Gen Al Burhan non-committal on joining Geneva ceasefire negotiations

US Secretary of State Blinken urges Sudanese leader to participate in this month's talks in Switzerland

A displaced Sudanese child pours water at the Zamzam camp for the displaced in North Darfur, Sudan. The UN says famine has risen in the camp located near the city of Al Fasher. Reuters

With the country devastated by more than a year of civil war, it is still unclear whether Sudan's army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan is sending delegates to the US-sponsored ceasefire talks due to begin later this month in Geneva, Switzerland.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Gen Al Burhan to join the talks in a telephone call on Monday, but the Sudanese leader was non-committal. He later wrote on X that he discussed with Mr Blinken the necessity of addressing the “Sudanese government's concerns” before starting negotiations.

He did not elaborate, but Gen Al Burhan had previously said that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the powerful paramilitary the army has been fighting since April 2023, must vacate private homes and government facilities it has occupied across the nation before negotiations could resume.

The RSF, led by Gen Al Burhan's one-time ally Gen Mohamed Dagalo, has said it would participate in the negotiations which, apart from the two warring sides, will bring together delegates from the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the US.

Sudanese analyst Osman Al Mirghany, however, believes Gen Al Burhan's backers from among the ranks of Islamist loyalists to former dictator Omar Al Bashir might be behind his resistance of a negotiated settlement, assuming that a military victory by the army could allow them to bounce back to power.

“Al Burhan, in response, may have been trying to find a balance between satisfying his Islamist backers while also eyeing negotiations. That balance may be unattainable and he could lose on both racks if he persists,” Mr Mirghany told The National.

Several ceasefires brokered by the US and Saudi Arabia during the early days of war were entirely ignored or short-lived as the two sides continued to fight for domination of the vast, resource-rich Afro-Arab nation but without either side able to gain a clear or irreversible battlefield edge over the other.

Several invitations to resume the negotiations over the months had not come to fruition but the latest US bid to get the warring parties to come to the negotiating table is perhaps the most serious.

The talks take added urgency because they come as Sudan's large-scale humanitarian crisis is dawning on the international community, with millions facing hunger and famine declared in one of the largest camps for displaced people, near the contested city of Al Fasher in northern Darfur.

Additionally, Sudan is suffering from the world's largest displacement crisis as a result of the war, with about 10 million people – nearly 20 per cent of the population – having to flee their homes to date to escape the war.

Some analysts say Gen Al Burhan has been reluctant to return to negotiations before making significant battlefield gains that would place him in a strong negotiating position. That strategy has not worked, with the RSF continuing to hold on to large swathes of territory in the west and south of the country as well as most of the capital Khartoum and the agriculture-rich Al Jazeera state to the south.

“The army's expectations must have fallen by now because of the shrinkage of areas under its control,” Sudanese analyst Fayez Al Zaki told The National. “I think the army may now have no choice but to return to negotiations. It may not, for one thing, be able to withstand the punitive measures the international community is likely to resort to if the army is found to be the party preventing a negotiated settlement.”

Gen Al Burhan and his top aides have been increasingly upbeat about the army's chances of winning the war and vanquishing the RSF, with a top aide of the Sudanese general saying this week that a regional and international coalition was being put together to provide the army with modern weapons that would tip the balance decidedly in their favour.

While such claims could be chiefly designed for domestic consumption, it could not be ruled out that it also reflects a mindset detached from the realities of the battlefield.

Another factor in play regarding the army's participation in the talks is that Gen Al Burhan genuinely fears that a truce to allow the distribution of humanitarian supplies could be taken advantage of by the RSF to regroup and reorganise to better its capabilities if or when hostilities resume, according to another Sudanese analyst, Haidar Ahmed.

“He thinks going to the talks in Switzerland may prove to be a miscalculated step fraught with danger,” he said. “He also has little trust in the intentions of the United States.”

Al Shafie Ahmed reported from Kampala, Uganda.