War in Sudan: A Conversation With U.S. Special Envoy Tom Perriello

Special Envoy Tom Perriello discusses the ongoing civil war in Sudan, the resulting humanitarian crisis, and the Biden administration’s designation of genocide by the Rapid Support Forces.

BRIGETY: Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, good afternoon. Happy—it’s great to see everybody on this cool January day. Some of you may know I just recently returned from South Africa, and within forty-eight hours I was shoveling snow here in the DMV. So no longer in Africa anymore. 

My name is Ruben Brigety. I am the president of Busara Advisors and the recent past U.S. ambassador to the Republic of South Africa. Is my honor to welcome you all today to today’s CFR meeting, “War in Sudan: A Conversation with U.S. Special Envoy Tom Perriello.” We are joined by members here in Washington, D.C. You have been reminded on today’s standard CFR protocols.  

And let me just say how honored I am to be here next to one of America’s great public servants, Special Envoy Tom Perriello. You have his bio in front of you. And as we approach the end of the Biden administration, it is a wonderful opportunity for all of us to gain his insights on what is the world’s most tragic humanitarian conflict, that has been spawned by one of the world’s most horrible wars, starting on April 15, 2023, in Khartoum. As most of us know, the war in Sudan has killed at least 15,000 people, some eleven million people displaced, with some twenty-five million people in need of lifesaving humanitarian assistance, with famine being declared in five of Sudan’s districts. All of which is not simply a matter of the war itself, but more fundamentally a matter of the really challenging politics that underlie this conflict. So we’re thrilled to have Special Envoy Perriello to talk with us through it. 

PERRIELLO: Thank you for having me. 

BRIGETY: Delighted to have you here. Why don’t we start with a very broad-based overview? You became special envoy for Sudan in February 2024. And now, as we approach literally the final days of your tenure, I was wondering if you could give us your sense—beyond the headlines, beyond the facts that we all know—what is the root challenge in getting to a ceasefire and returning to peace in Sudan? 

PERRIELLO: Oh, thanks, Ambassador. Thank you, everyone, for being here.  

I think that the problem is also the opportunity, because the opportunity is that Sudan, of course, is a country of unbelievable talent, unbelievable diversity, incredible resources. You see the kind of innovation of young people who found a way to create these cash apps and mutual aid societies. You found women using both traditional and cutting-edge mechanisms to, you know, save neighbors, document abuses. And unfortunately, the core of this war—while there are many, many causes—is that there are men with guns who don’t want the people to have power. And ultimately, you know, when there was a revolution in 2019 that inspired the world, it began a transition—an imperfect transition to civilian power. And, of course, the two groups that are fighting each other to the death now were the two sides of the joined forces to make sure that power did not transition to the people.  

And ultimately, right now, that is still the solution. If either side is focused on a zero-sum game or a total victory, it is not going to happen. And ultimately, there’s a tremendous amount of consensus around Sudan. They want the war over with. They want the atrocities not only to end, but there to be accountability. And they want to have democratic control over their future. Now, there are many, obviously, more complex elements of that, with long histories, but ultimately, we do have to remember that these forces joined forces before they were fighting. I think in addition to that, now one of the complicating factors is that arguably in the early stages of the war everyone could look at it and say, we benefit more from peace than from the war. And I think that’s certainly true still for the people and for many of the actors.  

But as we reach late into the second year of this war, we have a different economy, a different war economy. There are more actors that are either benefiting politically or financially from this war continuing. And those are people that have often sufficient veto power over those, certainly inside the SAF, who would be more interested, I think, in ceasefire talks and civilian transition. That includes, you know, former NCP regime who knows that the people don’t want them back, so the war gives them a backdoor to power. That’s people profiting off of the famine and suffering of the people. And, of course, also a change in some of the external actors, including the kinds—the difference between profiting from sort of short-term gold sales that are more benefited by an unstable state and by a war than those that may be looking at capital investments down the line.  

So I do think ultimately the solution is also the challenge, which is, everybody agrees, this is about allowing a broad civilian coalition to rule and move towards elections. And there are a number of very powerful forces inside the country that are determined to not let that happen. 

BRIGETY: So you’ve given us a lot to chew on. So let’s take, for starters, if I may, the role of outside forces in not only the perpetuation of the conflict, but also potentially in the solution to peace. How do you see the most significant outside players, both on the continent, beyond the continent, and the role they’re playing in terms of their level of influence, quite frankly, over the leaders of the SAF and also the RSF? 

PERRIELLO: You know, and unfortunately it’s becoming more and more a negative story of external actors, but I think there are many countries that are trying to be helpful. A lot of my time early on was based on this idea of, given how many—how much of a deep relationship there is between the U.S., Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—who’ve not seen the conflict the same way—could we reach some unity on what gets us to peace, while having the African Union and African partners work on the civilian process and the political process in transition?  

Various reasons that was not successful, or at least not as successful as we would want. But you have seen in just the last few weeks countries like Turkey start to—or, Türkiye—start to take a larger role. Is that a positive thing because they have a lot of economic interests that benefit from stability, they have an 800-year history and want to invest? Or is that about some of the more hardline elements wanting—that have connections to Turkey to have more of a role in that process?  

So I think if I was starting this job now versus a year ago, I think the bad news would be there are a lot more external actors, which tends to complicate the negotiations. On the other hand, I think there are some external actors now that are more invested in this crisis because it is such a threat to regional stability now, that you might have a more effective coalition that could help push for that. 

BRIGETY: You know, you talked—touched on the idea of the war economy in Sudan, and how we see this in lots of other places. And how, frankly and regrettably, there are actors that are actually benefiting from the perpetuation of conflict. I recently read, just in the last week or so, a World Bank study which suggests that the war in Sudan itself has shaved something like almost two percentage points over the GDP over all of East Africa. And I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you see as potentially the economic—not only to the drivers of the conflict, but what—how might economic incentives actually be a part of the solution in getting the parties to—parties to peace? 

