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UNITED NATIONS — Sudan’s military leader is openly defying a U.S.-backed ceasefire push after Washington withheld his visa to attend the U.N. General Assembly, exposing a widening rift over a war that has become not only one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, but also a regional struggle for influence stretching to the Red Sea.
Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of Sudan’s armed forces and de facto leader, had been expected in New York during UNGA before the Trump administration withheld his visa amid a dispute over a proposed 90-day humanitarian truce. Days later, Burhan struck a defiant tone from Khartoum.
“We will keep our heads high. We will not accept bargaining, sell ourselves cheaply to anyone or bow to anyone,” Burhan said Saturday, according to Anadolu Agency. “We do not need a visa to any country or anyone’s permission.”
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The State Department has accused both Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, and the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, of failing to make serious commitments to an immediate truce.
“Neither the Sudanese Armed Forces, the Rapid Support Forces, nor their respective leaders, represent legitimate, constitutional governance for Sudan,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said Sept. 22, adding that the conduct of both leaders renders them “ineligible to govern the country.”
The State Department said both sides had instead intensified combat operations and drone strikes that killed civilians and said Washington had repeatedly asked them to accept a humanitarian truce “without preconditions” and commit to an inclusive political dialogue leading to civilian government.
But a senior advisor to Burhan disputed Washington’s account in an on-camera interview with Fox News Digital on the sidelines of UNGA.
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Dr. Amjad Farid Al-Tayyib, the foreign affairs advisor to Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council, said Sudan never rejected the American ceasefire proposal and instead submitted technical comments on it.
“We never rejected this proposal,” Farid said. “The Sudanese government wants war with no one.”
Farid said a negotiating team had intended to accompany Burhan and accused Washington of undermining the very diplomatic process it was seeking to advance by preventing the delegation from traveling.
The State Department declined to comment on Burhan’s specific visa case, citing its policy of not discussing individual visa decisions. A State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital on background that Washington is instead focused on a broader diplomatic framework with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE through the Quad, linking a humanitarian truce and sustained aid access to a permanent ceasefire, civilian transition and reconstruction.
“We are working with our partners to encourage the parties to agree to the humanitarian truce and guarantee humanitarian access, and to also ensure external military or financial support to the warring parties is cut off,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that the Quad supports the Quintet-led civilian political track and rejects parallel diplomatic processes that could fragment negotiations.
The United Nations also challenged Washington over the visa decision. “We immediately raised with the U.S. authorities the issue regarding the denial of visa to the President of the Transitional Sovereign Council of the Sudan, who was scheduled to address the General Assembly this week,” U.N. Secretary-General spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told Fox News Digital.
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Cameron Hudson, a former director for African affairs on the National Security Council who also served as chief of staff to successive U.S. presidential special envoys for Sudan, said his understanding was that Washington had asked the Sudanese to send a delegation both to the U.N. and to Washington for talks on a ceasefire.
He said the Sudanese were preparing to do so before Washington, in his understanding, made Burhan’s visa contingent on signing the ceasefire agreement before traveling.
“It doesn’t fully make sense why the United States took this decision at the last minute,” Hudson told Fox News Digital.
Farid said the central dispute is whether the RSF would be required to withdraw from civilian areas it controls. He argued that freezing current lines of control risks turning a temporary ceasefire into a de facto partition of Sudan.
The dispute comes against the backdrop of a brutal civil war that erupted in April 2023 following a power struggle between Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti.
Both sides have been accused of serious violations, but Hudson told Fox News Digital that treating their records as interchangeable obscures an important distinction.
“The RSF is committing war crimes on a scale and with an intention that the army does not,” Hudson said.
Hudson said SAF has struck civilian targets and committed war crimes, including through drone attacks, but said the RSF’s record goes significantly further.
“They have committed mass rape, mass killing, torture, sexual enslavement,” Hudson said, arguing that Western descriptions of “both sides” can create the impression that the two forces are committing the same crimes “on the same scale or with the same intention.”
U.N. investigators have also drawn distinctions while documenting abuses by both forces.
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A U.N. fact-finding mission reported in September 2025 that both SAF and RSF were responsible for direct, large-scale attacks against civilians and the destruction of critical civilian infrastructure. But it found that the RSF, particularly during its siege of El Fasher and surrounding areas, committed crimes against humanity including murder, torture, enslavement, rape, sexual slavery, forced displacement and persecution on ethnic, gender and political grounds.
A separate U.N. Human Rights Office report released in February documented more than 6,000 killings during the first three days of the RSF’s final offensive on El Fasher and found that the violations could amount to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.
