At least 12 countries are supplying military assistance to Sudan’s rival forces, contributing to the continued escalation of the conflict, according to Massad Boulos, US President Donald Trump’s senior adviser for Africa and Asia.
Boulos told the BBC’s Focus on Africa that foreign military support for both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces had risen sharply in recent weeks and months.
“There are probably at least 12 countries that are, in one way or the other, providing military support,” he said, describing the growing flow of weapons and other assistance as a deeply troubling development that must be stopped immediately.
Boulos declined to identify the countries involved, saying their identities were already widely known within the international community. He said Sudan’s neighbours and several other regional powers were either participating in or facilitating military operations in support of the opposing sides.
Asked whether any members of the diplomatic Quad—the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom—were among those supplying weapons, Boulos avoided naming individual states.
He instead said Washington’s three Quad partners remained directly involved in diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the fighting and advancing a political settlement.
Boulos argued that the widening scale of the war had made a nationwide arms embargo increasingly urgent. The existing United Nations embargo applies only to Darfur, despite the conflict and its supply networks extending across Sudan.
The United States has submitted a draft resolution to the UN Security Council seeking to expand the embargo to cover the entire country, he said.
The council is expected to vote in September on renewing the wider Sudan sanctions regime before it expires on September 12. The mandate of the Panel of Experts supporting the Security Council’s 1591 Sudan Sanctions Committee is due to expire on October 12.
Boulos said the Trump administration had also imposed sanctions on individuals and organisations accused of supplying weapons or facilitating the recruitment of mercenaries and foreign fighters for the conflict.