PERRIELLO: You’re right, Ambassador. It’s the blessing. It’s the curse. And there are different kind of concentric circles of it. I will be honest, I did not expect to work so closely with Egypt and so closely with Egypt on humanitarian access. But they were—they had a direct economic interest in seeing a decrease in refugee flows, which was having significant impacts on their economy and various parts of that and seeing a real desire to have that stability for realpolitik reasons. And we’re willing to use quite a bit of leverage, particularly on the SAF side, for some of our key breakthroughs of what was effectively a humanitarian embargo on twenty-five million people.  

That’s a—so you have each of the neighboring countries that have had those immediate spillover effects economically. In addition to that, of course, you know, Sudan is not only a major gold supplier in the world, as everyone knows it’s also a breadbasket for the region. And you have the port access and many other economic activities. So you do have a situation where I think everyone in the region feels like this right now should be a net positive. Sudan should be a net positive economically in the region, and agriculturally. And having it be in the other direction is not something people can afford.  

The problem, as is the problem in so much in life, is that rational mutual interest should lead to a clear conclusion here around that civilian transition and getting people off of their maximalist interest. There is a solution here where you can see everybody winning, if they’re not in that maximalist position. But everyone, of course, has a slightly different theory of what that—the balance of that mutual interest should be, and how quickly they should move off of this position.  

But it is—I mean, I think one of the things that I do think we’ve had some positive effect on in the last year is recruiting more countries to care, our European colleagues taking more of an interest, the United Kingdom for instance. The United Kingdom in the last six months has really increased, under the new government, its leadership on Sudan, its contributions, humanitarian contributions on Sudan, its role at the United Nations. I think I mentioned the engagement of Turkey and others.  

The place we’ve really struggled is having strong African leadership. I think the African Union has had the challenges we know. The hope is that after the elections in the African Union perhaps there’ll be some new leadership that will look at this. But it’s relatively, you know, paralyzed in its engagement there. And then, you know, you have not seen the kind of initiatives like the Museveni initiative that I thought could have been extremely additive, which was when President Museveni, as PSC chair, suggested getting five heads of state across Africa together to mediate on the conflict. Was not able to bring that to pass, for reasons we may talk about. So I do think those—that we’re seeing more diplomatic interests because of the costs. 

BRIGETY: You know, Special Envoy, someone once said to me that the art of diplomacy is getting your interlocutor to do something you want them to do because they want to do it. You are a repeat special envoy, having—maybe the only one, certainly a small club—a small club—(laughs)—having previously served as special envoy for the Great Lakes. I’m wondering if you could take a moment to reflect a little bit in the intervening time on the tools of American power for peacemaking and what you have seen over the course the last decade, since you last had this role, in terms of what we—what we are—not only in the United States, but also our partners around the world—what are we able to do well? What tools have atrophied? What new tools may be available? And how, as instruments of peacemaking, frankly as instruments of national power, how we ought to be thinking about these things?  

PERRIELLO: Thank you. First of all, maybe we’re going to have to get, like, two timer club jackets. (Laughter.) Let me think over three periods. So let’s take the period where I cut my teeth, where I lived in Sierra Leone for two years during the late period of that war and then was in Darfur not long after that. Fast forward ten years in the Great Lakes period, and then ten years to now. So it’s an incredible contrast for me to be working on Sudan compared to that twenty-plus years ago in terms of the tools we had. If you think about that in Sierra Leone as well.  

In Sierra Leone, the Brits were willing to put boots on the ground. You had a U.N. peacekeeping force. Now, the heroes were the Sudanese women—sorry—Sierra Leonean women who were able to face down these horrible armed groups. And they were willing to come to a peace deal that didn’t sacrifice justice for peace. And it’s such a great case study still. And I really appreciate the role Sierra Leone is playing in the Security Council in trying to bring that back. But you had boots on the ground, and you had these things. In Darfur we talked about the tools of naming and shaming, this tremendous global activism, and U.S.-based activism. You had the issue of Chapter Seven authority on the table in the African Union, and other things.  

You come forward to today, and most of those tools are either off the table completely or seriously diluted. Right now most of the things that we would have wanted from the U.N. or AU twenty years ago are nonstarters—a responsibility to protect, even the monitoring unit that came out of the ALPS negotiations in August that the African Union said they wanted to lead on they then pulled the plug on before UNGA, didn’t want to pursue that interest. I think in addition, you know, twenty years ago, and even ten years ago, the U.S. was kind of the major bank for the world, and so upsetting the United States had serious economic implications.  

I think that’s much weaker in a world where people can go to other countries and get billion dollar checks without having any conversations about human rights and democracy. And even naming and shaming, you think about how the genocide declaration fell last week, which we’re, you know, proud we got through, versus twenty years ago. You know, in a world of social media and propaganda and misinformation and, you know, where we are today, it’s not quite the same power as well. And the idea of U.S. or British boots on the ground is a nonstarter, for some pretty good reasons.  

So I think when we look at this, if sanctions are the only tool we have, and I believe sanctions can be a very effective tool, that is not a big enough tool set to be addressing the things that we’re addressing. I also think there are ways in which just the basic functioning of the national security infrastructure in the United States has become completely dysfunctional and paralyzed in our ability to do the things that we need to do nimbly and with agility. So—I think, you know, if you compare the number of actors and the rest.  

Now, the other thing which is both bad and good that we talked about a bit earlier is I think twenty years ago and ten years ago—like, twenty years ago if you had told me that, you know, Ramaphosa was going to be president of South Africa, and he was going to greet the head of the RSF, formerly Janjaweed, as an almost head of state, I would have been shocked. And if you had said, in addition to that there wouldn’t have been that much of an outcry from South African civil society, you would have been shocked. And I am still shocked by that. (Laughs.)  

But I think the question is, so what’s changed there? So part is that governments have been more focused at home, whether that’s in Kenya, South Africa. They’ve had some domestic issues, as we have. In addition to that, I think these countries want to be seen as economic powerhouses of the future, not necessarily the moral police. And so that not only is a difference of priorities but may change the way they engage with certain key actors, whether that’s China, the Gulf, or elsewhere.  

