Can economic opportunity become a meaningful instrument of political leverage?

Sudan’s natural resources have long attracted external interest. Gold, oil, agricultural potential and other valuable commodities give the country considerable economic significance. Yet this wealth has not translated into security, stability or prosperity for much of its population.

The question is not simply who wants access to Sudan’s resources. It is whether international engagement can help change the incentives that sustain conflict, strengthen accountability and create conditions in which Sudan’s resources serve the interests of its people.

A recent legislative proposal in the United States offers an opportunity to examine that question.

A proposal linking resources with civilian protection

On 13 October 2026, US Representative Jim Baird introduced the Sudan Investing in Minerals, Partnership, Agriculture, Commerce, and Trade Act, known as the Sudan IMPACT Act. The proposed legislation would establish a partnership through which the United States could provide agricultural and mining equipment, technology and expertise in exchange for access to Sudanese natural resources.

Crucially, the partnership would be conditional. It would depend on the US Secretary of State determining that the required progress had been made in civilian protection, political stability and responsible management of natural resources.

The proposal remains at an early legislative stage. It has been referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It is not law, and no partnership has been established.

Nevertheless, the underlying idea deserves consideration: economic cooperation should not be entirely detached from the political and security conditions in which it takes place.

From commercial interest to responsible engagement

International engagement with Sudan has too often struggled to translate expressions of concern into changes in behaviour. Diplomatic statements, humanitarian assistance and calls for an end to the fighting remain necessary, but they do not automatically alter the calculations of those who sustain or benefit from conflict.

Economic relationships offer another potential instrument. Access to technology, expertise, investment and markets can create incentives. The question is whether those incentives can be used to support civilian protection, responsible resource management and conditions in which Sudanese people can determine their own political future.

The Sudan IMPACT Act attempts to connect economic opportunity with improvements in civilian protection and governance. In principle, this offers an opportunity to consider how commercial cooperation might contribute to a more accountable and peaceful future for Sudan.

But there is an important distinction between encouraging responsible conduct and attempting to determine another country’s political future. International engagement should not become a means of imposing a preferred political outcome, nor should external recognition alone determine who is entitled to govern.

The legitimacy of Sudan’s future political arrangements must ultimately rest with the Sudanese people. External partners can support the conditions necessary for that choice to be meaningful, including security, accountability and space for genuine political participation. They cannot substitute their own preferences for the choices of Sudanese people themselves.

Conditionality also raises practical questions. Who defines the conditions? Who independently assesses progress? And how consistently will the criteria be applied when commercial and strategic interests are at stake?

The test is not simply whether a proposal contains conditions. It is whether those conditions protect civilians, encourage responsible governance and respect Sudanese political agency — without becoming another instrument through which external powers seek to determine Sudan’s future.

Whose resources, and whose interests?

There is another question that deserves equal attention: who ultimately benefits?

Sudan’s natural resources should not be viewed merely as assets available to external powers seeking secure supplies of valuable commodities. They are part of the country’s economic inheritance and should contribute to its future recovery.

A responsible partnership would therefore need to consider transparency in resource extraction, the destination of revenues, environmental protection, workers’ safety and the distribution of economic benefits. It should also guard against arrangements that concentrate wealth among politically connected interests while leaving communities bearing the costs.

The exchange of equipment and ability for access to resources may offer practical advantages. Agricultural technology and irrigation could help strengthen productive capacity; improved mining technology could support safer operations and better environmental management.

Yet the benefits would depend on the terms of any eventual agreement, the institutions overseeing it and the safeguards protecting Sudanese interests. Access to resources is not, in itself, evidence of responsible development.

Nor should economic cooperation become a substitute for the harder work of rebuilding accountable institutions and establishing legitimate political authority.

The challenge of credibility

Even where the principles are clear, implementation raises difficult questions. How would progress be measured, and who would verify it?

Civilian protection cannot be assessed through declarations alone. Credible assessment would need to consider developments on the ground, including whether violence against civilians is declining, whether humanitarian access is improving and whether those responsible for abuses face meaningful accountability.

There is also a question of consistency. If economic benefits are made conditional on progress in Sudan, will the same principles be applied when commercial or strategic interests pull in another direction? Selective enforcement would undermine the credibility of the entire approach.

These are not reasons to dismiss the proposal. They are questions that must be answered before its potential contribution can be assessed.

One partnership cannot resolve a wider conflict

Sudan’s war cannot be addressed through a single economic initiative. Its continuation is shaped by domestic power struggles, external relationships, access to resources and the incentives available to those who continue the fighting.

