Re: Turmoil in Sudan
Sudanese Echo
Sep 22
Reuters: US Withholds Burhan’s Visa Ahead of UN General Assembly as Sources Say Approval Is Tied to Acceptance of Massad Boulos’s 90-Day Ceasefire Plan
September 22, 2026
The United States is withholding an entry visa for Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council Chairman and army commander General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, just days before he is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
According to Reuters, the issuance of the visa appears to have been made conditional on Burhan agreeing to sign a 90-day ceasefire proposed by US Senior Advisor for Arab and African Affairs Massad Boulos. The report cited a Sudanese diplomatic source and a Western analyst close to American and Sudanese officials. Neither the US State Department nor Sudanese authorities had responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.
Sudan’s UN Ambassador Al-Harith Idriss Al-Harith has asked UN Secretary-General António Guterres for the organisation’s “immediate intervention” with US authorities, warning that failure to issue the visa would effectively prevent the head of a UN member state from participating in person in the General Assembly.
The UN confirmed that it had raised the matter with Washington. Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Guterres was deeply concerned that a visa had reportedly not yet been issued to the President of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council.
Cameron Hudson, a former US government official who has worked on Sudan policy at the State Department and National Security Council and is now a prominent analyst of Sudan and the Horn of Africa, described the use of a visa to pressure a government into signing an agreement as virtually unprecedented. He also said countries within the Quad, and states close to it that maintain relations with the Sudanese Armed Forces, had been lobbying Washington to reverse the decision, warning that the dispute could deepen divisions within the group. Hudson’s assessment is an interpretation of the diplomatic fallout rather than an independently established account of US motives.
The visa dispute comes amid a broader deterioration in relations between Washington and Sudan’s authorities. Boulos has recently supported expanding the existing arms embargo on Darfur to cover the whole of Sudan. Reuters reported in July that his ceasefire proposal called for an immediate 90-day humanitarian truce, followed by negotiations toward a permanent ceasefire and a civilian-led political transition. Sudan’s army accepted much of the proposal but objected to provisions allowing only limited RSF withdrawals, insisting that the Rapid Support Forces withdraw from all cities they have occupied since May 2023.
Days before the visa dispute emerged, Boulos visited Abu Dhabi on September 16 and met UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed. According to the UAE Foreign Ministry, the meeting covered strategic US-UAE relations, their partnership in Africa and regional developments.
The visit carries particular sensitivity in the Sudan file because of longstanding allegations and documented reporting concerning UAE support for the Rapid Support Forces. A recent UN fact-finding mission said foreign military support, including weapons, technology, personnel and logistical assistance, had helped sustain and intensify the war, and identified networks operating through the UAE, Chad, Libya and Somalia in connection with support reaching the RSF. The UAE has repeatedly denied providing military, financial or logistical support to the militia.
After the Abu Dhabi visit, Boulos drew additional attention when he referred to Sudanese Foreign Minister Mohi El Din Salem as the “SAF-appointed Foreign Minister” following a meeting with Salem and Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty in New York. The wording was notable because it differed from the way Boulos had previously referred to Sudanese officials.
That shift in language, coming directly after his visit to Abu Dhabi, prompted some analysts and observers of Sudan to question whether Washington was moving toward greater pressure on the Sudanese government in line with UAE preferences. There is no publicly available evidence establishing that Abu Dhabi requested such steps from Boulos. However, Reuters’ subsequent report that Burhan’s visa appears to have been linked to his acceptance of Boulos’s 90-day ceasefire proposal has strengthened that interpretation among those who had already raised it.
The timing is particularly significant because the visa dispute emerged only one day after Burhan published an opinion article in Foreign Policy in which he directly addressed the question of truces and externally brokered ceasefires.
Burhan argued that Sudan does not need another temporary pause in fighting that merely stops the war for a period before hostilities resume. Instead, he called for a settlement capable of preventing the conflict from restarting once international attention moves elsewhere.
He wrote that previous ceasefires had collapsed because they were negotiated “about Sudan without Sudan,” and argued that pauses in fighting had allowed the Rapid Support Forces and their backers to regroup while international attention drifted away.
“Peace must therefore be homemade, by Sudanese, for Sudanese, in Sudan,” Burhan wrote.
