Why do Sudan’s humanitarian truces keep failing and who is to blame?

Efforts to bring about truces in Sudan are continuing to hit a dead end, with fighting continuing and worsening the country’s dire humanitarian situation.

Renewed efforts, including by the United States, to implement temporary truces to allow desperately needed aid into the country have repeatedly failed. Fighting has intensified in recent months, with the United Nations warning that the humanitarian system in Sudan is on the brink of collapse.

Aid groups have urged immediate truces to alleviate the humanitarian crisis, but rival factions continue to maintain their momentum on the battlefield and break local ceasefires.

Sudan’s civil war erupted in April 2023 after months of tensions between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) group. It expanded into 13 out of Sudan’s 18 states and has forcibly displaced 14 million people, creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and killing tens of thousands of people.

Several international mediation efforts have attempted to broker ceasefires to end fighting and bolster humanitarian efforts, amid cases of starvation.

The first major initiative, the Jeddah Declaration in May 2023 , was mediated and guaranteed by the US and Saudi Arabia. While it temporarily facilitated limited humanitarian access to affected communities, it soon collapsed after both factions repeatedly violated the terms.

Regional efforts via the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Union (AU) similarly failed when localised, short-term truces broke down, sometimes just hours after they were implemented.

The US has significantly ramped up its diplomatic engagement over the past year, spearheading the Aligned for Advancing Lifesaving and Peace in Sudan (ALPS) initiative in Geneva. Alongside Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, the UN, and the AU, Washington has pushed for direct negotiations and localised humanitarian pauses.

Responding to the escalating crisis, US Senior Advisor for Arab and African Affairs Massad Boulos last week committed $375m to humanitarian efforts in Sudan and reiterated that “there is no military solution to this conflict.”

The US has reportedly renewed calls for a 90-day humanitarian truce in Sudan and for allowing affected communities to access emergency aid.

Fighting continues on multiple fronts in Sudan. In South Kordofan, the SAF has claimed gains, while Al Jazeera sources reported that the army had repelled an attack by the RSF in Blue Nile state. Conversely, the RSF has claimed a major victory over the army and its allies in Abu Qauod, west of El Obeid. With both sides claiming to be winning, it could make the prospects of a peaceful outcome to the war even harder to achieve.

Analysts suggest the failure of these truces is ultimately tied to the political ambitions of the warring leaders – Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the SAF and the RSF’s head Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

Fathi Abu Ammar, a Sudanese academic and editor-in-chief of Al-Wasat newspaper, argued that the military leadership is deliberately stalling negotiations to maintain its grip on power.

“All these efforts that serve the interest of the Sudanese people primarily were rejected by the army, rejected by al-Burhan and Yasser al-Atta (chief of staff of the SAF), and they all tried to obstruct them by setting broad lines for the peace they want,” Abu Ammar told Al Jazeera.

He said recent comments from the two military commanders hint that al-Burhan is preparing to formalise his rule over Sudan, perhaps for decades.

Supporters of SAF believe that after a series of victories on the battlefield, it is now operating from a position of strength and does not need to compromise.

Mohammed Ibrahim al-Rashid, director of the Center for International Political Relations Studies (Ma’alim), believes the RSF is facing a comprehensive defeat and that an SAF victory will end the war.

“The defeat now is not military; the defeat is diplomatic, a defeat in the corridors of the Security Council. The militia’s (RSF) load and its support are now in a critical position,” al-Rashid told Al Jazeera.

“Therefore, the government is reassured as days go by with the military advance … we can talk about breakthroughs with … a peace that achieves the interest of the Sudanese people, not one that reproduces the crisis and reproduces the militia.”

While the fighting in Sudan continues, experts believe that international diplomatic efforts to end the war are essentially dead.

Cameron Hudson, former adviser to the US envoy to Sudan, believes that applying punitive measures while excluding the warring parties from negotiations is counterproductive.

“I think that there is one approach the United States has not tried since the beginning of this war, which is providing incentives and motives for peace. The United States used only pressures: Pressures through sanctions, and also accusations of using chemical weapons, and even pressure by ignoring both parties and not travelling to Sudan, and not inviting Sudanese officials to participate in international conferences,” Hudson told Al Jazeera.

“The issue of accumulating pressures one after another has not succeeded and has not worked, and therefore the United States must acknowledge that this approach has not succeeded. And until their position is revealed with the end of the war, I do not think that either of the fighting parties will proceed to stop the fighting.”