Sudan’s War Has No Borders. Neither Should Accountability.

A new investigation by Africa Intelligence has reported that senior figures linked to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces travelled to Tel Aviv during the war and met Israeli officials, including representatives of the Foreign Ministry’s Africa Division and Israeli intelligence personnel. The reported visits took place in May 2025 and February 2026.

The significance of this report goes beyond the meetings themselves.

It raises a broader question about how the international community engages with the actors sustaining Sudan’s war.

The reported contacts are said to form part of a relationship that predates the current conflict. That history matters. But so does the timing: these contacts reportedly continued while Sudan was experiencing some of the worst violence and displacement in its modern history.

Sudan Futures is not suggesting that a meeting constitutes endorsement, nor that every contact between a government and a conflict actor amounts to complicity.

Diplomacy requires communication.

But diplomacy also requires clarity.

When governments maintain relationships with armed actors during an active conflict, the international community should be entitled to ask what those relationships are intended to achieve, what leverage they provide, and where the boundaries lie.

If governments have access to the parties to Sudan’s war, what are they doing with that access?

This is particularly important when the organisation involved is the RSF, a paramilitary force facing extensive allegations of atrocities against civilians and which has been the subject of international sanctions.

The question is therefore not simply:

Who is talking to whom?

It is:

What is being discussed, what influence does that relationship create, and is that influence being used to reduce the capacity for war?

That distinction matters.

Sudan’s conflict has repeatedly demonstrated that the war cannot be understood solely through events inside Sudan.

Weapons move across borders. Money moves across financial systems. Fighters move across countries. Political relationships operate far beyond the battlefield.

And now, once again, we are reminded that the diplomatic relationships surrounding Sudan’s war are equally international.

This is precisely why Sudan Futures has argued for greater scrutiny of the external architecture of the conflict.

Engagement with Sudanese actors is necessary.

But engagement should not become a substitute for accountability.

Nor should diplomatic relationships become so politically sensitive that difficult questions are left unasked.

There is also a wider lesson here.

The international community has repeatedly called for Sudanese parties to negotiate and end the war. But if influential external governments maintain channels to those same parties, they possess something potentially valuable: leverage.

The question is whether that leverage is being used.

If it is, what results are being demanded?

If it is not, why not?

And if external relationships can provide access to the people capable of prolonging the conflict, can they not also be used to press them to stop?

Sudan does not need the world to stop talking to those who hold power.

It needs the world to use those conversations more effectively.

The war has no borders. Accountability should not have them either.