A US-Sudan resource partnership, even if enacted, would form only one part of that wider picture. Its significance would depend partly on how it related to the policies of other governments, including those whose financial, commercial or diplomatic relationships may influence the parties to the conflict.

If international actors pursue competing approaches, the leverage available to any one of them may be limited. If economic engagement proceeds without regard to the wider conflict, it may produce commercial benefits without contributing meaningfully to peace.

This is why coordination matters. Civilian protection, diplomatic engagement, economic relationships and the scrutiny of external support should reinforce one another rather than operate as disconnected policy tracks.

The objective should not be to replace economic engagement with isolation. It should be to ensure that engagement contributes to conditions in which Sudanese people can live safely, participate in determining their country’s future and benefit from its resources.

From proposal to principle

The Sudan IMPACT Act is a proposal, not a demonstrated solution. Its introduction does not establish that it will pass, that an agreement will follow or that its conditions will produce the intended results.

But it raises a question that extends beyond the United States: can access to economic opportunity be used more deliberately to support civilian protection, responsible governance and a sustainable political settlement?

For Sudan Futures, the question is not whether every international initiative should be welcomed or dismissed, but how its incentives, interests and safeguards should be assessed.

Sudan does not lack strategic resources. It lacks a settlement capable of placing those resources within a framework of legitimate authority, accountability and public benefit.

International engagement will be judged not by the promises attached to it, but by whether it helps change the conditions that have made Sudan’s wealth coexist with such profound human suffering.

The question is not simply who gains access to Sudan’s resources, but whether international engagement can help ensure that Sudanese people ultimately benefit from them.

Sources and further reading
1. US Congress: Sudan Investing in Minerals, Partnership, Agriculture, Commerce, and Trade Act (H.R. 10795)⁠ — official bill text and legislative status.
2. Office of Congressman Jim Baird: Congressman Baird introduces the Sudan IMPACT Act⁠ — the sponsoring congressman’s announcement.
3. Sudan Tribune: US lawmaker introduces bill to tie Sudan minerals and farm pact to civilian protection⁠ — news coverage of the proposal.

When I moved to England in 1991, I had no idea that Britain’s relationship with Europe would become one of its most enduring political obsessions.

Over the years, I listened to endless arguments about the European Union. For a long time, it was largely the right demanding that Britain leave. Brussels had too much power, there were too many rules, and Britain needed to take back control of its own affairs.

Eventually, in 2016, the British people voted to leave. We formally departed in 2020.

I supported leaving. I am a Brexiteer, and I have no desire to take Britain back into the European Union.

Yet here we are, years later, and the argument continues. The voices have changed, but the obsession remains. Having spent years listening to those who wanted out, I now hear an increasingly familiar refrain from those who want us back in.

And I find myself asking: Why are we still having this argument?

Surely, by now, we should be looking forward rather than continually revisiting the same decision. We made a choice. We left. Whatever one thinks of Brexit, the question now should be how Britain makes the most of its position outside the EU.

Instead, too much of our political conversation seems to revolve around whether we should find a way back.

Have we really become so incapable of imagining a future outside the European Union? Or have we simply forgotten that cooperation and membership are two different things?

Europe is our neighbour, not our destiny

Let me be clear: I am not arguing that Britain should turn its back on Europe. That would be absurd.

Europe is our neighbour. We have deep economic, cultural, historical and security ties. We should trade with European countries, cooperate with them and maintain constructive relationships with their governments. Where our interests coincide, we should work together.

But cooperation is not the same as membership.

We trade with countries across the world without joining their political institutions. We negotiate agreements, build partnerships and pursue mutual interests while retaining responsibility for our own decisions.

Why should Europe be different?

I understand that the EU is more than a conventional trading bloc. Membership brings access to arrangements that are difficult to replicate from outside, and leaving has introduced additional barriers in some areas. These are real considerations.

But the existence of those challenges does not automatically make rejoining the right answer. Nor does it mean that the only way to have a productive relationship with our neighbours is to place ourselves once again within their shared political and regulatory framework.

We left for reasons that mattered to millions of people. Those reasons should not simply be forgotten because the practical business of independence has proved complicated.

Independence comes with responsibilities

Leaving the EU was not supposed to mean that every problem would disappear overnight. Nor did it mean that Britain could simply declare itself independent and expect the world to rearrange itself around us.

Independence requires work. It requires competent government, sound economic policy, effective negotiation and a willingness to make difficult choices. It requires us to build relationships, seek new opportunities and take responsibility for the consequences of our decisions.

