By Benadeta Mwaura - Reporter
U.S., 9 December 2025 - The United States has tightened pressure on actors enabling Sudan’s devastating conflict, slapping sanctions on a sprawling network of companies and individuals accused of moving money, weapons and logistics to the warring parties.
Washington says the action is designed to choke off the financial lifelines that have kept the conflict burning for almost three years.
In its announcement, the U.S. Treasury Department said it was acting to disrupt “the flow of weapons into Sudan” and to hold those responsible for “their blatant disregard of civilian lives.”
The language reflects the growing frustration of international partners who say both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have repeatedly sabotaged peace efforts while civilians bear the brunt of the violence.
This new action follows Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s earlier declaration accusing the RSF and its allied militias of genocide and systematic atrocities in Darfur.
“The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys, even infants, on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls… for brutal sexual violence,” Blinken said in a previous briefing, a statement that shook the region and set the tone for deeper scrutiny of the conflict’s foreign enablers.
Washington’s latest sanctions target a network that operates across borders, using front companies and shadow intermediaries to quietly move arms and funding into Sudan.
While the U.S. has not disclosed every link publicly, it insists the group has played a direct role in prolonging the war and worsening the humanitarian crisis.
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With more than 11 million Sudanese displaced and entire cities reduced to rubble, aid groups warn that Sudan is slipping deeper into catastrophe.
Many humanitarian organisations say that any step, diplomatic or punitive, that slows the flow of weapons is welcome. But they also caution that sanctions alone cannot unlock peace.
In a separate context, export-controls expert Duncan Hay recently warned that sudden restrictions and unclear rules “offer no certainty,” adding that opaque decision-making “will keep exports and prices volatile.”
While he was speaking about Congo’s mining sector, the observation mirrors the unease around how global rules, sanctions and supply disruptions ripple into conflict zones like Sudan.
For now, the United States maintains that cutting off foreign support networks is an essential step toward nudging the rival generals back to negotiations.
But on the ground, Sudanese civilians remain caught in a war that refuses to slow, even as the world tries, once again, to force the weapons to fall silent.
