Washington asks the Security Council to widen an arms embargo that stops at Darfur

Rosemary DiCarlo, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, briefed the Council on Friday 16 October. According to Asharq Al-Awsat’s account, she said the warring parties had shown no serious commitment to a negotiated settlement even though neither is capable of securing a military victory, warned of further escalation in the coming months, reported continued UN coordination with the Quad on a humanitarian truce, and said further delay was unacceptable. The Files has not retrieved the verbatim UN transcript. Jeff Bartos, the US Representative to the United Nations for Management and Reform, called for a humanitarian truce to allow aid in and urged the Council to expand the arms embargo and strengthen sanctions. “Every day that this conflict persists is unacceptable,” Bartos said, per Radio Tamazuj. Sudan’s ambassador, Al-Harith Idriss al-Harith Mohamed, replied that his government remains committed to peace and has submitted proposals on civilian protection, a ceasefire and monitoring mechanisms.

The substantive request sits under the rhetoric: the Council’s Sudan arms embargo currently applies only to Darfur, and widening it to the whole country is the one measure that would bite on both belligerents' supply chains rather than on territory the RSF mostly holds. The same ask came four days earlier from a different direction. On 12 October a delegation of Sudanese anti-war civilian and political forces including former prime minister Abdalla Hamdok met the Quintet mechanism at African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa — UN personal envoy Ramtane Lamamra, AU envoy Mohamed Ibn Chambas, IGAD representatives and EU special representative Annette Weber — and presented a roadmap calling for an unconditional humanitarian truce, a Sudanese-led process, an end to external support, and extension of the arms embargo to all of Sudan. Their structural proposal reserves 20 of 40 seats in a transitional body for non-aligned forces, splitting the rest evenly between the two camps.

Assessment: Two things to hold apart. A truce call at a Council briefing costs nothing; a draft resolution widening the embargo costs the states whose clients would be covered by it, and that is the fight to watch over the next sitting. Nothing in Friday’s session indicates the US has tabled text. Note also the distance between Sudan’s ambassador, who described submitted ceasefire proposals, and Burhan, who on 7 October rejected talks and vowed to retake every inch of RSF-held ground. When a government’s diplomat and its commander-in-chief describe different wars, the diplomat is usually the one addressing the Council, not the front.