RIYADH / ABU DHABI — Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will hold a high-level meeting this Friday to try to chart a way out of the Sudan crisis and produce a political formula to end the war that has pitted the Army against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for more than three years. Gulf sources familiar with the contacts revealed the plans.
According to those sources, the meeting aims to bring closer the positions of the president of the Sovereign Council and head of the Sudanese Army, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, as a step toward understandings that would close a conflict with profound humanitarian, economic and security consequences.
The meeting is not the first of its kind. The same sources say it is part of a series of meetings and consultations between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi — this would be the third — aimed at shaping a common vision of the political settlement. That framework rests on three pillars: an end to hostilities, the formation of a civilian government acceptable to Sudan's different forces, and the removal of the military institution from the executive management of the state.
From the fall of Al Bashir to open war
The origin of the crisis goes back to the growing tension between the Army and the RSF after the fall of President Omar al-Bashir in 2019. After several years of fragile coexistence within the transitional institutions, disagreements erupted over the timetable for integrating the paramilitaries into the Armed Forces and the scope of security sector reform. In April 2023, those differences escalated into open military confrontation that spread to Khartoum and several states across the country.
Since then, numerous regional and international initiatives to achieve a ceasefire and open an inclusive political process have run aground on both sides' insistence on their conditions, complicating the landscape and prolonging the conflict.
Expectations of a breakthrough
The sources consulted anticipate a significant unblocking of the political track in the coming weeks, in light of the diplomatic moves under way and the fast-moving regional situation. Saudi Arabia, they note, is leading an intense round of contacts with both parties to prepare the ground for a broad reconciliation that would restore stability to the country and clear the path back to civilian rule.
Current efforts, they add, are focused on an agreement that preserves the unity of Sudan and its institutions, ends the humanitarian suffering caused by the war, and opens a new transitional phase based on national consensus — one capable of halting the country's slide toward deeper fragmentation.
