Burhan Buries the Truce From a Mosque Pulpit — and Names the RSF's Backers

Speaking after Friday prayers at the Al-Hadrab Mosque in Khartoum North on July 24, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan ruled out any deal with the RSF and extended the target set to its foreign backers: "There will be no place for the rebel militia or those who supported and backed them after today." The same day, Sovereignty Council adviser Amgad Fareid Eltayeb told Anadolu that Khartoum rejects any proposal legitimising RSF territorial control and will not accept partition "like the Libya scenario" — the first time the army side has framed the US plan in those words. Defence minister Hassan Daoud Kabroun claimed field gains across Kordofan, Blue Nile and Darfur; the prime minister spoke of the RSF's "complete defeat." Underneath the rhetoric, the army sent heavy reinforcements into the Sahara on July 21 to sever RSF resupply from Libya.

Assessment: The Quad — the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE — was built on the premise that both principals could be brought to a text. Hemedti accepted a truce but refused withdrawal; Burhan has now removed even the negotiable middle, and did it from a pulpit, to a domestic audience he intends to mobilise rather than to mediators. For Riyadh and Cairo, whose leverage rests on Burhan appearing to negotiate, that is a credibility problem — and his threat to the RSF's "backers" is a barely coded reference to Abu Dhabi inside a mechanism the UAE co-chairs. The Libya-border push signals the next phase is an interdiction war over supply corridors. The claimed battlefield gains are army-official and unverified; treat them as information operations.