Sudan’s civil war will soon enter its fourth year, with no end in sight. The conflict has drawn in other regional actors who support and support the war by supporting Sudan’s warlords. This risks triggering a more widespread collapse in the region, with severe consequences both inside and outside of Sudan. Sudanese citizens are paying the price.
Militarily, momentum swung back and forth between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Today, the frontline runs mostly along west-central Kordofan, with no decisive breakthrough in sight. As the war moves into its fourth year, the conflict has grown steadily territorial into the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea, making it difficult to reach any settlement. External patrons with deep pockets are turning Sudan into an indirect theater of confrontation. Their money, weapons, and logistical support shape battlefield calculations, sustain combat capability, and sometimes shift military momentum, heighten conflict, and reduce incentives for compromise.
On one side stands the Sudanese army, which has assembled a coalition of supporters: Egypt, Eritrea, Turkey, Qatar, Iran and, most likely, Saudi Arabia, an initially neutral intermediary. These countries, along with the United Nations and the Arab League, recognize army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan as Sudan’s head of state. Most frame their support as support for a government facing internal rebellion.
On the other hand, the United Arab Emirates is the main patron of the RSF, providing financial, military and logistical support. That support helped the RSF sustain key operations, including the long fight for el-Fashar. When the city fell after a siege of roughly 18 months, images and testimonies of atrocities spread: executions, torture, abductions and sexual violence. The horror prompted a wave of critical coverage of Abu Dhabi’s role, but it did not affect Emirati support.
Sudan’s geostrategic position helps explain why outside powers invest so deeply. The country lies at the crossroads of the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa, the Sahel and North Africa. For some regional powers, the war is not only about Sudan, but also about their own national security interests and the projection of influence in a rapidly changing and contested regional order.
Sudan’s African neighbors are also being drawn into the conflict, sometimes because of direct national interests and other times because of incentives to serve as transit hubs for arms and supplies. These dynamics risk exacerbating existing fault lines across the Horn of Africa and potentially merging multiple regional conflicts with Sudan at the epicenter.
Tensions engulf diplomatic efforts
On September 12, 2025, after months of US leadership, the Quad – the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt – proposed a roadmap to end the war. There has been some initial diplomatic progress within the Quad format, including agreement on broad principles and indirect negotiations. In theory, a compromise between these external supporters could exert meaningful pressure on both the SAF and the RSF to negotiate an end to the war.
But, instead, rising tensions between the two Quad members, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, now overshadow the roadmap talks.
In December, those tensions erupted publicly. The UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council in Yemen launched a surprise offensive against Saudi-backed forces near the Saudi border, angering Riyadh and sparking a rare, open rupture between the two Gulf heavyweights. Saudi Arabia publicly condemned the UAE and demanded full UAE withdrawal. The UAE then announced its withdrawal. However, the rift is not closed. Saudi-aligned media outlets now regularly accuse the UAE of “destabilizing the region,” including Sudan.
UAE-Saudi animosity risks increasing the intractable nature of the war. For example, it could provide even more support to the army from Egypt, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. And some expect the UAE to withdraw its support for the RSF.
The US must get stronger
Despite ongoing questions about whether the Trump administration is committed to seeing those efforts through, the U.S. remains at the center of efforts to end the war. Those questions are likely to grow amid a war launched by the US and Israel against Iran, which has been retaliated by attacking states across the Gulf.
All these developments raise doubts about whether the Quad talks on Sudan will make progress in the short term. As Gulf states respond to an unprecedented security threat, their focus is unlikely to be trained on Sudan. Yet the same crisis can also create startups. Faced with a shared security challenge, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi may find reason to set aside some of their differences, including over Sudan. If they do, the consequences could be constructive, helping to revive stalled diplomatic efforts to end the war. The US and European powers, as well as other regional actors such as Turkey, Egypt and other Gulf states, should try to help broker the Saudi-Emirati detente and use it as a decisive step towards a ceasefire in Sudan. Any such agreement between the two warring parties would require the initiation of a political process within Sudan, possibly by the African Union and the UN.
There is also an urgent need to cool the temperature in the Horn of Africa, which appears on the brink of a wider regional war driven in part by rivalry over Sudan’s conflict. Now is the time for African and other leaders to step up and try to stop any escalation.
Even as the war with Iran intensifies and consumes global attention, let’s not forget that Sudan’s conflict is also primed to spread unless more is done to stop it.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
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