So I think we also have not seen that kind of civil society activism on the continent as well. So I do think we need a reimagining of tools on this. I think the other, you know, truth is—and it’s a tough truth, and I’ve had a lot of these tough conversations with Sudanese civilians—is, like, you know, the cavalry is not coming, in general. And I think we need to probably—it’s not fair to say to the people that are the most victims and the most traumatized of this, but I think the stories we’ve told ourselves of how often the international community can come in and save the day probably give people an unfair expectation of things.  

I take that, for example, in the current political dialog, where it’s been very frustrating that we have not seen the African Union process move more quickly or been able to bring the various strands together. The reality is that the Sudanese know their country better and know that path better. And so as long as we—we’re doing the worst of both worlds, which usually signal that we’re going to run a process. So people—the Sudanese, are like, OK, I guess we need to wait for the process. But then we don’t actually make it a reality. So I think there’s going to be—and I think this is what I’m going to do after I sleep a little bit—is really think, we don’t have the right tool set. We live in a very different world. And how do we reimagine that?  

BRIGETY: So I have just two last questions before we turn to our esteemed audience for questions. The first is, so having opined eloquently on the nature of our toolkit, I wonder if we can come back to the—one of the original questions, one of the original premises. And as you are in your last several days, could you think through or articulate for our colleagues what specifically are the levers, having spent time with these people, having spent time in South Africa—in Sudan, how—what are the exact levers, psychologically and otherwise, to move Burhan and move Hemedti to a deal? 

PERRIELLO: So I think that they’re two very different individuals, different personalities, and they work in different structures. I would say that—I’m going to go—take a step back first to your point about the art of diplomacy. And I think the engagement of the ALPS table that we created is a good model of this, because Burhan did not feel like it was in his incentive to go to talks. And I think there are variety of reasons for that. He doesn’t like being in a negotiating environment. He’s not very comfortable with it. He doesn’t like to be across the table from Hemedti. He is going to get accused by his hardliners with whatever that he does. So we were basically trying to reimagine how you do diplomatic engagement to remove this veto over being able to go to the talks.  

So the parties in Sudan for a long time have postured a lot about do you get invited, not invited, what’s the title on the invitation. Who cares? It’s 2025. Like, we—what we did was we just brought together the people that could get them on the phone. And we did most of it this way. And then people could shuttle back and forth. So I think what you want to do in part is remove some of that veto power that they have. And we’ve met as ALPS every week since. And every week we’ve gotten more humanitarian access. We’ve gotten breakthroughs on these things. We don’t do a lot of highlighting of it, but, again, a humanitarian embargo on twenty-five million people, and you move forward. 

Now, part of that, again, was going with, say, the Egyptians or others and saying, hey, it’s in your interest. We convince you that our agenda is in the interest. And making humanitarian access was a big priority. And I think, you know, for, say, Egypt, because it’s a neighboring country, it was a more immediate economic issue. For others it may be, you know, perception of trying to make contributions in a positive way. I will also say, and this comes back to our tool kit, that, you know, we never should have been having to negotiate those things.  

I think it was a mistake for the United Nations, a tragic one, for the Office of the Legal Adviser to validate very conservative, meaning risk conservative, definition of sovereignty that handed not just SAF, but actually the worst hardliners inside SAF, the ability to use starvation as a weapon of war. And that meant there was a whole set of things to do that could have been solved very differently. So let’s not hand people powers, or let’s reimagine how we think about what powers they should have.  

That being said, right now, I mean, I think that Hemedti and the Dagalo family has cared a lot about their legitimacy and their perceived legitimacy. They are people who have long been seen as, you know, in their mind, not allowed in the country club of the Riverine era, you know, set inside—associated, of course, with the horrific atrocities of the Janjaweed and the rest. They become multi-billion dollar international, you know, businesspeople, and want to be seen as, you know, kind of like the Corleones, you know, someday I’ll be Senator Corleone, President Corleone. So I think this is a place we’ve been very successful.  

If you look at a year ago, the RSF was probably at its peak of perceived legitimacy. It had dominated on the battlefield and it started to establish a momentum where there was some move to start saying, hey, maybe we need to recognize these guys. He gets his tour, being greeted almost like a head of state in the area. And if you move that forward a year later, we moved the sanctions up into the family, across the brothers, up to Hemedti, designated this as genocide, started to go after some of the procurement companies. And I think one thing that should never be negotiable in this is any legitimacy and ruling legitimacy of the RSF. And I think that’s been appreciated by Sudan.  

Now, you know, that’s a negative incentive. So the question is, what is the positive incentive? On the SAF side, you know, it’s more complicated. Ironically, you know, the militia group has a clearer command structure than the military side. And so on the RSF side, you really can look at—and they have, you know, a more concentrated set of external supporters. On the SAF side, and particularly if you spend that to think about the Port Sudan government as a coalition, however you want to refer to it, you’re looking at dozens of different factions and actors, and a much larger number of external supporters with, say, less intensity of support.  

So I think there’s a question of whether you can affect those external backers, whether you can affect the coalition dynamics internally. I think we’ve seen over the first six months of last year the hardliners really take almost complete control of SAF, and the SAF governing coalition. And over the last six months you’ve seen some of the more kind of moderate elements, however one defines that, getting a little bit more, and some of the more extremist elements being pushed to the side. But that’s a project that I think will continue with the next team.  

BRIGETY: Speaking of the next team, my last question. As of 12:01 p.m. Eastern standard time on Monday, January 20 there will be a new administration in the White House that will set new policy on a wide variety of matters. What would you advise them on Sudan? And what would you say you’re leaving them with in order to execute on your advice?  

PERRIELLO: So, it’s interesting, we we’re going back in a time machine to the kind of Sierra Leone, Darfur days. One thing that feels like a time machine about Sudan is that you still have this strong bipartisan consensus on Sudan. And I can’t say enough about how much Congress has been a crucial part of our strategy in Sudan, and frankly pushing us to be even stronger. The new chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Risch, of course, has been a huge advocate for the Sudanese people.  

The returning—or, chair of the subcommittee, HFAC on Africa, a tremendous amount of experience, backed by Meeks, obviously always being there, and younger rising stars like Sara Jacobs. So that attention from the Hill all year has been, I think, something very much noticed by the Sudanese people, both on the sort of tough side and the desire to hold up and elevate Sudanese civilians. And I think it’s something that’s given people in Sudan comfort during this transition period, that there will be that. In addition—and I really, again, appreciate it. It came up, I think, in the hearings yesterday. I haven’t had time to hear it—to listen. But we are very hopeful about that.  

