Negotiating with Yesterday’s Sudan

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.