Today, Explained - Can Trump help Sudan?

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Two military generals are responsible for Sudan's brutal civil war. The American president just pledged to get involved. This episode was produced by Danielle Hewitt, edited by Amina al-Sadi and Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Hady Mawajdeh and Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Adriene Lilly, and hosted by Noel King. The two generals -- former allies -- who are now at war in Sudan, seen together at a military ceremony in Khartoum in 2021. Photo by Mahmoud Hjaj/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

President Trump delivered a shocker today at a meeting between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia that was meant to be about investment. He said he's getting involved in Sudan. His Majesty would like me to do something very powerful having to do with Sudan. It was not on my charts to be involved in that. I thought it was just something that was crazy and out of control. But I just see how important that is to you and to, a lot of your friends in the room, Sudan, and we're going to start working on Sudan.

I didn't think that was. Since 1969, Sudan has suffered under some absolutely terrible governments. Those governments were usually headed by military men who took power in coups and then ruled as dictators for years. From 2019 to 2021 after a popular uprising, Sudan was on the road to becoming a democracy. And then there was another coup, led by two generals, former allies, and what happened next was predictable. Surprise, surprise. The military leaders fell out as thieves and warlords so often do and plunge the country into yet another war, which is what we see now. Today, those two generals

stand accused of war crimes, of genocide, and arguably of some of the most callous disregard for civilian life on record. Neither one of them seems inclined to stop. Coming up on today explained the two men who are destroying Sudan and the one man who could maybe do something about it. Support for this show comes from the Audible Original, the downloaded two ghosts in the machine. Quantum computers, the next great frontier of technology, offering endless possibilities that stretch the human mind. But for Roscoe Cudulian and the Phoenix Colony,

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from Audible. You're listening to Today Today Explained. When the small city of Elfasher Sudan was overrun by a paramilitary group in late October, the killing there was so frenzied that you could see blood on the ground from space. Alex Deval is a preeminent scholar of Sudan.

He runs the World Peace Foundation at Tufts. He's been writing about and working in Sudan on and off for more than 40 years. Alex says that the people of El Fasher tried to stay out of this war between the government forces and this paramilitary group. But it's a war, and they got dragged in. So they sided with the so-called government, and they became the last place in Darfur that was resisting the rapid support forces.

this very vicious paramilitary. And just a few weeks ago, the RSF overran that garrison. New satellite imagery is painting a grim picture of what may have happened in Sudan this week. Troops from Sudan's paramilitary rapid support forces, the RSF, gained control of the besieged city of Alfershow. They killed the men, they killed them all, and they left none behind. We don't know what to do.

We're exhausted and we see. suffer greatly. The children are hungry. The people of Elfasha had been living in a state of suspended terror for 18 months because the RSF, when it overran previous cities, notably a city called El Janina, close to the border with Chad, had committed the most horrendous massacres against the people there. What the people of Elfasher had been experiencing was shelling, drone attacks, targeted on the hospitals, on the clinic. on everything that made civilian life bearable. And then when the troops or the paramilitary men came in,

they went house to house, pulling people out, murdering men in the streets, raping women and girls in front of their families. Perhaps just as horrific as the crimes themselves is the way the men who are perpetrating them film themselves. Some of the footage we have obtained from Alferta is simply too graphic for CNN to broadcast. Videos of soldiers shooting at unarmed people who clearly appeared to be civilians,

men boasting about attacks and the numbers of people that they had killed. His comrades filmed him, taunting 10 unarmed prisoners, ordering them to praise the RSF's leader before shooting them at point-blank rage. And you see their reliance. the enjoyment with which they torture and torment their victims before killing them.

