counterpart tried to crush that revolution, but it led to a civil-military transitional government, which was then crushed by the October 2021 coup, which took place with Biden in the White House.

Trump, Israel and the Abraham Accords

Domestic developments in Sudan – however dramatic – were not on Trump’s radar. When Sudan fell under his jurisdiction, it was thanks to Israel.

In October 2020, Sudan’s name was removed from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism. Days later, the then US president announced that Sudan could follow the UAE and Bahrain and become the third Arab country to normalize relations with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords, his signature foreign policy.

While celebrating the deal on the phone with Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump mocked Biden as he did asked his Israeli counterpart: “Do you think Sleepy Joe could have made this deal, Bibi, Sleepy Joe? Do you think he would have made this deal? Somehow I don’t think so.”

Sudan had become a pawn in a vision shared by Trump and Netanyahu, in which Palestinians became increasingly isolated as one Arab state after another established full relations with Israel in exchange for certain favors from Washington.

“Like Biden, I don’t think Sudan will be on Trump’s desk. And like Biden, I think Sudan will continue to be seen through the prism of Arab countries that are allies of the US: Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE,” Khair said.

“Especially the Gulf, because for Trump, his two core policies for the Middle East, which more or less includes Sudan, are anti-Iran and as much as possible pro-Israel and pro-Abraham accords.”

Sudan outsourced

In the American system of government, Sudan is supposed to be under the purview of the State Department Bureau of African Affairs. But the influence of Saudi Arabia and the UAE on US policy means that Sudan is often dragged into the United Arab Emirates’ sphere of influence Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.

These two State Department agencies have very different cultures. The Near East Bureau is full of officials whose thinking has been shaped by time spent in Iraq and Libya, and by the US war on terror.

“For Trump, because his signature policy is the Abraham Accords, that is the lens through which he sees Sudan,” Khair said. “Sudan will not be seen on its own terms… It will not be seen by its internal dynamics or how it relates to the Sahel or the Horn.”

“I think Sudan within the Trump administration will complement his broader Middle East and Gulf policies,” Hudson said. “Sudan will be seen as a bargaining chip that can be offered to exchange for something else… The resolution of the war in Sudan under Trump will be the byproduct of a much larger deal.”

“He’s going to look at the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and say fix this,” Hudson added. The question then is how these three powers proceed.

While the UAE’s support for the RSF in Sudan is well known, less often discussed is Saudi Arabia’s more discreet preference for the Sudanese military, a force the country understands and can handle.

The military situation on the ground, with heavy fighting taking place in Darfur, Khartoum, Gezira State and other parts of Sudan, will influence the situation. “The Trump administration will try to pick a winner,” Khair said. “Burhan and Hemeti are auditioning on the political front, but they will also be auditioning on the battlefield.”

With Trump, and the US right wing in general, keen to cut humanitarian aid wherever possible, the situation in Sudan could become increasingly dark as fighting intensifies with the onset of the dry season in November.

“It doesn’t look very good for Sudan anyway, in the sense that it will not be judged on its own merits, its own seriousness, its own development, but rather on the humanitarian side, through the prism of Trump’s domestic fiscal policy and then based on the humanitarian side of the country. the political side, the Gulf and Israel,” Khair said.

“This does not bode well for Sudan’s long-term stability and its ability to transition to anything resembling a civil democratic country.”