Similarly, while I can’t speak for the new administration, there have been certainly positive indications about interest in sub-Saharan Africa and interest in Sudan. I would say, on a personal note—(laughs)—that one of my goals when I took this job was, and I’ll be honest. When I took this job I begged, like, ten people to take it. (Laughs.) I just started my first-ever sabbatical at Stanford, and was not really looking to disrupt that. And it was a tough job to convince people to take. And my goal, if I couldn’t solve everything—which we certainly did not do—was to at least create the building blocks for this to be a job someone could look at and say, wow, this is awesome.  

And I think it is, because it’s always better to come in, you know, to the first year of an administration than the fourth year of an administration. There was legislation passed last year that does strengthen the office and elevate the office. But more significantly I think, with the number of external players on the field that could benefit from a peace deal, I think the civilian processes, while a hot mess, are actually—if you look at them you can see how the pieces come together. And the sheer necessity that if this war is not over within the next six months or so, it will move towards a failed state or split state.  

And I think, you know, President Trump likes to think of himself very much as a closer, there are dynamics related to the Abraham Accords, and the Gulf, and other things. You could—you could imagine a reason to want to put some muscle on the table to take, as you said, something that’s a 2 to 3 percent negative GDP impact for the entire region into a net positive, is a good story. So I think it’s going to take probably someone, whether it’s the AF person, or an envoy, or whatever I’ll leave to the new team. But if there’s someone working this twenty-four/seven, I believe that pieces are there that weren’t there—or, you know, fewer were there a year ago.  

And with leverage, you could bring early in administration—I think there’s a real opportunity. And hopefully that, we’ll see how things go, we’ve kind of tried to move the humanitarian access piece out of the diplomatic lane with. That really shouldn’t belong there. We got pulled into it because of, you know, the necessity of the famine. So I also hope, because now we’ve got the kind of muscle memory of that week to week negotiations, that the person could come in and be in a position to do that. So that’s the hope.  

That being said, you know, I do think another place we have succeeded, but only succeeded relative to a very low bar, is drawing more attention to Sudan. And it does still just continue to confound me that a crisis of this size, and just of this scale, and of this kind of threat to the region, still trying to get people to care, to understand, to engage. It’s a challenge, but we have far more congressional champions now than we did before. We’re seeing some more activism around it. We’re seeing more aligned and likeminded countries engaged. So I really do hope that someone extremely excited comes in and tries to see this thing through. 

BRIGETY: Great. Well, thank you.  

So let’s go to our colleagues in the audience for questions. I will ask that you raise your hand. I’ll call on you. I would ask that you ask a question, rather than a statement. If you have difficulty turning your statement into a question, I’ll be more than happy to assist you in that regard. (Laughter.) And also please state your name and affiliation. Colleagues will bring your microphone. Yes, ma’am, please.  

Q: Hi. Kate with Amnesty International. 

Two questions. I don’t know if you’ll answer the first one or not, since I don’t think you publicly announced today. But Reuters and others are reporting that you will sanction Burhan today, with the justification partially being the use of chemical weapons. So a question of why now? Amnesty in 2016 documented SAF use of chemical weapons on civilians in Darfur, and there was no State Department reaction then. So, why now? And if you’re able to say what chemical weapons were being used, appreciate that. And then the other one. You mentioned, in terms of U.S. influence, there’s less U.S. banking now than there was before. So there’s ability to have your money in different places. Yet, the U.S. lifted the gray listing on the UAE. So what is—you know, we’ve seen sanctions and whatnot, but what other steps are you addressing to actually make those sanctions be effective? 

PERRIELLO: Thanks. So I’m not going to comment on the first question. I will say, you know, we are remaining active right up until noon on Monday and continuing to work with the Hill and others on continuity of that action. We’ve obviously been both—been willing to call out war crimes on the SAF side and aligned militias, both with previous sanctions and with, you know, public condemnations and private pressure. And that has certainly been part as well of the ALPS process. We’ve had more success on the humanitarian access side than protection of civilians, but as you may know we convened a working group in December to try to figure out how do we take some of the successes, modest but persistent for six months, on humanitarian access into some of the protection of civilian space.  

We were both horrified by the recent videos coming out of Wad Madani. We did recognize that SAF did what you would want a military to do, in calling out the atrocity and demanding steps to accountability. We’ll see whether that happens. And I know both Republicans and Democrats on the Hill are looking at that. So, you know, I think we’ve clearly tried to—not just try to, but I think we have actively been holding both sides to account. And I will just recognize that your work on this has been extremely thorough, diligent, and appreciated in many circles, not just in the U.S.  

On the second question, I mean, I think it comes back to some of what we’ve talked about. I think there are questions about tools inside the government. And, you know, we know what some of those are. You know probably better than anyone. I think there are also questions of tools outside of government. Where can consumer pressure and global consumer pressure matter? We’ve seen that work in some cases, you know, more than in others, and narratives and the rest. I think that we have not been able to see the sort of mass movement engagement on this.  

And I think generationally, as someone who has ten nieces and nephews below the age of twenty-five, that, you know, what sort of the anti-atrocity never again feeling was to us is more of kind of the anti-imperialism, anti-structural racism for the younger generation today. And that has not tended to translate into a lot of activism around the use of U.S. power to do good work. And, as you have tried to do more than others, somehow finding a way—and this may be something I try to work on, even though I’m definitely not of that demographic anymore—of, you know, how do we build a truly global movement on what I would have considered, you know, justice or accountability. And it will have to be the terms that are, you know, emergent and authentic. And how does that translate into power for some of those external actors as we move? And—yeah, I think that’s good for now.  

BRIGETY: Thank you. Yes, ma’am, please.  

Q: Thanks. Ellen Laipson, George Mason University.  

I wonder if you could say a little bit more about the geography of the war. It’s a big country. Are there parts of the country that are not directly affected? What are the—what’s sort of the military story these days? And is South Sudan completely insulated from this war? Are they—is it not relevant to them? But does it also lead to some neglect of South Sudan, which is not, in itself, a stable country? Thanks.  

