Both Belligerents Have Now Answered Boulos, and Both Answers Turn on Who Leaves a City First

Sudan Tribune reported on 14 July that the RSF had submitted its response to the peace proposals carried by Massad Boulos, the US Senior Advisor for Arab and African Affairs: the force accepts a truce, sets conditions for a political settlement, and rejects withdrawal from the territory it holds. Sudan’s Security and Defence Council, chaired by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said on 12 July that it had filed its own answer. Burhan’s position has not shifted since January — no truce before RSF withdrawal from cities, and no mediating role for the United Arab Emirates. Burhan met Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki in Asmara on 17 July for lengthy talks dominated by ceasefire proposals, and repeated the sequencing condition there; Mada Masr’s Sudan Nashra of 25 July reports Afwerki reinforced it.

Mada Masr, which has good Sudan sourcing but is here the only outlet reporting it, also describes an existing Burhan–Hemedti channel and says Burhan is accelerating a state-led dialogue plan while forces prepare for a possible battle over Tina. The International Crisis Group’s 24 April briefing sets the ceiling on all of this: Hemedti accepted the Quad peace plan in November 2025 a day after Burhan openly rejected it; key Burhan allies oppose any humanitarian truce and treat the UAE as a party rather than a mediator; and the Quad roadmap, in Crisis Group’s words, “has yet to get off the ground.” Its evidence for the pro-army position is telephone interviews with Darfuri armed group leaders, National Congress Party figures and pro-army party representatives conducted between September 2025 and January 2026.

Assessment: A response is not a concession. Both sides have now put paper in front of Washington while conceding the one thing that is not theirs to concede — territory — and that symmetry is what keeps the file alive without moving it. Treat the Burhan–Hemedti channel with care: single-outlet, and exactly the kind of claim both principals benefit from having circulate whether or not it is operating. Note also the sequencing between the desk’s two stories. The N’Djamena–Nyala corridor, as the UN draft describes it, ran through January to July — the same months in which the diplomacy was being drafted, exchanged and stalled.