He did not reject international involvement. Burhan said international partnership and credible monitoring could help restrain the parties and give a peace agreement legitimacy. But he argued that a ceasefire should not simply freeze the battlefield or create another temporary pause that allows forces to reorganise. In his view, it must be part of a broader settlement addressing the conditions that allow the war to continue.
Burhan also called for fighters and weapons to be removed from civilian areas under UN supervision, for the financing and supply networks enabling the Rapid Support Forces to continue the war to be cut, and for the political process that follows to be Sudanese-led, including the drafting of a constitution and eventual internationally monitored elections.
The visa dispute therefore comes after weeks of disagreement over a proposed nationwide arms embargo, the terms of a ceasefire and Sudan’s future political process, followed by Boulos’s visit to Abu Dhabi and a noticeable change in his language toward Sudanese officials.
It also comes immediately after Burhan publicly argued against another stand-alone truce that, in his view, could simply provide the Rapid Support Forces and their backers with time to regroup.
Reuters’ report now adds a new dimension to that confrontation: according to its sources, the visa Burhan needs to attend the UN General Assembly appears to have become linked to his acceptance of Washington’s 90-day ceasefire proposal.
#Sudan
#RSFisTerroristOrganization
#UAEKillsSudanesePeople
#UAESponsorsTerrorism
https://x.com/SudaneseEcho/status/2102434672827380059
Cameron Hudson
Sep 22
This is not quite the full story either, but we are getting there. First, it is virtually unprecedented that the US would hold a visa and a country hostage in exchange for signing any agreement. It demonstrates a number of shocking developments:
1. The US willingness to flout diplomatic protocol and precedent
2. The clear de facto decision to decide that it does not recognize the Sudan's sovereignty council or its head as at least temporarily occupying the UN seat for the country. That is a change in policy to make that choice explicit and sets it on a different path from the UN or most other nations, including African nations.
3. The US is clearly not interested in actual peace in Sudan, just the allusion of it. Its all about the headlines, nothing about the substance. How durable is any ceasefire agreement going to be if it is arrived at under duress?
4. Perhaps most importantly, Quad countries and Quad adjacent countries allied with the SAF have spent the last several days furiously lobbying US officials to reverse this ban on Burhan's visa. I am told that it is causing a potential irreparable rupture within the Quad and could prompt one or more Quad countries to withdraw from the informal alliance. While the Quad has produced virtually nothing in the last year, this would demonstrate just how far out of step the US is and how much further away Sudan is from peace as a result of the US' irresponsible gambit
https://x.com/_hudsonc/status/2102427464337109216
Sovereign Media
@sov_media
·
3h
The US is withholding an entry visa for Sudan's leader Abdulfattah Al-Burhan ahead of his scheduled appearance at the UN General Assembly in New York.
According to Reuters, the visa is contingent upon an agreement to sign a ceasefire proposed by the US' senior advisor for Arab and African Affairs, Massad Boulos.
"It is virtually unprecedented that the US would hold a visa and a country hostage in exchange for signing any agreement," said analyst Cameron Hudson, a former chief of staff to US special envoys to Sudan.
In a Foreign Policy article published a day earlier, Al-Burhan highlighted "more than a dozen failed ceasefires" which he said collapsed because they were written without Sudanese input, adding that they enabled the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia to regroup.
In late 2025, the RSF perpetrated massacres in North Darfur state capital Al-Fashir that the UN described as "g*nocidal".
The impasse comes amid escalating tensions with Boulos, who Sudan has previously accused of being biased towards the RSF's Emirati backers.
During a UN Security Council (UNSC) session on Sudan last month, the US' Sudan envoy pushed for a nationwide arms embargo.
Analysts warned that this would disproportionately impact Sudan's army, which relies on legal state defence agreements. In contrast, the UAE's illicit supply of weapons for the RSF would continue in breach of the UN's pre-existing Darfur arms embargo that failed to stop RSF mas*acres.
Despite US lobbying, the UAE failed to convince the UNSC to adopt the proposal.
Since then, Boulos has said that the US does not recognise the Sudanese government.
Under the agreement for the US to host UN headquarters, it is not supposed to deny visas, although it has denied entry to the head of the P*lestinian Authority for the last two years.
The UN said it is "deeply concerned that a visa has reportedly not yet been issued to the President of the Transitional Sovereign Council of the Sudan," and raised the matter with US authorities.
However, according to Hudson, "the US is clearly not interested in actual peace in Sudan."
https://x.com/sov_media/status/2102784019108593892
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