Sudan tests the limits of Middle Eastern de-escalation.
With Saudi-hosted talks to end Sudan fighting producing minimal results and Arab states supporting rival forces, de-escalation in the Middle East faces a major test.
So does Gulf states' ability to employ dollar diplomacy to persuade poorer Arab brethren to align with the policies of countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
In Sudan, the stakes are high.
Gulf states fear four weeks of fighting between the Sudanese army headed by Army General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the dissident Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, a.k.a. Hemedti could spark a broader war in the Red Sea that threatens their maritime and strategic interests.
The most US and Saudi mediators were able to achieve in days of talks in the port city of Jeddah between the army and the RSF was “a declaration of commitment to protect the civilians of Sudan” rather than a halt to the fighting.
A US State Department official said the declaration would “guide the conduct of the two forces so that we can get in humanitarian assistance, help begin the restoration of essential services like electricity and water, to arrange for the withdrawal of security forces from hospitals and clinics, and to perform the respectful burial of the dead.”
The World Health Organisation (WHO) last week put the number of killed in the fighting at 604, many of them civilians. It said 51,000 had been wounded and 700,000 displaced.
The mediators hope that they can leverage the declaration to achieve agreement on a 10-day ceasefire to implement it. That in turn, officials said, could create the basis for a longer halt to the fighting.
Officials said implementation of the declaration would be monitored with overhead imagery, satellite data, social media analysis, and on the ground reporting from Sudanese civil society members.
In an indication of the multiple obstacles, the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva narrowly passed a motion tabled by the United States and Britain to increase monitoring of human rights abuses in Sudan.
Arab and African nations either opposed the motion or abstained because of Saudi and Sudanese lobbying against it…