These are videos that are simply too horrible to watch. Okay, so as you said, Alex, there are two sides in this war, and there is a general leading each side. Let's start with Sudan's regular army, the SAF. Who is the general leading that force? So General Abdul-Fata-Iruburhan is a regular career. military officer. And like many of those regular officers, he has a pretty mixed record. So that some 20 years ago, he was one of those who served in the vicious war in Darfur. He was then

head of a contingent of Sudanese soldiers that served in Yemen, paid for by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. And he has his fingers in a number of crony capitalist enterprises that make money, etc. But within his coalition, which is a very fractious coalition, he has some people who are utterly ruthless, among them an Islamist brigade. And he relies on them because they have money, they also have some of the best troops, and they are bitter and vengeful. When General Bahrain has said he's ready to come to peace talks, it's the Islamists in his coalition Hussein, no way. What does General Burhan want here? And is it as simple as he wants to win this war for the government of Sudan? So he calls himself the government of Sudan, even though

he didn't actually control the capital. The United Nations recognized him, rather foolishly, in my view. But he wants to basically restore the status quo, which is certainly better than what we have now, but it was that status quo against which civilians came in that uprising seven years ago and against which many of the rural people in Sudan have rebelled. Who are Sudan's friends and who are Sudan's enemies? Many countries remain silent and turn a blind eye to the crimes being committed every day. Everyone who remains silent and everyone who supports what the other side is doing on a daily basis is definitely an enemy.

How has General Burhan conducted himself and his forces during this war? So there's no doubt that his forces have committed war crimes, both at a sort of strategic level. They've tried to cut off international assistance to rebel-held areas. They've blocked the UN. And some of it through lack of discipline, some of it through the vengefulness of local commanders. All right, let's talk about the other side in this war. this is the Rapid Support Force, the RSF. As you said, this is a paramilitary group. Who is the general leading them? So the general in charge there, his name is Mohamed Hamdagh. He's widely known as Hemeti. And 20 years ago, I first came across him when I read a report from African Union monitors, there were some peacekeepers in Darfur at the time, in which a notorious militia called the Janjaweed, which had been rampaging on a sort of this.

genocidal campaign throughout Darfur 20 years ago, they destroyed a village called Adwa in the centre of Darfur, killed 128 people, 38 of them children. And when these African Union monitors showed up, this fellow Hemeti was there, and he made, he didn't conceal the fact that they were responsible. In fact, he said, we've been planning this for a long time. So he was one of the sort of most ruthless and capable commanders. He's also a very charming man. He's also a very charming man. Many of these killers are. They don't have horns growing out of their heads. And he became over the succeeding years a very capable commander serving the government, also a businessman. So he took control of gold mines, artisanal gold mines in Darfur became extremely wealthy.

And he is a different kind of animal. So he's much more like a sort of a mercenary commercial operator. He doesn't want to rebuild the state as it was. He basically would like to see power in the hands of him and his family running the country as though it's really a family business with his own private army, his own companies in charge. How has Hometti conducted himself and his forces during this war? So Hometti claims to be standing for democracy and he claims to be the champion of the poor and the marginalized and all those who oppose the Islamists. That doesn't cut much ice. When we see how his forces have behaved throughout the war, it is utterly atrocious right at the beginning of the war. They ransacked and pillage, the national capital,

Khartoum, terrorized, so many of its inhabitants, looted, raped their way through whole residential neighborhoods. And then in Darfur, they conducted what was candidly a genocidal campaign in this city of El Fasher. And that was a longstanding agenda of some of the groups that are allied with Hometti and his forces. You've been living in and writing about Sudan on and off for 40 years. You have seen, you know, little Sudanese kids grow up and get old and turn into middle-aged men. These two men, these two generals, are people who have been shaped by years and years and years of war. They are perpetrators of war.

They also, I imagine if you dig deeply enough back into their histories and into the histories of the men fighting with them, they are victims of war. And I wonder when you think about the future of Sudan, you know, is the future of Sudan just more and more generations of men who've been shaped by war? So one of my very first hosts when I went to Darfur 40 years ago was an old sheikh from. a nomadic Arab tribe, who told me, you know, we are so poor, we are so impoverished, we've lost our camels, you know, the desert is encroaching, our way of life is coming to an end. And he said, what this famine means, that was the famine of that time, isn't so much that our people are starving, but that our way of life is ending. Now, his son, same age as me, 20 years later, became head of the Janjaweed, this notorious

force. Wow. And then that man, Musa Hilal, the head of the Janjuid, was himself displaced by his second-in-command, Hemeti, who said, this man is not ruthless enough. So what we see is over those 40 years, you can trace how the pressures and the traumas of hunger and of conflict have translated into this merciless political culture that we have today. Alex Deval, he's the co-author of Sudan's Unfinished Democracy, among other books. Coming up, Vox's Josh Keating on the long-shot chance that there is someone who has the leverage to force a peace deal in Sudan. It wasn't on my charge, because I'm good at settling disputes. and I've always been. I've done very well with that over the years.