PERRIELLO: So, to the second point, I don’t think it’s led to neglect on South Sudan. I think South Sudan, I’ll let others speak to. To the extent that there continue to be tragic conditions in South Sudan, it’s not from a lack of effort, I think, generally, by the U.S. government and others. But I’ll leave others to talk about it. Certainly, they’re affected. And they are involved in this, in the sense that—refugee flows alone. At this point we need to get the border crossing open, which is, you know, with South Sudan; it’s one of the top priorities for World Food Programme. You have the oil pipeline issue of passage through, and the shutting down of the main revenue stream into South Sudan. You have ethnic, you know, group overlaps. So there’s an enormous amount. And there are people to your right and other where in the room who can probably speak to that in even more detail.  

The geographic range of the war is right. I mean, I think there are times where people will talk about it as not being one civil war but multiple wars. I think that, you know, the fighting that’s been in Darfur and around Al Fashir, it’s both been different tactically. It’s also largely done by the joint forces, you know, with some support from SAF, making it a different, you know, fighting force. A year ago when the Islamists and the NCP were really coming back in, in full force to SAF, you started to see some of these more Islamist brigades. So there’s been a question of who’s answering to what. The Kordofans have their own dynamic. So I think that—and that includes some, increasingly limited, basically down to, you know, a couple of areas that have stayed semi neutral. And that’s been very important for areas of protection of civilian, but even in the last forty-eight hours we’ve seen some fighting there of people getting pulled in.  

So, you know, I think it’s—one of the issues, I think, for the RSF was clearly that it was a priority if they could either get Al Fashir, if they could get to the Ethiopian border, if they could solidify Khartoum, all of those, I think, in their mind are things that would make it easier for them to announce some sort of government, whether that’s of a partitioned state or of the whole country. Again, I think a place we’ve been successful is we were able to deter that announcement for a long time, and with a number of tools we have used privately, as well as the designation, you know, we’ve kind of got—their A list is not interested anymore, B list, and their C list. And so then there’s a certain point at which, you know, their ability to threaten that is real.  

But one of the other factors, to your point about safe areas, that’s been really depressing, and I hope the next person will just be smarter and better, or others will come up with solutions, is, you know, normally it’s easier to be able to kind of declare large parts of a country non-conflict zones, and allow things like school exams and, you know, medical care, and the rest. I think here, you know, the RSF has ruled with such complete brutal authority in its areas, and then the SAF has put so much stake on the idea of not wanting to recognize any territory as RSF territory and therefore allow the kind of international humanitarian hubs or other things. They’ll sometimes cite the Operation Lifeline Sudan efforts as a precedent, but it really amounts to being willing to starve people in those areas from any sort of food or government services, rather than allow anything to look governed or governable, or any map that ever delineates an areas being RSF you know, controlled or affiliated. 

And it’s just a brutal tactic. And it’s one we’ve had to chip away at, again, with the negotiations that we’ve done. I do think at the end of the day, you know, the solutions aren’t that complicated, because Sudan’s been having these conversations for decades. Are we one Sudan? What is that Sudanese identity? And if you believe that Sudanese identity stretches across Masalit, and Fur, and Zaghawa, and Riverine, Rizeigat, and everything else, then you see this is a national country that needs to be united in one way, whether or not that has, you know, significant federalist powers as well. So the regional dynamics, I think, are very real. 

BRIGETY: Thank you. Yes, sir, Sam. 

Q: Hi. Sam Worthington, retired. Formally of InterAction and the NGO sector, the humanitarian NGOs. 

The whole Save Darfur and the movement against that genocide happened after two million people had died. So sort of after this enormous horror had happened. Do we need to wait for a similar period of level of human death and horror before we could act on this? Because the word “famine” used to mean something, genocide meant something, but the sort of impunity in war and famine as a tool of war has become now widely accepted. And yet, we have not seen those full consequences. Are those consequences possible? And is my fear real? 

BRIGETY: Can I just, if I may, take the prerogative of the chair to add on to Sam’s question? It goes back to what you were saying before, about the nature of the tools. So Sam’s observation that famine used to mean something, genocide used to mean something, used to shock the conscience in a way that somehow it appears to do less so now, how does one think about the scale, the true scale of these humanitarian crises as means to alter the political will, of both the parties of the conflict and outside in order to actually try to drive towards peace? 

PERRIELLO: You know, I think this is a really long and really important conversation that I won’t do justice to. But I think that, you know, we do need to peel back some of the layers the onion on this. One I do think is that we are now in an era of disinformation and misinformation that has numbed us, and just saturated information. So we all see shocking images all the time. We don’t know if they’re real or they’re fake. You don’t know how to—you know, and the second one thing is out the other side can put out memes and the rest. So that ability to have something where, like the New York Times breaks the story and every news outlet runs it that night, and everybody is seeing this as a breakthrough moment, is not there.  

And I think I was in a very sad conversation at the U.N., which is not uncommon—(laughter)—where I think it was the number two at OCHA, or somebody in the system who was retiring. And he was just saying that he thought that the dominant—one of his dominant observations in the last five years is the number of things that used to just be unacceptable that have become, you know, acceptable or negotiable has changed. So there was—if you think about, in some ways, the project—the 1945 project, right, of the Greatest Generation, building on laws of war and chivalry and everything else, there was a way that we were saying, hey guys, we’re going to—we’re going to agree that even in wartime there’s certain stuff you just don’t do. And then that, despite, you know, often in hypocrisy or often respected in the breach, through that era of Cold War there was at least some attempt to try to respect and perhaps even expand on that set of norms.  

And then I think what we all go back to is the halcyon days post-Cold War, where we said, oh, now we’re going to finally mean it, and we’re going to finally not be constrained by that other, you know, axis. And we’re going to start to do this thing. And a number of things have happened. You know, I have some theories on it. But the extent to which we started to go in exactly the opposite direction. Torture suddenly became—you know, you have Abu Ghraib moments. You have different things where it’s, like, you know, the human rights and democracy language starts to get associated with, you know, with neo-imperialism, and other things. But what we end up with is the ability to say, guys, can’t we just agree that everybody gets access to food and medicine? That that should be non-negotiable?  

