Burhan rules out talks again while the Council rolls over a Darfur-only embargo in two minutes

Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, chairman of the Transitional Sovereignty Council and SAF commander-in-chief, told a crowd in the northern town of Amri that the army would fight until it defeats the Rapid Support Forces across Darfur, Kordofan and Blue Nile. “We say it again: we have no negotiations with anyone, we are not speaking with anyone, and we have nothing to do with anyone,” he said, according to Daily Trust via allAfrica on 12 October. On the question of who could change that, he added: “Neither I nor Minawi, nor anyone else can make a unilateral decision on their own,” placing the matter with state institutions, notably the Security and Defence Council. This is a restatement — Al Jazeera, Anadolu, The New Arab and Sudan Tribune all carried the same line around 7 October. The movement is the trend: on 15 August, Al Jazeera reported Burhan offering immunity for dialogue while ruling out any return for Hemedti. The same allAfrica item carries an unverified military claim that allied troops destroyed seven RSF combat vehicles and retook Bir Saliba.

On the morning of 8 October the Security Council met for roughly two minutes and renewed the 1591 sanctions regime for two further months, with the arms embargo still confined to Darfur. The characterisation of the meeting’s length was put to the UN podium that day and not disputed. It follows Resolution 2828 of 11 September, which extended the regime only to 9 October while renewing the Panel of Experts mandate to 9 November — two short rollovers in a month. Security Council Report identifies the live substantive question as a United States proposal to extend the regime’s geographical scope beyond Darfur. Asked whether the Secretary-General supports a nationwide embargo, spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said: “Look, that is a decision for Security Council members to make. The Secretary-General has been clear in saying that the one thing that Sudan does not need more of is more weapons pouring into the country.”

Geography is the whole argument. The sharpest front of the past month has been Kordofan, outside the embargo’s reach. AFP, citing United Nations figures, reports that drones deployed by both the army and the RSF killed more than 1,100 people in the first five months of 2026. In El Obeid, AFP reported at least 10 killed in strikes on a University of Kordofan dormitory housing students and civilians and on a centre sheltering displaced families; a Sudanese rights group put the dormitory toll at five killed and 47 wounded, and a North Kordofan official and a hospital medical source put the second strike at five killed and 13 injured, blaming the RSF, which did not respond. A further drone swarm on 9 October wounding at least six is reported by Sudan Tribune on the basis of anonymous military sources, which the paper says it could not independently verify. Security Council Report records a human rights finding of reasonable grounds to believe RSF drone strikes on El Obeid in July and August may amount to war crimes.

Assessment: Two short rollovers are not a sanctions policy; they are a Council that cannot agree and has priced disagreement in sixty-day instalments. Keep the Darfur limitation in view: an embargo drawn around the 2005 war while the 2026 one is fought by drone over Kordofan is a legal instrument aimed at the wrong map, which is why Washington’s expansion proposal is the only item worth tracking in November. Note too what Port Sudan is doing with the space this buys. While Burhan forecloses talks in public, his foreign ministry is courting European recognition — Sudan asked France this week, per SUNA as reported by Sudan Tribune, to reopen its Khartoum embassy. Refusal and rehabilitation are running on the same track.