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Vox's Josh Keating covers foreign policy, and he's been writing recently about Sudan. Josh, at this point, does it look like either the military or the paramilitary could actually win this war? There's some thought that this could be entering what strategists call a herding stalemate, which is the point of a war when both sides are continuing. to fight despite knowing that they don't really have a chance of victory, but they're continuing to hurt each other to afflict casualties on each other. And unfortunately, in this case, to inflict, you know, really horrendous atrocities against the civilian population of Sudan, despite the fact that both sides probably aren't going to be able to take over the whole

country. So, I mean, that's very bad in the short term when you reach that stage. But it's also possible, just possible, that it opens up some more room for diplomacy and efforts to de-escalate the conflict. As complicated as this war is the diplomacy is almost more complicated. There's a whole alphabet soup and of different groups trying to mediate. But, you know, the important one at the moment is a diplomatic grouping, which is called the quad. This consists of the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. So in September, this group of four countries announced a joint proposal for a ceasefire. The quad includes very relevant and very important countries that can make a big difference.

There are steps to be taken initially, which start with a ceasefire, and that's what we're working on. We're working on this for the last almost 10 days, with both sides, hoping to find. the details and hopefully have something positive to announce soon. Neither side was likely to agree to that as long as the fight for Alfasher was continuing. Ah. Wasn't going to agree to step down. Shortly after they took the city, the RSF agreed to the ceasefire. After two and a half years of civil war in Sudan, there are potential signs of hope. The rapid support forces or RSF have agreed to a U.S.-backed ceasefire.

The group agreed to a ceasefire. However, the Sudanese army, known as the SAF, has yet to do the same. The proposal includes a three-month humanitarian pause, followed by a permanent ceasefire and a nine-month transition to civilian rule. At the same time, they're continuing to launch attacks, including sending, you know, allied paramilitary groups into further east. They're still launching rocket and drone attacks at Khartoum. It'd be a stretch to say, you know, this is, we're moving towards peace or de-escalation,

But even the fact that the RSF was even willing to agree to this, whether they were serious about it or not, that's still, like, more progress than we've seen in quite a while in the diplomatic front. Three of the countries in the quad, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE are in the region, right? It makes sense for them to be involved. Then there's the United States. In what way is the U.S. involved here? Well, the U.S. has traditionally been sort of a major player in Sudanese politics for better or worse. Last month I announced that the United States was prepared to take new steps if the government of Sudan did not allow the full deployment of a UN peacekeeping force. We know what needs to happen. The government of Sudan must stop its military actions, including aerial bombardments. It must give aid workers the access they need to save lives. And it must end its support. for armed groups inside the South. And, you know, I think Sudan has sort of steadily slid down the list of priorities for the

U.S. over successive administrations. This wasn't a major priority of the Biden administration, which, to be fair, had its hands full between, you know, Gaza and Ukraine and rising tensions with China and everything else. And there were signs earlier in the Trump administration. It didn't seem like it was going to be high on the list either. that has started to change a little bit in the past few months. The U.S. does seem to be engaged a little more.

And I think, you know, when President Trump was recently in the Gulf for all the, you know, discussions around the Gaza ceasefire, he was getting an earful from countries in the region that they wanted him to be more involved in Sudan. And I think we are seeing a sort of higher level of engagement on that issue. And, in fact, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, just a few days back, at the G7, and he came out and he said, Something needs to be done to cut off the weapons and the support that the RSF is getting as they continue with their advances. Who is arming this group?

Well, most likely it's the simple answer to that is the UAE, the United Arab Emirates. The UAE denies this fact, but it's been pretty well documented by multiple NGOs, media reports, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. There's a leaked UN report. It's a really kind of worst-kept secret that this is what's happening. And so, you know, it was interesting when Rubio said that, he was a little vague. He sort of said that support for the RSF needs to stop. He didn't say who needs to do it.