I do think, though, at the end of the day, you know, some of this—if we’ve lost the ability for shame to matter, then you need coercive force. And for most of us, that means the law, and some enforceable bit of the law, unless you’re, like, a vigilante person. So, you know, what does that look like? Is the ICC having a second moment? Could we go back to hybrid tribunals, like Sierra Leone model? Are there ways to think about, you know, other mechanisms in getting back to the universal norms? So, again, a much longer conversation. That’s—another form of that would be, you know, global brand pressure. Let’s just say that—you know, but that only works in certain situations, right? Like Berhan is not very financially exposed globally. But if he was someone who had lots of, you know, business interests, then you—if you can, you know, associate him with enough of these negative things, that has implications.  

So it is something where I think we need a bigger rethink on it. And understanding that we are—we’re not going back to the world we had. It’s not about sort of, like, you know, getting back there. It’s going to be something very new. And that’s where I get hopeful is, you know, when I think about what worked with the revolution in Sudan, and what made these amazing emergency response rooms work, right? It was mostly digital scale technology. And here, you know, I think if you take the civilian side, like, what we all know is, you know, you need an inclusive process, you need a deliberative process. But the old model, like, you know, it takes you three months to do a conference in Addis, and everyone’s got visas, and you spend $2 million.  

And you get there and before people have even walked into the first conference room, they’ve all been canceled online. Oh, they took money from them. They took money from them. It can all be false. But that idea was, oh, what’s going to emerge from there is going to be really powerful because it’s going to be this deep deliberation. It doesn’t work anymore. But scaled stuff, where you can get, you know, tens of thousands of people engaged, you have effect. We saw this several times. I mean, incredible cultural creatives with the Sudanese activists, right? And you can see when the meme hits. And both Hemedti and Burhan are responsive. When they know that they’re losing to a viral meme, like, it’s surprising how responsive it is. Unfortunately, I think both sides are also quite good at their own memes and being able to react on that. So it’s going to be a different set of tactics.  

BRIGETY: Please, yes. Tony, please. 

Q: Welcome back, Ambassador. Good to see you back in Washington. And, Tom, thank you for your service. I’m Tony Carroll. I’m a nonresident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment.  

I’d like to drill down a little bit more about one of those outside actors, which is the UAE. I think you would probably know the timing better than me, but in advance to the genocide declaration they made an indication or statement saying that they’re no longer going to provide arms to the RSF. Not sure whether that’s been validated in fact, but I’ve seen statements to that effect. What leverage points do we have to try to get the UAE to be more cooperative in reaching some sort of resolution, if that’s possible? And what are the motivations for them resisting that?  

PERRIELLO: So I think this is something where it will be very interesting to watch the new administration on how they want to engage with the range of neighbors, the range of Gulf actors, including the UAE, both in terms of what they’re setting out aspirationally as the goal and what they’re setting out as, you know, positive and negative coercive tools. I think that the—you know, going back to something I said earlier, I think if you have this issue where everybody can see their mutual interest in a stable Sudan, and even a Sudan with a civilian unity government, and come off a maximalist position, I think you can get to that outcome. I think that we have seen over the last year, not just the engagement of the Biden administration but also of the Hill with a more active voice, including citing a number of countries.  

I do think there’s also this issue of—which I talked about before—of, you know, short termism versus long termism. I think even among Sudanese who are extremely critical of the UAE, there is some sense of them potentially being a long-term economic partner. I think people draw a distinction between that and, say, Russia, that seems to want to benefit from a weak Sudan, and other countries that benefit from weak Sudan. So I think that there are ways to talk about the future and work backwards of where there’s common ground on that future, to work backwards. So, you know, I think we’ll come to an end here, but it’ll be, I think, something that people are really looking at with that country, and more generally for the next term. 

Q: Thank you so much for being here and for your service. I’m Kele Zvobgo. I’m a professor at William and Mary and visiting at Brookings this year.  

I was struck by one of your comments that the cavalry is not coming. And that’s a point very well taken. And it seems clear that that is the case. But I’m wondering to what extent that expectation has in part contributed to where we are today. So a lot of the conversation is often about upstream prevention. And that didn’t work, you know, in 2004, it didn’t work in 2023. And then kind of midstream action, what do we do? But on the downstream side, not having perhaps supported criminal accountability measures in a serious way for Darfur, do you think this might have led combatants now to develop an expectation that there wasn’t going to be accountability, and thus abetting the current situation? 

BRIGETY: So, moral hazard. How do we think about this?  

PERRIELLO: Yeah, no. Two parts of that, I think, that I want to address. So one is a note of hope. Which is, you know, there were a number of times—(laughs)—during the last year where I wondered why people cared so much about what the U.S. was doing, when we’re not putting certain things like boots on the ground on the table. And I will say, and I give a lot of credit to Secretary Blinken on that, he and Linda Thomas-Greenfield used every opportunity to move Sudan up the agenda. There was always this issue about, like, oh, did Gaza check it out—you know, choke it out. It was, like, we were the number two call on calls three times a week, whereas if it was a standalone call it probably would have been maybe once every couple of weeks, if we were lucky. So there’s a lot of commitment from particularly, I think, Secretary Blinken and LTG. 

And we do—there still is this role for U.S. leadership. I’m not quite sure why. (Laughs.) But we—I mean, you know, the convening power we have. Now, I think part of that in the Sudan case is, quite frankly, that we don’t have enough muscle on the table. This comes back to the Museveni initiative. Like, you know, as much as I think that I worked very hard and, you know, can build a lot of relationships, like, it’s different than having a former head of state, you know, on the field, or having two or three former heads of state on the field. So I think one is, you know, to realize even if we are not—if the cavalry is not coming, the truth is the United States has really led in Sudan, before my time and after, of the major supporter of civil society, the major supporter of women, the major supporter of youth, making sure they’re at the table.  

