Burhan adviser accuses US envoy of engineering a Libya-style partition of Sudan

Amjad Farid, adviser to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on political and international affairs, told Reuters on 30 September from New York that the ceasefire proposal advanced by Massad Boulos, the US Senior Advisor for Arab and African Affairs, risked freezing the war on current lines. “Mr Boulos seems to be putting pressure on us to accept a de facto partitioning of the country similar to Libyan model,” Farid said, adding: “Our concern is that the approach Mr Boulos continues to advance appears to accommodate the militia’s continued existence and preserve a place for it in Sudan’s political future.” Reuters describes the plan as a 90-day ceasefire followed by negotiations to end the war and restore a civilian transition. Farid said Port Sudan had submitted amendments — chief among them an internationally monitored RSF withdrawal from urban areas — and that Washington appeared to have ignored them. Boulos has not publicly responded in anything retrieved for this brief.

The remarks close a fortnight that began with a visa. On 21 September Sudan’s permanent representative wrote to the UN asking it to intervene, warning that if the situation persisted “it would effectively prevent the Head of State of a Member State of the United Nations from participating in person in the work of the General Assembly.” Burhan had been scheduled to address the Assembly on 24 September. The claim that the visa was being withheld to force his signature on the Boulos plan rests on two anonymous sources — a Sudanese diplomatic source and a Western analyst described as close to American and Sudanese officials — and has not been confirmed by the State Department, which Al Jazeera reported declined to comment, as did the Sudanese government. On 26 September, at a youth rally at Khartoum Stadium, Burhan rejected the conditions and said he did not need the visa.

Assessment: “Libya-style partition” is the army’s frame, not a finding, and it is doing specific work: it converts a dispute about sequencing into a dispute about sovereignty. What Port Sudan actually wants is RSF urban withdrawal priced into the ceasefire rather than deferred to the talks that follow it — a demand the RSF has no battlefield reason to accept, which is why Farid’s objection functions as a refusal. Distrust the visa storyline’s motive, which is single-track anonymous sourcing; the non-issuance itself is documented by Sudan’s own letter. The tell to watch is whether Washington restates the 90 days unchanged or rewrites the withdrawal clause. Silence counts as an answer.