Sudan Army’s Demand for RSF City Withdrawal Puts U.S. Peace Push at a Crossroads
Sudan’s military leadership has told mediators it will only broadly accept a U.S.-backed plan to end the three‑year civil war if the Rapid Support Forces pull out of cities they now control, according to documents seen by international media. The demand goes to the heart of who rules Sudan’s urban centers and could decide whether peace efforts ease the suffering of trapped civilians or stall once more.
Sudan’s army has drawn a hard line in U.S.-led efforts to end the country’s brutal civil war, conditioning its acceptance of a broad peace framework on the full withdrawal of the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) from cities they have seized, according to draft documents circulating among negotiators.
The position, reported on 10 July by outlets citing text seen from the talks, sets out the military’s response to a proposal pushed by Washington and regional partners to halt the fighting, secure humanitarian access and begin a political transition. The army’s demand targets one of the RSF’s most significant gains of the war: its grip on urban areas, including large parts of the capital Khartoum and major towns in Darfur and beyond. RSF leaders have not publicly accepted any blanket withdrawal from those strongholds.
For millions of civilians, the wording of this condition is not an abstraction. Urban neighborhoods under RSF control have faced looting, targeted ethnic violence and the collapse of basic services, while areas held by the army or allied militias have seen airstrikes, artillery fire and forced recruitment. Any agreement that redraws control lines inside Sudan’s cities will shape who can return home, who can access aid and which communities are left exposed to retaliation.
From the army’s perspective, insisting on RSF withdrawals is about more than symbolism. The generals who dominate the regular forces see the presence of a powerful paramilitary in the heart of key cities as an existential threat to the state and to their own survival. Allowing the RSF to retain entrenched urban positions after a ceasefire could lock in a de facto partition of Sudan’s political and economic centers – a scenario the officer corps is determined to avoid after decades as the country’s primary power broker.
For the United States and its partners, the army’s stance complicates an already fragile diplomatic effort. Washington has invested political capital in trying to bring the warring factions toward a formula that neither enshrines RSF control nor demands a total surrender likely to be rejected. By making city withdrawals a prerequisite for broader acceptance of the plan, the army is effectively asking mediators to deliver on the most contentious piece of the puzzle up front.
Humanitarian agencies, meanwhile, are watching the talks with a narrower but urgent focus: whether any agreement, however imperfect, will open safe corridors into besieged urban areas where famine, disease and sexual violence have been reported on a wide scale. Every month of delay in securing even localized pauses in fighting deepens the crisis in places like Omdurman and El Geneina, where health systems have collapsed and markets barely function.
The deeper insight is stark: in Sudan’s war, control of cities is control of the state. A peace plan that does not answer who commands the streets of Khartoum and Darfur’s towns will struggle to take hold, yet forcing that answer too early risks blowing up the process entirely.
Key markers in the coming weeks will include whether the RSF signals any willingness to discuss phased withdrawals or joint security arrangements in specific urban zones, and whether the army softens its maximalist position in exchange for concrete guarantees on disarmament or integration. The response from regional powers with leverage over each side – particularly Egypt, the Gulf states and Ethiopia – will also be critical in determining whether the U.S. initiative moves from paper to a ceasefire that people in Sudan can feel beyond the negotiating rooms.
Sources
- OSINT