We’re one of the only countries that is deeply involved in Sudan who is primarily motivated by standing with the Sudanese people. And I tend—(laughs)—you know, I joke about this, when I took the Great Lakes gig, President Obama said, you know, we call you for the wars no one else cares about. And then Biden made a joke about it. So it’s—you know, there is something about that. But one of the nice things is it tends to be a place that we don’t have countervailing hard power interests, and therefore we are most forward-leaning on our democracy and human rights values. Plus we have this strong bipartisan consensus in Congress.  

So on the one hand I do want to say, like, the cavalry is not coming is true. But the extent to which I think the U.S. has been the most persistent partner on the humanitarian side, we’ve given more than the rest of the world combined. When we launched the ALPS talks, it was—you know, I said to Secretary Blinken, I was, like, probably less than a 30 percent chance that succeeds, 20 percent chance that it succeeds in the way that normally you would define success in diplomacy. But I think we’re going to kind of redefine diplomacy with this new model. And he was like, let’s go for it. And at that point, like, people had—basically were saying, well, yeah, it’s a famine. But, you know, what are you going to do? The parties don’t seem interested. We’re going to take August off. Maybe we’ll talk in UNGA and re-meet in October.  

And, you know, the U.S.—and I’ll give my team a lot of credit—we went and we were, like, no. We’re not going to accept that as a—we’re not going to accept paralysis in the face of famine. And so I do think one of the things we’ve got to remember is, like, you know, that cynicism in paralysis is an excuse. It’s not wisdom. You’ve got to show up. You’ve got to problem solve. And I think we can do a better job in the State Department of having a little bit of, in this sense, what I think of as, like, a venture capital model, which is, you know, right now, the definition of success in government is not to fail. (Laughs.) And that’s very different than saying, hey, let’s try ten things in Sudan, and if one or two of them work that success, if they’re really making a difference.  

And we’ve got to get that mentality because the world out there just doesn’t work at the pace of, you know, a cable clearance process, or, however—having seventeen people clear on a tweet that’s supposed to be about rapid response. Anyway, well now I’m going to get sidelined. (Laughter.) So there was another part of what you said, though, that I wanted to come to. You said cavalry— 

BRIGETY: So—you want to—(inaudible)? 

Q: Yes. (Off mic)—South Africa when Al-Bashir was there, and just other processes. 

PERRIELLO: So, I mean, I go back to my heart and soul and what transformed my life, which was, you know, being in Sierra Leone and being part of that process. For those who don’t know, I spent a year with—sort of embedded with Sierra Leonean women in civil society demanding a seat at the table. The talks had been paralyzed for ten years. Within basically three weeks of the women coming to the table there was a peace deal, and it’s never been broken since, in a country that had been completely written off as no chance of ever having peace. And it included both a war crimes tribunal and a truth commission. And it’s a more complicated model, but it really is just an incredible model.  

And I can tell you, when—because in the second year I helped set up the war crimes tribunal and I actually got to do things like sneak Taylor’s indictment out of the country, and, you know, we brought down these seven warlords, da, da, da. And every time we did it, and particularly when we unsealed the indictment on Taylor, the conventional wisdom was we were restarting the war. The conventional wisdom was that we were, you know, backing Taylor into a corner. What were we doing? And the truth is, which comes back to this, you know, venture cap question, there was a risk. Like, if you don’t take risks, there’s a risk of action and there’s a risk of inaction.  

And I think part of the problem is in our diplomatic systems we are so over-indexed for the risk of action over inaction. So in a situation like that, you know, if you do the Taylor indictment and the war starts, it’s very clear you’re the reason. If you don’t do it and the war starts because it was impunity again, you know, it’s a lot of different causes. So it’s, I think, something where we could—if we could figure out a way of how do you—how do you value that? And, you know, what I try to do with all my—anyway, I won’t tell that story here. So, yes. I think we have to figure that out. 

Now, that doesn’t mean it looks the same in each location. But I do think that there is—and, again, with the Sierra Leone case, it wasn’t—because I was doing a lot of work, both in the first year and then crossing the second year with the former child soldiers, you know, who were both victims and perpetrators. And they were being told by their generals, you know, you got to come fight. They were getting that same message. And there was a lot of really good, really courageous grassroots organizing by a lot of Sierra Leoneans. And we would get out, and we would get threatened with beheadings and thrown in cars and stuff. And that was, you know, me looking like me.  

So it was—you know, there are risks. And you got to respond to those risks and engage. And I think—but I do think that the default in situations, and I worry about this with Sudan, is that the easiest way to cut the deal is to concede everything to the people who are creating resistance. And that tends to be the people with guns and the people doing the worst actions. And it is very clear that that is a model that will not end this war. Even if it pauses it, it will only perpetuate it.  

BRIGETY: Yes. Good to see you.  

Q: Hello. Macani Toungara, at Dell. 

My question is whether, in the absence of a human rights imperative to solve this crisis, is there potentially an economic solution? Are the minerals reserves sort of an economic area around which there could be a negotiation that incentivizes those parties to come to the table, potentially creates economic opportunity with the right partners, who want to extract those minerals for production? Is the extracted minerals area a way to have that conversation, when people don’t want to come to the table for human rights reasons, to try to get to a more stable and humanitarian-based outcome? Thank you. 

PERRIELLO: I think the answer is yes, but I haven’t figured out how to do it. You know, I really highly recommend the, the Declan Walsh piece about the gold trade from a few weeks ago, or a couple months ago—I lost track of time—you know, talking about this complexity about the idea that gold is kind of going from both sides through both sides, different sides profiting. Why even a lot of, you know, fueling—financial fueling of the SAF side goes through, you know, countries that seem affiliated with the other side. So there’s something about all of that. And I think that what is generally true of a lot of countries, you know, like a China or wherever, that is trying to be a major financial hub, is they don’t want to—they don’t want people to think that their money could potentially at risk for political ideology or other reasons.  

And so I think we’ve had more success, back to universal norms, where everyone could accept that, hey, there is something that is so bad that no matter what banking system you are in the world, this is—you know, this is something that’s going to—going to have an account. So I think, you know, there are lots of people that are working in that area. And I think that it’s very important. What I will say again is that, you know, there are a lot of different ways to extract gold. I think one of the things that I really came to understand about how Hemedti disrupted and transformed the economy of Sudan, in this idea that initially most of the gold was, you know, mined in this—where you only get about 20 percent of the value. You’re basically just hacking away and taking the ore, but most of the value is in the sludge. But no one could do the sludge, because you need to start making upfront major capital investments. You need to have a private army to be able to move it.  

