Sudan’s army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has ruled out any negotiations with the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF), declaring that the military will keep fighting until it retakes every area the paramilitary group controls, as the three-and-a-half-year civil war grinds on with no end in sight.

Speaking to crowds in the northern town of Amri and, days earlier, at a gathering in Merowe locality, al-Burhan — who also chairs Sudan’s Sovereign Council — dismissed any suggestion of talks. “We say it again: we have no negotiations with anyone, we are not speaking with anyone,” he said, according to the Sudan News Agency. He insisted that decisions over war and peace rest with state institutions such as the Security and Defence Council rather than individual commanders, adding, “Neither I nor Minawi, nor anyone else can make a unilateral decision on their own,” a reference to Darfur’s regional governor, Minni Minawi. Turning to the battlefield, al-Burhan told soldiers, “We tell the rebels among you that we are coming to you with force,” and vowed, “We want to uproot the enemy and eliminate it completely.”

The defiant stance comes as fighting intensifies across Darfur, Kordofan and Blue Nile state. Near El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, clashes resumed last week between the army-allied Joint Force and the RSF around the towns of Bir Saliba and Abu Suruj, close to the Chad border — a corridor both sides see as strategically vital given its links to smuggling and supply routes through the Sudan-Chad-Libya border triangle. The Joint Force said it destroyed seven RSF vehicles and recaptured Bir Saliba, though those claims could not be independently verified.

The human toll continues to mount away from the front lines. The Dar Hamar Emergency Committee, a local charity group, said at least ten civilians were killed and several wounded in an RSF attack on Abu Ajal village in West Kordofan. In Blue Nile state, the International Organization for Migration reported that more than 5,500 people were displaced from their villages over just three days this month. The United Nations and international agencies estimate the war, which erupted in April 2023 after a collapse in talks to integrate the RSF into the national army, has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced roughly 13 million — one of the world’s largest displacement crises.

International mediators have repeatedly failed to broker a lasting truce. Massad Boulos, the United States’ senior adviser for Arab and African affairs, said this month that peace would have to come through “a Sudanese-owned, Sudanese-led national dialogue” and a transition to civilian rule. The U.S. State Department has gone further, stating that neither the Sudanese Armed Forces nor the RSF “represent legitimate, constitutional governance for Sudan.”

With al-Burhan’s latest remarks, hopes for an imminent ceasefire appear to be fading further, leaving millions of Sudanese caught between an army determined to fight to the finish and an RSF that still holds much of Darfur. For Sierra Leoneans and the wider diaspora watching conflicts across the continent, Sudan’s war remains a sobering reminder of how fragile post-transition governance can be — and how costly its collapse.

Sources: Al Jazeera, AllAfrica/Daily Trust (via Sudan Tribune, Radio Tamazuj)