Washington’s Visa Block on Sudan’s Military Chief Spotlights Forgotten Conflict and Regional Rivalries

UNITED NATIONS — Sudan’s military chief has openly rejected a U.S.-backed ceasefire initiative following Washington’s decision to deny his visa for the U.N. General Assembly, revealing deepening divisions over a conflict that ranks among the world’s most severe humanitarian crises while simultaneously serving as a regional battleground for influence extending to the Red Sea.

Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, commander of Sudan’s armed forces and de facto leader, had been scheduled to attend the U.N. General Assembly in New York before the Trump administration revoked his visa amid disagreements over a proposed 90-day humanitarian ceasefire. Subsequently, Burhan adopted a defiant stance from Khartoum.

“We will keep our heads high. We will not accept bargaining, sell ourselves cheaply to anyone or bow to anyone,” Burhan stated Saturday, according to Anadolu Agency. “We do not require a visa from any country or anyone’s permission.”

Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan gestures to soldiers inside the presidential palace after the Sudanese army said it had taken control of the building, in the capital Khartoum, Sudan March 26, 2025. (Sudan Transitional Sovereignty Council/Handout via Reuters)

The State Department has accused both Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of failing to make serious commitments to an immediate truce.

“Neither the Sudanese Armed Forces, the Rapid Support Forces, nor their respective leaders, represent legitimate, constitutional governance for Sudan,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott stated on Sept. 22, adding that the conduct of both leaders renders them “ineligible to govern the country.”

The State Department reported that both sides had instead intensified combat operations and drone strikes resulting in civilian casualties, while Washington had repeatedly urged them to accept a humanitarian truce “without preconditions” and commit to an inclusive political dialogue leading to civilian governance.

However, a senior advisor to Burhan disputed Washington’s account during an on-camera interview with Fox News Digital on the sidelines of the UNGA.

Sudanese army soldiers take part in a military parade as part of religious commemorations by Muslim devotees of the birthday of Islam’s Prophet Mohamed in Sudan’s capital Khartoum on Aug. 23, 2025 (Ebrahim Hamid AFP via Getty Images)

Dr. Amjad Farid Al-Tayyib, foreign affairs advisor to Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council, stated that Sudan never rejected the American ceasefire proposal but instead submitted technical comments on it.

“We never rejected this proposal,” Farid stated. “The Sudanese government wants war with no one.”

Farid noted that a negotiating team had intended to accompany Burhan and accused Washington of undermining the diplomatic process it sought to advance by preventing the delegation from traveling.

The State Department declined to comment on Burhan’s specific visa case, citing its policy of not discussing individual visa decisions. A spokesperson told Fox News Digital on background that Washington is instead focused on a broader diplomatic framework with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE through the Quad, linking a humanitarian truce and sustained aid access to a permanent ceasefire, civilian transition and reconstruction.

“We are working with our partners to encourage the parties to agree to the humanitarian truce and guarantee humanitarian access, and to also ensure external military or financial support to the warring parties is cut off,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that the Quad supports the Quintet-led civilian political track and rejects parallel diplomatic processes that could fragment negotiations.

The United Nations also challenged Washington over the visa decision. “We immediately raised with U.S. authorities the issue regarding the denial of a visa to the President of the Transitional Sovereign Council of Sudan, who was scheduled to address the General Assembly this week,” U.N. Secretary-General spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told Fox News Digital.

Cameron Hudson, a former director for African affairs on the National Security Council who also served as chief of staff to successive U.S. presidential special envoys for Sudan, said his understanding was that Washington had asked the Sudanese to send a delegation both to the U.N. and to Washington for ceasefire talks.

He stated that the Sudanese were preparing to do so before Washington, in his understanding, made Burhan’s visa contingent on signing the ceasefire agreement prior to travel.

“It doesn’t fully make sense why the United States took this decision at the last minute,” Hudson told Fox News Digital.

Armed men salute the governor of Sudan’s Red Sea State Mustafa Mahmud in Port Sudan in the war-torn country on July 24, 2024. Sudan has been gripped by war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the RSF led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo. The conflict in the country of 48 million has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. (AFP via Getty Images)

Farid stated that the central dispute concerns whether the RSF would be required to withdraw from civilian areas it controls. He argued that freezing current lines of control risks transforming a temporary ceasefire into a de facto partition of Sudan.

The dispute occurs against the backdrop of a brutal civil war that erupted in April 2023 following a power struggle between Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti.

Both sides have been accused of serious violations, but Hudson told Fox News Digital that treating their records as interchangeable obscures an important distinction.

“The RSF is committing war crimes on a scale and with an intention that the army does not,” Hudson said.

Hudson stated that the SAF has struck civilian targets and committed war crimes, including through drone attacks, but said the RSF’s record goes significantly further.

“They have committed mass rape, mass killing, torture, sexual enslavement,” Hudson said, arguing that Western descriptions of “both sides” can create the impression that the two forces are committing the same crimes “on the same scale or with the same intention.”

U.N. investigators have also drawn distinctions while documenting abuses by both forces.

Members of Sudanese Armed Popular Resistance Force take part in a military parade for fresh graduates, in Al-Qadarif state, in eastern Sudan on May 20, 2026. (AFP via Getty Images)

A U.N. fact-finding mission reported in September 2025 that both SAF and RSF were responsible for direct, large-scale attacks against civilians and the destruction of critical civilian infrastructure. However, it found that the RSF, particularly during its siege of El Fasher and surrounding areas, committed crimes against humanity including murder, torture, enslavement, rape, sexual slavery, forced displacement and persecution on ethnic, gender and political grounds.

A separate U.N. Human Rights Office report released in February documented more than 6,000 killings during the first three days of the RSF’s final offensive on El Fasher and found that the violations could amount to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.