And by being able to do that it wasn’t, like, you know, you used to make $10 million from that mine and now I make $10 million. It was, like, you used to make 10 million (dollars), and now I make 200 million (dollars) a year. And then starting to look and say, OK, we can reimagine these from a financial standpoint. But it was always interlinked with the private army, as well as the, you know, foreign mercenary elements. So you start to be kind of a multi-pronged, or diversified business, or something. So I think then others have been—there are some who are looking at these mines and saying, well, I just need that 20 percent, right? And so we’re just going to kind of pull all that out, versus those that would be investing in a very different way.  

And I think, though I’m not an expert, that that’s probably true with sorghum and some of the ag development as well. And I do think, honestly, this comes back to this question of, like, why is it we’ve had so much trouble getting the SAF side of the equation to consider even local ceasefires? And I do think ultimately you have a small subset, mostly from, you know, one part of, call it the Riverine-Arab set, who have basically felt entitled to all the resources and all the power across the country. And they’re not going to win in a free market or a free democratic process. And so you think about the same group of people backed the partition of South Sudan. And they were basically given the option, recognize everyone as equal citizens or risk losing 85 percent of your natural wealth.  

And they said, we’d rather risk losing 85 percent of our natural wealth than have to concede to democratic sovereign accountability authority. And then if you look at that in this context, it comes back to this question of, like, what would normally seem to be a win-win, right? Like, everyone’s going to win from this kind of economic flourishing, may not be the case for a subset that prefers the idea of having absolute power over the people they feel like they should have absolute power to. More nuanced than that, but I think there is an answer to it. But I think it is a change in thinking from a way that some people with a lot of guns in power have preferred things to operate.  

BRIGETY: I want to take the prerogative of the chair and ask the last question. You’ve had an extraordinary public career. As you say, starting out working on— 

PERRIELLO: Oh, I’m that old now? (Laughter.) You’re talking about it like this is my last chance. That’s great. It’s— 

BRIGETY: It’s funny, in November we were sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner. And I said to my younger son, you know, you need to dress up a bit for Thanksgiving, just like I did when I was a kid. My son said, but Dad, it’s not like it’s the twentieth century anymore. (Laughter.) Exactly. I felt that one right in my ribs.  

Anyway, you’ve had an extraordinary public career starting out as a young attorney working for the war crime tribunal of Sierra Leone, as a congressman, as a two-time special envoy working with Open Society Foundations. And I noticed we have some younger people in the audience. So what advice would you give to them? What perspective would you have for them, for those that are interested in engaging in the public space on things that matter? 

PERRIELLO: I mean, first, though it’s trite, it’s, like, it’s your time, man. All of us are so old. The system that—we came up in a system that was fundamentally anchored in that 1945 vision, and in that post-Cold War vision. And it is not working. It’s not happening. And it was based on a certain form of sort of liberal democratic ideals about reason, about structures, about rule of law, and a certain set of organizing tools, very heavily rooted in sort of Gandhian and MLK-type, you know, massive resistant, civil disobedience, combined with the sort of, now over-professionalization of, you know, think tanks and the rest, and advocacy groups.  

I think there is going to be something that looks very different, whether it’s in the public service sector, or whether it’s in the advocacy sector. It’s going to be different tools, different thinking. And going back to what I said before, I mean, hopefully it’s going to be genuinely global. I think we—if we’re going to have universal norms, it’s going to have to emerge in a way that doesn’t reflect the pre-existing, neo-colonial dynamics, Global North/South, or structural race and gender issues in the U.S., but something that can get back to the idea of do we or do we not agree that there are actually some universal things? Maybe that the new generation decides that’s not true. For me, that’s a core thing, but it’s going to be a different language. It’s going to be a different set of tactics.  

And I think if you do that, particularly I think it will probably be a lot around global consumer pressure. It’s not just consumer, but your data. You know, all these things. Like, people are buying our attention span and they’re buying our data. I think we’re probably past the point of no return where we’re never going to get it back, but it is where that kind of stuff is going to imagine—going to rest. And I think a lot of it is about narratives. It sounds trite, but one of the things we have lost so badly on in Sudan is there’s no narrative of the war that gives people an entry point. And right now, I think you see most center left and even center right parties failing around the world because you—we’re offering kind of a technocratic fix rather than a narrative fix. This gets into other areas.  

So I think it’s going to be a really exciting moment. And it is going to be primarily people under, you know, thirty, or really under twenty-five—no offense to those who are in the thirty range—that do that. The other I will say is just that—that has not changed, is that living a life of purpose is just the best thing imaginable, for me. I can’t speak for other people. But, you know, as miserable as it is, and the fact that I haven’t slept in a year, and, you know, I feel the anxiety—carry the anxiety of decisions that may have implications of life and death, like, you have power that is hard to imagine having. You can wield it with integrity and wisdom. And I think you can look back. And, you know, for me, at least, looking at those moments, like, standing with the women in Sierra Leone, and getting the breakthrough at the talks, and, you know, boxing in the strategy on the Kabila transition, and things like that.  

You know, it’s funny. I was talking to my sister, who is a national champion lacrosse player and all-American. And she was saying, you know, pain is temporary. Championships are forever. She’s a Notre Dame fan, so she’s very excited. And I was thinking about it in, you know, a lot of the public service work. Like, when you’re doing it, it is usually somewhat miserable. But the pain tends to be temporary. (Laughs.) And the meaning and the purpose tends to be something that you carry with for a long time. So I hope that people will stick with that. Thank you, Ambassador. 

BRIGETY: Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for being with us today. (Applause.) Please note—please note that the video and the transcript of today’s meeting will be posted on CFR’s website. And please take a moment to give an extraordinary word of thanks, not only for being here today, but for an extraordinary career in public service, Special Envoy Tom Perriello. (Applause.) 

(END) 

This is an uncorrected transcript.