Farid nevertheless accused the U.N. and Western governments of creating what he called a ‘false equivalence’ between Sudan’s military and the RSF.
“The U.N. is not staying neutral,” he told Fox News Digital, arguing that international institutions have documented RSF atrocities without taking sufficient action against the group or those supporting it.
Farid nevertheless accused the U.N. and Western governments of creating what he called a false equivalence between Sudan’s military and the RSF.
U.N. Secretary-General spokesman Stéphane Dujarric rejected the allegation that the organization was equating the two sides. “This is not about equating two sides,” Dujarric told Fox News Digital. “We focus on the facts, the violations that have been documented, and above all, the devastating toll this war has taken on civilians since 15 April 2023.”
Dujarric said both the RSF and SAF have used explosive weapons in densely populated areas and that the U.N. Human Rights Office has documented attacks affecting schools, hospitals, markets and religious sites.
He pointed specifically to what he described as “particularly grave violations” by the RSF and affiliated forces in Darfur, including mass killings, sexual violence, torture, abductions and forced displacement, while noting that serious abuses have also been documented in SAF-controlled areas, including arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment and summary executions.
The war, meanwhile, increasingly extends beyond Sudan’s borders.
Foreign backing has become a central feature of the conflict. A July 2026 UK government assessment, drawing on U.N. and other reporting, said the RSF had benefited from support networks involving the UAE and neighboring countries, while SAF had received backing from states including Egypt, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. The UAE has repeatedly denied providing military support to the RSF.
Fox News Digital reached out to the UAE Embassy in Washington and the UAE mission to the U.N. but did not receive a response in time for publication.
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Hudson said the RSF’s foreign relationships are only part of a much larger regional competition.
He said Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Qatar have supported the army to varying degrees, while outside powers pursue their own strategic interests in Sudan.
That competition increasingly centers on Sudan’s Red Sea coastline. “There is a regional battle of influence among neighboring states and regional states who want to be able to control Sudan’s Red Sea coastline,” Hudson said, pointing to potential military, port and economic access.
“Superimposed on top of the conflict inside Sudan is a regional proxy conflict for influence in Sudan and in the wider Horn of Africa, Red Sea region,” he said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also said foreign powers are central to prolonging the war. “What’s happening in Sudan would not be happening were it not for external actors supporting one side or the other,” Rubio told reporters during UNGA week, describing U.S. efforts to secure even limited humanitarian agreements as “very frustrating.”
Rubio said the parties have repeatedly agreed to commitments only to abandon them when one side believes it is gaining the upper hand. “There are external actors. I’m not going to single them out. You know who they are,” Rubio said. “That war and that conflict and that crisis would not be happening were it not for the active participation of external actors that are feeding one side of that conflict or another.”
He said meaningful progress would depend on those states pressuring their respective partners in Sudan.
“Until those external actors are prepared to use influence and pressure their respective proxies to live up to the commitments that they’re making, we’re not going to make progress,” Rubio said.
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Sudan’s strategic value goes beyond geography. The country has significant gold, agricultural and livestock resources and sits at the crossroads of Africa and the Middle East. The World Bank has described Sudan as rich in fertile land, water and minerals, while noting its substantial gold production and agricultural potential.
Sudan also controls critical infrastructure used to transport South Sudanese crude oil to the Red Sea. A World Bank assessment says South Sudan’s oil has historically traveled through pipelines across Sudan to Port Sudan, its key export route.
Hudson said that broader regional competition helps explain why Washington has struggled to force Sudan’s outside backers to pull away.
“The United States is not going to use the limited political capital that it has with Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Turkey or UAE to get them to control their support to one side or the other in this conflict,” he said.
Hudson also questioned Washington’s diplomatic strategy, arguing that pressure on Burhan has not been matched by sufficient direct engagement inside Sudan.
He said Massad Boulos, President Donald Trump’s senior advisor for Arab and African affairs, has never traveled to Sudan while attempting to mediate the conflict.
“He’s trying to mediate peace in a country that he’s never been to,” Hudson said, arguing that Washington needs more “personal diplomacy” and less reliance on public statements and social media.
“If we want these people to sign a ceasefire deal, then they have to trust us,” Hudson said. “And right now we’ve given them no reason to do so.”
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The U.N. acknowledged that international efforts have so far failed to stop the fighting. “Unfortunately, we are not seeing the war abating,” Dujarric said, reiterating the U.N. position that “there is no military solution to the conflict,” and noting Washington’s diplomatic role as the US and African Union co-chaired a Sept. 23 meeting bringing together the Quad and Quintet diplomatic groupings.
“The immediate priority is to stop the killing and secure a cessation of hostilities, while creating the conditions for a credible political process,” he said.
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