The Sudan peace plan brokered by the United States has stalled over a familiar sticking point. Sudan’s army wants the Rapid Support Forces out of every city it has seized before it will fully commit.
Documents seen by Reuters and confirmed by senior Sudanese officials show the army accepted most elements of the Sudan peace plan. But it rejected the idea of a partial pullback by the RSF.
The army insists the Sudan peace plan must require the paramilitary group to leave all cities it has occupied since 11 May 2023. That is a much broader demand than what Washington initially proposed.
The original Sudan peace plan, put forward last month, called for an immediate 90 day humanitarian truce. It also proposed a UN led mechanism to manage limited RSF withdrawals, starting with North Darfur and North Kordofan.
North Darfur has been the epicentre of the war since the RSF seized El Fasher after an 18 month siege. Amnesty International said in a report launched in Nairobi that the RSF committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing during that campaign. The rights group documented cases of civilians detained in shipping containers, denied food and water, and beaten during interrogation, based on survivor accounts gathered by its researchers.
North Kordofan is now bracing for a similar fate. The International Rescue Committee warned in a statement that RSF drone strikes on El Obeid have cut off food, water and fuel supplies, and could pave the way for a ground assault. Al Jazeera reported that roughly half a million people remain trapped in the city.
El Obeid carries strategic weight beyond its population. Al Jazeera reported that the city sits on a key route linking RSF held Darfur with army controlled areas further east, and hosts a military airbase, an oil pipeline and a large Arabic gum market. An independent Sudan analyst told the broadcaster that losing El Obeid would let the RSF rebuild its political project after being pushed out of Khartoum last year.
Confusion has surrounded Sudan’s actual response to the Sudan peace plan. Reuters reported that Washington initially told the UN Security Council that Khartoum had rejected the proposal outright. That version was later revised.
US Senior Adviser for Arab and African Affairs Massad Boulos said in a social media post that he was pleased to learn Sudanese army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan had apparently accepted, rather than rejected, the latest offer. The State Department has not issued further public comment. Sudan’s Foreign Ministry has also stayed quiet on the matter.
Beyond the truce and withdrawal terms, the Sudan peace plan envisions a unified national army built through disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration arrangements. It also calls for a civilian led political process that excludes the Muslim Brotherhood and any militia elements linked to atrocities.
The RSF has given its own written response to the Sudan peace plan, a senior official told Reuters, though few details have been made public. The group has a track record of welcoming peace initiatives while continuing offensive operations on the ground, a pattern that has repeated across nearly every round of talks since the war began in April 2023.
Fighting on the ground undercuts the diplomatic momentum. Sudan’s army has pushed to retake territory across Kordofan and Darfur, and it has described recent strikes that destroyed hundreds of RSF combat vehicles. Darfur governor Minni Arko Minnawi said the operation had so far prevented a full siege of El Obeid. Al Jazeera reported that residents in the Kordofan region remained unconvinced by that assurance.
The war has displaced millions of people and killed an estimated hundreds of thousands since it broke out in April 2023. UN experts have accused the RSF of genocide in Darfur, allegations the group denies, while continuing to build a parallel administrative structure in areas under its control.
For now, the Sudan peace plan sits in a familiar limbo. The army has signalled conditional support without full ratification. The RSF has welcomed the proposal on paper while its forces remain positioned near cities the plan is meant to free. Whether the 90 day truce takes hold will depend on whether Washington can close the gap between limited and complete withdrawal, the same gap that has sunk previous attempts to end Sudan’s civil war.