If our trading arrangements need improvement, improve them. If businesses need greater certainty, provide it. If cooperation on security, research or other shared priorities would benefit Britain, pursue it.

But let us do these things because they serve the national interest, not because every improvement is being presented as another step towards reversing Brexit.

A decision to leave should be followed by a serious effort to make leaving work. Otherwise, we risk spending years debating the decision rather than building on it.

Must every road lead back to Brussels?

What troubles me most is the apparent inability of parts of our political establishment to accept that Britain can have a future outside the EU.

There is a difference between recognising that a relationship could be improved and assuming that the solution must eventually be membership again.

One approach asks: what can we achieve, and how can we achieve it?

The other begins with a preferred destination and looks for reasons to return there.

I would rather see Britain approach Europe from the first position. We should be pragmatic, confident and willing to negotiate. We should pursue agreements that benefit our people and businesses. We should be prepared to compromise where compromise makes sense, without losing sight of the fact that we are responsible for our own choices.

That is not hostility towards Europe. It is a belief that a country can be a good neighbour without being a member of the same union.

And surely there is a wider world to consider? Britain has relationships and opportunities across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas. Our future should not be defined solely by an endless debate about our relationship with one institution.

Leaving the EU was an opportunity to think more broadly about Britain’s place in the world. We should not squander that opportunity by allowing our national conversation to become a permanent argument about whether we should reverse course.

Time to move forward

I appreciate that not everyone agrees with me. Some people believe Brexit was a mistake; others believe closer integration would bring economic and practical benefits. They are entitled to make their case.

But I am equally entitled to ask when we will stop treating the referendum as a decision that can never be allowed to stand.

We voted to leave. We left. It is now our responsibility to make that decision work as well as possible.

I do not want a Britain that is isolated, inward-looking or needlessly confrontational towards its neighbours. I want a Britain that is confident enough to cooperate without assuming that cooperation requires membership, and ambitious enough to build relationships around the world without constantly looking backwards.

Being independent does not mean doing everything alone. It means retaining the ability and responsibility to decide what is in our interests, and then having the competence to act on those decisions.

We should work with Europe where it makes sense. We should trade with Europe where it benefits us. We should maintain good relations with our neighbours.

But we do not need to rejoin the European Union to do any of those things.
I voted to leave, and I stand by that decision.

Britain has left the EU. Surely it is time we stopped asking how to get back in and started concentrating on what we intend to do with the freedom to chart our own course.

The planned public execution of Nidal Hasan, convicted of murdering 13 people at Fort Hood, raises a serious question: what purpose does broadcasting his death serve?

The victims and their families deserve justice, remembrance and dignity. They should never be overshadowed by a spectacle centred on the man who took their lives.

There is also a wider danger. Extremists can turn punishment into propaganda, presenting an execution as martyrdom and using the images to glorify the very individual the state intends to condemn.

A public execution risks giving him one final platform — not to defend his crimes, but to have his death appropriated by those who share his ideology.

Justice must be about accountability, not revenge; the rule of law, not public spectacle. A state should be confident enough in its justice system not to need an audience for an execution.

The question is not whether his crimes deserve condemnation. They do. It is whether broadcasting his death serves justice — or risks serving the very extremism it seeks to defeat.

The central issue at the heart of Sudan’s war was, in part, a question of whether the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) would be integrated into the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), under what terms, and within what timeframe.

Three and a half years later, after immense loss of life and the devastation of communities across Sudan, former RSF fighters are increasingly leaving the force and joining the national army.

For some Sudanese, welcoming them is an affront to victims of RSF atrocities. For others, these defections raise suspicions about the relationship between the two forces and the motives behind their shifting allegiances.

Both concerns deserve serious consideration. But neither should obscure the larger question: can Sudan emerge from this war with a genuinely unified national military, under a single command and subject to a coherent legal framework?

Defection is not the same as reconciliation. Integration is not immunity. And changing uniforms cannot, in itself, erase responsibility for crimes committed.

The objective must be to end the existence of competing armed forces, not to transfer their divisions into a new structure. That requires disciplined integration, proper vetting, accountability and a military institution that serves the Sudanese state rather than individual commanders or political interests.

Sudan cannot build a lasting peace while armed power remains fragmented. Nor can it build one by sacrificing justice in the name of military unity.

The challenge is to achieve both.

Another massacre. Another report of civilians killed by drones . And once again, the question extends beyond the battlefield.

At least 30 displaced civilians were reportedly killed in Abu Shandi, Blue Nile State, on 9 October, in an attack attributed to the RSF.