Farid nevertheless accused the U.N. and Western governments of creating what he termed a ‘false equivalence’ between Sudan’s military and the RSF.

U.N. Secretary-General spokesman Stéphane Dujarric rejected the allegation that the organization was equating the two sides. “This is not about equating two sides,” Dujarric told Fox News Digital. “We focus on the facts, the violations that have been documented, and above all, the devastating toll this war has taken on civilians since 15 April 2023.”

Dujarric said both the RSF and SAF have used explosive weapons in densely populated areas and that the U.N. Human Rights Office has documented attacks affecting schools, hospitals, markets and religious sites.

He pointed specifically to what he described as “particularly grave violations” by the RSF and affiliated forces in Darfur, including mass killings, sexual violence, torture, abductions and forced displacement, while noting that serious abuses have also been documented in SAF-controlled areas, including arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment and summary executions.

The war, meanwhile, increasingly extends beyond Sudan’s borders.

Foreign backing has become a central feature of the conflict. A July 2026 UK government assessment, drawing on U.N. and other reporting, said the RSF had benefited from support networks involving the UAE and neighboring countries, while the SAF had received backing from states including Egypt, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. The UAE has repeatedly denied providing military support to the RSF.

Fox News Digital reached out to the UAE Embassy in Washington and the UAE mission to the U.N. but did not receive a response in time for publication.

A Sudanese refugee father from Al-Fashir rides on a motorized cart with his family travelling between Chad and Sudan amid the ongoing conflict between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese army, at the Tine border post in eastern Chad, November 22, 2025. (Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)

Hudson said the RSF’s foreign relationships are only part of a much larger regional competition.

He stated that Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Qatar have supported the army to varying degrees, while outside powers pursue their own strategic interests in Sudan.

That competition increasingly centers on Sudan’s Red Sea coastline. “There is a regional battle of influence among neighboring states and regional powers who want to control Sudan’s Red Sea coastline,” Hudson said, pointing to potential military, port and economic access.

“Superimposed on top of the conflict inside Sudan is a regional proxy conflict for influence in Sudan and in the wider Horn of Africa, Red Sea region,” he said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also said foreign powers are central to prolonging the war. “What’s happening in Sudan would not be happening were it not for external actors supporting one side or the other,” Rubio told reporters during UNGA week, describing U.S. efforts to secure even limited humanitarian agreements as “very frustrating.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers remarks at the start of a ministerial meeting on political violence, at the State Department in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 16, 2026. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

Rubio said the parties have repeatedly agreed to commitments only to abandon them when one side believes it is gaining the upper hand. “There are external actors. I’m not going to single them out. You know who they are,” Rubio said. “That war and that conflict and that crisis would not be happening were it not for the active participation of external actors that are feeding one side of that conflict or another.”

He stated that meaningful progress would depend on those states pressuring their respective partners in Sudan.

“Until those external actors are prepared to use influence and pressure their respective proxies to live up to the commitments that they’re making, we’re not going to make progress,” Rubio said.

Mona Mohamed, 33, a Sudanese refugee who fled Al-Fashir, reacts during an interview with Reuters, amid ongoing conflict in Sudan between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese army, at the Iridimi refugee camp, northwest of the town of Iriba, in Wadi Fira province, eastern Chad, November 27, 2025. (Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)

Sudan’s strategic value extends beyond geography. The country possesses significant gold, agricultural and livestock resources and sits at the crossroads of Africa and the Middle East. The World Bank has described Sudan as rich in fertile land, water and minerals, while noting its substantial gold production and agricultural potential.

Sudan also controls critical infrastructure used to transport South Sudanese crude oil to the Red Sea. A World Bank assessment indicates that South Sudan’s oil has historically traveled through pipelines across Sudan to Port Sudan, its key export route.

Hudson said that broader regional competition helps explain why Washington has struggled to force Sudan’s outside backers to pull away.

“The United States is not going to use the limited political capital that it has with Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Turkey or UAE to get them to control their support to one side or the other in this conflict,” he said.

Hudson also questioned Washington’s diplomatic strategy, arguing that pressure on Burhan has not been matched by sufficient direct engagement inside Sudan.

He stated that Massad Boulos, President Donald Trump’s senior advisor for Arab and African affairs, has never traveled to Sudan while attempting to mediate the conflict.

Massad Boulos, senior advisor to President Donald Trump, speaks during an interview with the Associated Press at the United States’ embassy in Cairo, Egypt, Monday, Nov. 3, 2025. (Amr Nabil/AP Photo)

“He’s trying to mediate peace in a country that he’s never been to,” Hudson said, arguing that Washington needs more “personal diplomacy” and less reliance on public statements and social media.

“If we want these people to sign a ceasefire deal, then they have to trust us,” Hudson said. “And right now we’ve given them no reason to do so.”

Patients are pictured in one of the rooms of the Saudi hospital in Khartoum’s twin-city Omdurman on March 20, 2025 as most hospitals and schools no longer function in the Sudanese capital and its environs due to the ongoing war which broke out in April 2023. Since April 2023, the conflict has pitted army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against his former deputy and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, leaving thousands dead and uprooting more than 11 million, according to U.N. figures, with many living in makeshift camps and over 3.5 million fleeing across the country’s borders. (Ebrahim Hamid / AFP via Getty Images)

The U.N. acknowledged that international efforts have so far failed to stop the fighting. “Unfortunately, we are not seeing the war abating,” Dujarric said, reiterating the U.N. position that “there is no military solution to the conflict,” and noting Washington’s diplomatic role as the U.S. and African Union co-chaired a Sept. 23 meeting bringing together the Quad and Quintet diplomatic groupings.

“The immediate priority is to stop the killing and secure a cessation of hostilities, while creating the conditions for a credible political process,” he said.

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