By: Amin Ayman Suleiman
It is a grave strategic mistake — bordering on political blindness — to reduce the conflict in Sudan to a gunshot in 2023, a coup in 2021, or a “Framework Agreement” marketed as a path to civilian rule. These are merely deceptive facades hiding a much larger and more dangerous process: the attempt to re-engineer the Sudanese state within the framework of a broader regional project — the deeper structure of what is referred to as the “New Middle East.”
This project is based on dismantling national armies and replacing them with affiliated militias; on liquefying state structures, turning them into fragile entities with no sovereignty.
Since 2019, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has placed its hand on Sudan’s political and security decision-making — using militias, hollow civilian tools with no social base, and a directed media apparatus through which it redefines both victims and actors in ways that serve its agenda of domination.
The goal has never been political transition or a path to reconciliation. The goal has been to drain the state of its core, to break the Sudanese army — the last major sovereign institution — in preparation for replacing it with mercenary forces that have no memory, no loyalty, and are directly managed from Abu Dhabi.
This approach is neither new nor a reaction to temporary conditions; it is the foundational doctrine of the UAE’s project in the region: dismantling national armies, drying up the national state, creating a comprehensive sovereignty vacuum, and installing militias in place of central institutions — making the region pliable for reordering in line with the “New Middle East” agenda, where the Zionist entity (Israel) is granted the dominant role in regional security and political equations.
But hegemonic forces never act alone — they always require internal tools, a comprador military class. This is where the functional role of “Sumood” becomes clear: through its rhetoric, which deliberately avoids naming the UAE as a central actor in this war, and reduces the conflict to “remnants” (Islamists) and “coup plotters.”
Such rhetoric acts as a political smokescreen, shielding public consciousness and giving the regional funder and its militias more room to implement the project of dismantling the state.
What’s most dangerous today isn’t just the bullets or the battles — but the carefully crafted political narratives being pushed to redefine the nature of the conflict in line with Abu Dhabi’s interests and those of its partners. That’s why some voices are attempting to frame what’s happening as merely a “generals’ feud” or a “power struggle.”
But reality speaks clearly: the true objective is the collapse of the Sudanese national state, and its reconstruction as a subordinate entity — with no army, no sovereignty, and no ability to defend itself.
What is being implemented in Sudan is the same blueprint used in Yemen, Libya, Syria, and others:
- Control of ports,
- Dismantling of national armies,
- Funding of alternative militias,
- Engineering of a fragile political scene using money and influence,
- And the consistent presence of Israel as a strategic guarantor of this fractured order.
What’s happening today is not a power struggle. It’s not a “generals’ dispute.” It’s an existential battle between a project for a sovereign national state, and a regional project aimed at melting Sudan into a soft zone governed from Abu Dhabi and forcibly bound to a “New Middle East” where Israel holds the upper hand.
Any rhetoric that avoids this truth, beautifies the UAE’s role, or feigns neutrality that contradicts reality — is directly complicit in the machinery of domination.
In the end, the Sudanese people have no option but resistance:
- Resistance against the criminal Janjaweed militias,
- Resistance against the comprador army that fights in an imperial proxy war led by the UAE on behalf of Western powers — a war aiming to dismantle the Sudanese state, shred its social fabric, and erase it from history.
And we will keep saying it clearly:
Sudan will remain… imperial projects will perish.