If reports that the drones were launched from Ethiopian territory are confirmed, the implications are serious.

Sudan’s war cannot be understood, let alone ended, by looking only at the Sudanese actors fighting it. Cross-border military operations and the external support sustaining the conflict demand scrutiny, evidence and accountability.

Civilian protection requires more than condemning atrocities. It requires confronting the conditions that make them possible.

If reports are accurate that Abdalla Hamdok has sought police intervention when confronted by Sudanese diaspora members during visits to Western countries, a more fundamental question arises:

Who, exactly, does he claim to represent?

The Sudanese diaspora is not a fringe constituency to be managed or dismissed. It includes people who have fled the war, witnessed the destruction of their country, and have every right to question those who present themselves as Sudan’s political representatives.

Seeking police protection when genuinely threatened is one thing. Treating persistent political opposition as a security problem is quite another.

You cannot claim to speak for the Sudanese people while treating their questions as a threat.

Legitimacy cannot be conferred by international recognition alone, nor established through meetings with foreign governments.

Ultimately, it must rest on the consent of the people in whose name you seek to act.

Something is changing in the regional conversation around Sudan.

Turkey is deepening its relationship with Khartoum, including cooperation in defence industries. Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia have just met in El Alamein to strengthen regional coordination. Saudi Arabia continues high-level engagement with Sudan.

None of this, on its own, ends the war.

But it does point to something that international diplomacy has been slow to recognise:

Sudan is not simply a domestic conflict requiring a ceasefire between two armed forces. It is a regional security crisis with external enablers, interests and consequences.

The question therefore is not only whether the parties to the war can be brought to the negotiating table.

It is whether those with influence over the war — inside and outside Sudan — can be brought into a framework that changes the incentives sustaining it.

That is the harder diplomatic task.

And it is one the international community can no longer afford to avoid.

There is a rather important distinction being lost in the reporting around Massad Boulos and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

The US Senior Advisor for Arab and African Affairs wrote that he attended a luncheon hosted by President Sisi “alongside” General Burhan.

That is not the same thing as saying he held a meeting with Burhan.

Yet the encounter is now being reported as a meeting between the US envoy and Sudan’s army chief.

According to Reuters, a senior Sudanese government official described it rather differently: a “casual encounter”, with no talks between the two.

Why does the distinction matter?

Because in Sudan diplomacy, optics are policy.

After Washington withheld Burhan’s UN visa amid pressure over the proposed 90-day humanitarian ceasefire, an apparently formal US-Burhan meeting would carry considerable political weight.

If there was no bilateral meeting, no substantive conversation and no new engagement, then we should be careful not to manufacture one simply because two men attended the same luncheon.

Sudan needs diplomacy. But it also needs accurate diplomacy.

Cameron Hudson makes an important point: the SAF has momentum, but international mediators are still negotiating as though the battlefield looks like it did 1–2 years ago.

That’s because the primary objective of international mediation still appears to be stopping the war, rather than understanding the war as it exists today.

The battlefield has changed. The balance of power has changed. Yet the diplomatic framework remains remarkably similar.

A ceasefire cannot simply freeze a conflict in an earlier version of itself. Any credible political process has to start from the realities on the ground today — and from an honest assessment of what a sustainable settlement would actually require.

Diplomacy cannot succeed by negotiating with yesterday’s Sudan.

There is a question Sudan needs to confront honestly: can we distinguish between the Sudanese Armed Forces as a national institution, the leadership of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Islamist networks that have increasingly attached themselves to the war effort?

We should be able to.

That does not mean ignoring the documented presence of Islamist actors alongside the SAF. Nor does it mean overlooking the army’s record of abuses, its political history, or the responsibility of its leadership.

It means resisting a different kind of simplification.

The recent debate over Omar al-Bashir’s possible medical treatment abroad, reports of former Bashir-era figures regrouping around Burhan, and the visible presence of Islamist-linked forces around the SAF have understandably renewed scrutiny of the relationship between the army and Sudan’s former Islamist establishment. Bashir is currently under military guard in Khartoum and his family has sought permission for him to receive treatment abroad.

There is also substantial evidence that Islamist networks have regained influence during the war.

ACLED has documented the SAF’s revival of relationships with former Islamist allies, including the al-Baraa Ibn Malik Brigade and remnants of networks associated with the former regime. It describes the brigade as having developed institutional and personal ties with SAF commanders and subsequently becoming an important force within the war effort.

Those developments deserve scrutiny.

But they do not make the SAF synonymous with the NCP, nor do they make the SAF synonymous with the RSF.

