African Union delegation visits Khartoum for the first time since the 2021 takeover

A delegation from the African Union Peace and Security Council met Sovereign Council chairman Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Prime Minister Kamil Idris in Khartoum on Sunday 16 August, Sudan Tribune reported from the capital — the first such visit since the October 2021 military takeover that led to the suspension of Sudan’s membership of the 55-member body. Mohamed Khaled, the Council’s rotating president for August, said the AU respects Sudan’s sovereignty and unity, voiced concern at mounting casualties and infrastructure damage, urged inclusive dialogue and national reconciliation to pave the way toward free and fair elections, and rejected external interference and “the creation of parallel authorities” — the operative phrase, and a rebuke of the Rapid Support Forces' parallel administration without naming it. Sudan Tribune renders most of the remarks in indirect speech; the AU PSC’s own communiqué has not been published in a form we have seen.

Idris used the meeting to press the opposite of equivalence. In a cabinet statement, the prime minister said the government would not tolerate any equating of the national army with the RSF, urged the AU to support designating the paramilitary a terrorist organisation, and said the military is advancing in Greater Kordofan ahead of operations in Darfur. The AU sits in a five-member mechanism with the UN, EU, IGAD and the Arab League whose present task is narrower than a ceasefire: resolving Sudanese disagreement over the format and venue of proposed talks. On the parallel internal track, Sudan Tribune reports Burhan agreed on Friday 14 August to provide security guarantees and immunity from prosecution to participants in a planned national dialogue, following Al Jazeera’s 10 August report of unannounced talks by the army chief on the same subject.

Assessment: A visit is not a readmission, but it is currency. Port Sudan gets an African Union delegation photographed in Khartoum and a Council president using the phrase “parallel authorities” — precisely the language the government needs to foreclose any mediated settlement that treats the RSF as a counterparty. The counter-ask, terrorist designation, is the same objective by other means. Two cautions. Nearly all of this reaches us in indirect speech; until the PSC communiqué surfaces, the AU’s actual formulation is unconfirmed. And a mechanism of five institutions still arguing over venue is the best available measure of distance from a ceasefire. Further claims circulating — dropped death-penalty charges, an amnesty for Somoud figures — rest on single outlets relayed through unsigned analysis. Treat them as proposals discussed, not decisions taken.