And he certainly didn't call out the country that most people believe is the primary supporter of the RSF. And the United Arab Emirates is a major U.S. ally. The U.S.-R.R.D. relationship has been a bedside. rock of security and prosperity. You're an amazing country. You're a rich country. You can have your choice, but I know you'll never leave my side. I know that. And you know the special relationship that we have in our country has. Just recently, you know, when Trump was in the Gulf, they announced major defense and, you know, AI investment deals between the two governments.

And with this trip, we're adding over $1 trillion more in terms of. of investment and investment into our country and buying our products. And we really appreciate your confidence and an investment. That's your biggest investment that you've ever made. And we really appreciate it. And we're going to treat you very, as you should be, magnificently. The Trump family, Trump's sons have an enormous amount of money in real estate and cryptocurrency deals in Abu Dhabi.

So the ties here are pretty close. The good news on that front is it means you can imagine a circumstance where the Trump administration could leverage its close ties with the UAE to apply some pressure to them. They haven't really seemed in a hurry to do that so far to either sort of pressure them diplomatically, at least publicly, or sort of call out the support that pretty much everyone knows is going on. The UAE is this very small, very rich, in many ways, very modern country. Why are they arming a paramilitary group that is wreaking havoc in Sudan? It's a really good question, and it doesn't always seem to make a lot of sense from the outside. The UAE has pursued a strategy throughout the region of backing sort of either rebel or separatist groups in various conflicts to sort of maintain region. influence. They've done this in Libya, in Somalia, in Yemen. So this is kind of part of their

MO. Specifically in Sudan, there's major gold interests at place. Darfur, which is the main support base for the RSF, where their strongest, is a major gold mining region. The UAE has emerged as a major gold trading center. And, you know, it's pretty well documented. that a significant amount of gold is leaving Sudan through channels connected to the leadership of the RSF and heading to the gold trading centers in the United Arab Emirates. And so that's one possible interest. Another is they're very interested in control of ports along the Red Sea. That doesn't really seem to be an achievable goal.

And just, you know, I think the widespread coverage of, you know, what happened in El Fasher, the blood stains on the sand seen from space, the widespread reports of rape being used as a weapon of war, I do wonder if we're starting to get to the point where the sort of bad publicity they're getting for their ties to the RSF, to a group which, by the ways, has also been accused of genocide by a number of foreign governments and NGOs, whether that's starting to outweigh whatever strategic benefit they're getting by continuing to support them in this war. President Trump loves nothing more than being able to say that he ended a conflict. I do it nicely. I don't need to do it, I guess, but if I can take time and save millions of lives, that's really a great thing. I can't think of anything better to do.

He wants the Nobel Peace Prize. We know that. I can't think of any president that ever solve one war. I don't think anybody. They start wars. They don't solve them. So nothing like this has been done in history. Is a ceasefire a real possibility with a president-like Trump? Trump and a region that seems interested in getting this done. It's a really complicated conflict, and Trump often has a habit of, like, oversimplifying these things. But, you know, he would love to be able to announce that he's the one to brought peace to Sudan in his ongoing quest to get a Nobel Peace Prize. Over the last

few years, there have been, like, three major conflicts in the world that have caused most the casualties and most of the humanitarian disasters. It's Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan. We don't hear as much about that third one, but we probably should. It's like in the same league in terms of number of casualties and the number of countries involved and how complex it is. In the lead-up to the Gaza ceasefire, I think we saw that his relationships in the Gulf, as sort of like ethically and legally questionable as they may be, do kind of allow him to do business in that part of the world in a way that traditional U.S. diplomacy has not always. And I think the best hope we have now is that he can sort of bring the outside actors

together, get them on the same page, and hopefully that can have some impact on the ground in Sudan and bring an end to this sort of dizzingly complex and really destructive war. Josh Keating, you can find him writing at Vox.com. Today's show was produced by Danielle Hewitt and edited by Amina El Sadi and Miranda Kennedy. It was fact-checked by Hadi Muagdi and Melissa Hirsch, and our engineers are Patrick Boyd and Adrian Lilly. The rest of the team, Avashai Artsy, Miles Bryan, Peter Balin-Rose and Kelly Wessinger, Ariana Aspudu, Sean Ramosfirm, Ested Herndon, and Jolie Myers. We use music by Breakmaster Cylinder. Today Explained is distributed by WNYC, and the show is a part of it.

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