SudanThe generals at war were quick to congratulate them.

Shortly after Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections was confirmed, Sudanese army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan announcement that he hoped to “develop relations between our two countries during his presidency for the benefit of both countries.”

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

More than 18 months after the start of a war that transformed Sudan into the world’s largest humanitarian disaster in terms of scale, with almost 30 percent As people have fled their homes, tens of thousands have died and famine rages, Hemeti and Burhan see a chance to gain the upper hand.

But this is not because the outgoing president should have a real interest in Sudan.

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

“And of course he’s not an expert on details. He likes to transmit all this to the people around him. But he likes to choose sides.

Biden absent in Sudan

A lack of interest in Sudan would hardly be a change for an American president. As the war rages and the crisis deepens, the absence of any real commitment from Washington has become more glaring.

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

He has barely mentioned Sudan in public and has not engaged diplomatically on the issue, focusing 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 allies of the United States”

– Kholood Khair, Sudanese analyst

“In reality, Sudan never made it to Biden’s desk. Very little has come out of senior Biden administration officials on Sudan,” Kholood Khair, a Sudanese analyst and founding director of Confluence Advisory, a “think tank” in Khartoum, told MEE .

Khair pointed out that in the months before the war in Sudan began in April 2023, the United States had been heavily involved in the framework agreement intended to pave the way for a transition to civilian rule in Sudan.

One of major sticking points In this agreement there was the reabsorption of the RSF into the army: how it would happen, when it would happen, how long it would take. This problem was never resolved, but the United States – and Molly Phee, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs – failed to understand the signs that war was coming and that this would be the spark.

“The Americans played a very important role in the framework agreement, so their lack of responsibility when the war broke out was even more glaring,” Khair said.

After the outbreak of war, the United States and Saudi Arabia sponsored the Jeddah speaks, aimed at finding a diplomatic solution to end the war. Last August, when they were recaptured, neither the army nor RSF showed up.

In February, responding to pressure from civil society, the United States appointed a special envoy for Sudan, Tom Perriello. Described as energetic and engaged, Perriello is on another tour this week to Egypt, Kenya and Uganda.

But he did not go to Sudan, where the war is taking place, nor to United Arab Emirateswho is the main sponsor of RSFproviding it with weapons, money and diplomatic support. Senior Emirati officials will not meet with Perriello and senior Biden administration officials 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 for Sudan, said the problem with Biden’s approach “to Africa in the broad sense” was that it had then raised expectations. did nothing to meet them.

“Africans didn’t ask for this, Biden proposed it, then failed to deliver. If you just look at Sudan, that argument is true,” Hudson said, emphasizing that Perriello, who responds to Phee and only occasionally to top U.S. diplomat Antony Blinken, is “completely detached from the kind of high-level support that is necessary “. to really make things happen.”

Donald Trump and Sudan

Although Trump’s return to the White House is momentous, some analysts say that US policy in Sudan and the Middle East may not change much immediately.

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

“Sudan will be seen as a bargaining chip that can be offered in exchange for something else”

– Cameron Hudson, former State Department official

“In theory, this could appear to favor authoritarian figures like Hemeti in Sudan, Mohammed bin Zayed in the United Arab Emirates and Khalifa Haftar in Libya. But in reality, the Biden administration had already abandoned any form of liberal idealism in Sudan,” Harchaoui added.

“The transition can therefore only change the rhetoric, but not the action. US pressure on Sudan is already non-existent under Biden. Therefore, the forces already in play will likely continue to operate while US involvement remains inconsequential .”

For Harchaoui, this continuity will be seen elsewhere. “It’s like in Israel. Can you be more pro-Netanyahu? Of course not…Biden was a rabid Zionist. You can’t match it… In Ukraine, the war will last at least a 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 crucial time for the country. In 2019, after three decades at the helm of the country, Burhan and Hemeti removed longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir from power, following a months-long democratic revolution.

Together, the army chief and his RSF counterpart attempted to crush this revolution, but it resulted in a transitional civil-military government, which was subsequently crushed by the October coup. 2021, occurring with Biden in the White House.

Trump, Israel and the Abraham Accords

Domestic developments in Sudan – as dramatic as they were – were not on Trump’s radar. When Sudan entered its jurisdiction, it was because of Israel.

In October 2020, Sudan’s name was removed from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism. A few days later, the then US president announced that Sudan could follow the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and become the third Arab country to normalize relations with Israel, under the Abraham Accords, its foreign policy lighthouse.

Celebrating the deal on the phone with Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump mocked Biden as he request 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 the Palestinians became increasingly isolated as one Arab state after another established full relations with Israel in exchange for certain favors from Washington.

“Just like Biden, I don’t think Sudan will be on Trump’s desk. And just like Biden, I think Sudan will continue to be seen through the prism of the Arab countries allied with the United States: Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,” Khair said.

“Particularly in the Gulf, because for Trump, his two fundamental policies for the Middle East, which Sudan sort of falls under, are to be anti-Iran and to be as much as possible pro-Israel and pro-Abraham . »

Sudan outsourced

In the US government system, Sudan is supposed to fall under the mandate of the State Department. Office of African Affairs. But the influence of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on US politics means Sudan is often drawn into the US orbit. Office of Near Eastern Affairs.

These two State Department offices have very different cultures. The Mideast office is full of officials whose thinking has been shaped by their time in Iraq and Libya, as well as the U.S. war on terror.

“For Trump, because his signature policy is the Abraham Accords, that is the lens through which he views Sudan,” Khair said. “Sudan will not be seen on its own terms… It will not be seen through its internal dynamics or its relations with the Sahel or the Horn of Africa. »

“I think Sudan will be an addition of the Trump administration to its broader Middle East and Gulf policy,” Hudson said. “Sudan is going to be seen as a bargaining chip that can be exchanged for something else…Resolving the war in Sudan under Trump will be the byproduct of a much larger deal. »

How the UAE kept the war in Sudan going

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“He’s going to look at the situation in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and say: solve this problem,” Hudson added. The question will then be to know how these three powers proceed.

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

The military situation on the ground, with fierce fighting in Darfur, Khartoum, Gezira State and other parts of Sudan, will impact the situation. “The Trump administration will look to pick a winner,” Khair said. “Burhan and Hemeti are auditioning politically, but they will also audition on the battlefield.”

While Trump, and the American right more generally, are keen to reduce humanitarian aid as much as possible, the situation in Sudan could become even grimmer as fighting resumes with the start of the dry season in November.

“In either case, it does not look very good for Sudan, in that it will not be judged on its own merits, its own seriousness, its own development, but rather on a humanitarian level through the prism of Trump’s domestic fiscal policy, then on the humanitarian level. the political side, the Gulf and Israel,” Khair said.

“This does not bode well for Sudan’s long-term stability and its ability to evolve into something that resembles a civil and democratic country. »