Ahmad 
Sudan has witnessed fierce battles since the Security Council approved a ceasefire, where the UN intervention marked the beginning of changing the equations and balance between the parties.
The Sudanese army proactively dealt with the UN resolution and launched an attack in which it took control of the radio and television building in Omdurman, but the balance of power remained without a deep shift. Violent confrontations continued to seize strategic locations, including the Khartoum Naval Corps of Engineers that the RSF is trying to control, one of four military sites still under army control out of 18.
Failure of the UN Resolution
The UN resolution emerged against the backdrop of contradictions in positions within the Security Council, where the future of Sudan was reduced to the humanitarian issue. The participants in drafting or voting on the resolution exceeded the balance of power that does not allow the fighting to stop, and the issue here for the conflicting parties does not stop at the borders of the main areas of clashes, but rather in a delicate equation between the army, which has been the most likely factor in Sudan’s policy over the past decades, and the transformations brought about by the past few years when the country was divided between north and south.
It is clear from the call of the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Greenfield, for the UN Security Council to deal quickly to ensure the flow of humanitarian aid, that the international failure to stop the war is mainly related to the forms of power distribution between the army and the Rapid Support Forces, as both parties represent regional and international trends, while the humanitarian issue becomes a justification for exerting pressure between competing international parties inside Sudan, as the international consensus on Sudan’s non-disintegration is surrounded by many doubts, despite Greenfield’s assertions of the need for Sudan’s unity.
In practice, stability in Sudan is more related to the ability to develop a different power equation scenario. The conflict in Darfur has resulted in the creation of a new map in which rival forces emerge and influence the level of social movement. The collapse of four attempts to impose a truce between the army and the RSF in nine months also shows that Sudan’s stability depends on its relations with its regional neighborhood, and on the balance between the Horn of Africa and the entire Nile Basin region. Sudan’s New Equations
Efforts to stop the war illustrate a special quality of the regional impacts in the conflict, as the rounds of negotiations were represented in the Jeddah talks, which witnessed three meetings, two summits of the International Commission on Development in Africa (IGAD), in addition to negotiations in Manama last January. Regional concerns start from trying to find partners within the parties to the conflict, especially that the issue of resolving the battles for one of the parties is difficult due to the complexities of the population distribution in Sudan, as the continuation and expansion of the war dominated the scene in the Nile Valley and up to the Red Sea, and the entry of Saudi Arabia on the negotiating line illustrates the type of risks that the battles carry towards the Red Sea.
Geographic proximity is on fire with conflict
In practice, the military battles no longer constitute any fulcrum for deep stability, as the two main parties to the conflict are based on different rules at the level of tribal distribution, which makes the loss of a party the beginning of a new conflict, as the military victory of the army will not guarantee the end of the conflict, and on the other hand, the Rapid Support Forces do not have the capabilities of military superiority, but rather geographical spread in a number of areas.
The inability to draw the features of a full deployment puts the possibility of fighting in all states of Sudan is possible, as the expansion of the war, which Sudan has witnessed some of its chapters, does not threaten the unity of the Sudanese state, but rather establishes an African model in redrawing maps of countries, with the exception of Egypt and Ethiopia, the geographical neighborhood of Sudan is burning with different conflicts in which tribal factors and military rebellions play different roles, and the option of dividing Sudan has been practically enshrined since the secession of South Sudan in 2011.
In this complex context, the fundamental question arises about the effectiveness of regional and international intervention in ending the conflict in Sudan. Initiatives to stop the fighting now appear to be more of an attempt to establish relations with the conflicting parties, rather than as mediations to build the will for peace. This is partly due to the complex regional repercussions of the war in Sudan, which include different regional stakes and international influences that score gains and losses in the conflict throughout the African continent.
The conflict model in Sudan presents the space for modern geopolitical conflicts, where the struggle for power is intertwined with historical legacy and external influences, as the international community had no choice but to issue a non-binding ceasefire resolution, and to formulate a way out of the conflict that today seems to be an African task par excellence, because this form of war can shape the next African appearance.
Written by Mazen Bilal
Khartoum and Riyadh are discussing resuming the Jeddah negotiations to stop the Sudan war