There is already an answer to securing Sudan’s future

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The writer was US deputy special envoy for the Horn of Africa from 2021 to 2022.

After nearly three years of war in Sudan, the Trump administration has launched a diplomatic initiative predicated on a fundamental fact that its predecessor was reluctant to recognise: neither of the two main belligerents will prevail militarily nor are either fit to govern the country. The combination of escalating atrocities and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s recent request to President Donald Trump to intervene means Washington is now attempting to broker an international consensus among a “Quad” of states with the most leverage on the warring parties — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the US itself.

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) are a military only in name, much less a government. They have failed for three decades to defeat armed groups far less formidable than the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and now rely on extremists, militias and even chemical weapons to remain relevant. The RSF continue to perpetrate heinous crimes in Darfur and elsewhere. Both are dependent on foreign support. Neither provides the basic functions of governance in the territories it holds. In September, the “Quad” commendably asserted that Sudan’s future should not be controlled by the SAF, the RSF or violent extremists, and that external military support to the warring parties should end. In other words, the belligerents should be sidelined to allow a legitimate, civilian authority to emerge. Still, a critical question looms: who could step into the breach? Most of Sudan’s civilian politicians lack demonstrable constituencies or have discredited themselves through association with the belligerents.

However, a grassroots movement is beginning to answer this question. Sudan’s mutual aid groups and emergency response rooms (ERRs) evolved from the resistance committees that were in the vanguard of the revolution that overthrew the 30-year dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir in 2019. Since the outbreak of war in 2023, these groups have provided life-saving food and medical care to their fellow citizens, growing from a few hundred volunteers to a network of 26,000 today.

In an era of often illiberal politics, the mutual aid movement and ERRs have distinguished themselves as democratic, egalitarian and accountable to their communities. They are providing the functions of a state in a country where the state no longer exists and can claim unique legitimacy among Sudanese that transcends ethnic and regional divisions. As one volunteer said upon receiving a prize on behalf of the movement: “We are not victims waiting to be saved. We are citizens building Sudan’s future, and we have [our] own vision.”

The mutual aid groups and ERRs are not partisan; they are equally opposed to the militarised politics of the SAF and the RSF. They embody the principle of power through legitimacy as opposed to power through violence. They also represent such a threat that the belligerents and Islamist extremists have reacted by attacking them.

Rather than patronising the mutual aid movement as an earnest but peripheral alternative to traditional aid mechanisms, it should be recognised as the core of the humanitarian response and funding prioritised for it. These groups deliver results transparently and for a fraction of the cost of UN agencies and international NGOs. They are more accountable to Sudan’s citizens and are able to operate throughout the country — in contrast to the UN’s self-imposed decision to treat the SAF as a legitimate government, which has compromised its neutrality and its access to non-SAF areas.

Such solidarity would be an investment in Sudan’s present and its future. As the Quad attempts to end the war from the outside in, the mutual aid movement is laying the foundations for rebuilding the state from the bottom-up and ending the dystopian horrors the Sudanese people now endure.