That distinction matters.

The army, the commander and the political networks are not the same thing

The SAF is Sudan’s regular armed force. The RSF is a separate paramilitary organisation.

The current war began in April 2023 between those two forces, after the post-Bashir transition broke down over, among other things, the future political order and the integration of the RSF into the regular military. The House of Commons Library continues to describe the conflict in those institutional terms: the SAF, led by Burhan, and the RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

That does not make the SAF politically neutral.

Nor does it make Burhan synonymous with the institution he commands.

And it certainly does not erase the army’s relationship with Islamist networks.

But these distinctions are important precisely because Sudan’s future cannot be built on analytical shortcuts.

An Islamist network operating with or alongside the SAF is not the same thing as the SAF being an Islamist organisation.

Likewise, criticism of Burhan is not criticism of every Sudanese soldier serving in the national army.

And support for the SAF’s role in preserving Sudan’s territorial integrity does not automatically amount to support for Bashir, the NCP, the Muslim Brotherhood or a return to Islamist rule.

Sudanese people can hold all of those positions simultaneously.

The false comfort of “both sides”

There is an opposite simplification that is equally problematic: treating the SAF and RSF as simply two interchangeable armed factions.

They are not.

Both have been accused of serious violations against civilians.

Both have relied on alliances beyond their formal structures.

Both have political ambitions and competing networks of influence.

But they are different organisations with different histories, structures and political relationships.

The RSF itself grew out of the Janjaweed and was formally established as a paramilitary force under Bashir. The SAF, by contrast, is the country’s regular armed force.

The RSF has since established a rival governing structure in areas it controls, while the SAF has re-established government institutions in Khartoum after retaking the capital. Sudan is now effectively divided between areas dominated by the two forces.

That reality does not tell Sudanese people which political settlement they should choose.

But it does tell us that institutional distinctions matter.

And they matter even more when international actors are trying to negotiate an end to the war.

None of this absolves the SAF

This argument should not be misunderstood as a defence of Burhan.

The SAF’s conduct must be examined. Its alliances must be examined. The role of Islamist groups fighting alongside it must be examined. Allegations of abuses by SAF forces must be investigated.

And the question of what role, if any, Islamist political organisations should have in Sudan’s future must ultimately be answered by Sudanese people through a credible political process.

But that is precisely why we need better distinctions.

The United States has recently stated that neither the SAF nor the RSF represents legitimate constitutional governance for Sudan. Sudan’s government rejected that position, arguing that Sudan’s sovereignty, unity and institutions must be respected.

Whatever one’s view of that dispute, “neither side represents a political settlement” is not the same as “both sides are the same.”

That distinction appears increasingly important in international diplomacy.

Indeed, the current US-led effort has itself exposed disagreement among external actors over whether the SAF and RSF should be treated as equivalent parties. A recent UN-focused assessment noted Saudi concerns about language treating the two forces as equivalent.

Sudan needs more than one lens

The temptation to explain Sudan through a single lens is understandable.

For some, the war is fundamentally a struggle against the Islamists.

For others, it is a struggle between two military factions.

For others still, it is primarily a proxy war driven by the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey or other external powers.

Each lens captures something.

None captures everything.

Sudan’s war operates at several levels simultaneously: institutional, political, local, regional and international.

The Islamist question is real.

The question of the SAF’s conduct is real.

The RSF’s record and political ambitions are real.

Foreign support and external enablers are real.

And the aspirations of Sudanese civilians remain real.

The challenge is not to choose one of these realities and discard the others.

It is to understand how they interact.

The question Sudan should be asking

Perhaps the more useful question is not:

”Is Burhan an Islamist?”

Nor:

”Is the SAF the same as the RSF?”

Nor even:

”Which armed faction should Sudan trust?”

The harder question is:

What institutions and political arrangements can prevent any armed organisation — military, paramilitary or ideological — from determining Sudan’s political future by force?

That question leaves room to acknowledge the SAF’s institutional status without giving its leadership a blank cheque.

It allows the role of Islamist networks to be scrutinised without declaring every supporter of the army an Islamist.

It allows the RSF’s origins, conduct and political ambitions to be examined without pretending that the two forces are identical.

And, most importantly, it puts the Sudanese people back where they belong: at the centre of the question of what comes next.

Sudan does not need another binary.

It needs clearer distinctions.

Because if we cannot distinguish the army from the men who command it, the institution from the networks around it, and both from the political future of Sudan, we risk misunderstanding the very country we are trying to help.

— Sudan Futures