Strategic Sanctions: The War on Sudanese Sovereignty Through Law
By Sabah Al-Makki, Assistant Editor
Writing from within the storm.
Sanctions are no longer accountability tools—they have become instruments of subjugation. In Sudan’s case, the real offense is not aggression, but the refusal to collapse. This article examines how international law is being strategically repurposed to punish sovereignty and protect proxies in a global order increasingly driven by narrative warfare.
From Accountability to Control: Sanctions as Subjugation
For over three decades, U.S. sanctions against Sudan have not responded to violations of law but have obstructed the emergence of a sovereign African power at the crossroads of the Arab and Sub-Saharan worlds. Cloaked in the language of “human rights” and “counterterrorism,” these measures reveal a more profound logic: to suppress sovereignty when it threatens the architecture of global dependency.
Administrations have changed from Reagan to Trump, but the target has remained constant. Sudan is not punished for its actions but for its orientation: a state that refuses to collapse, surrender military autonomy, or submit to externally dictated transitions. Its enduring defiance of engineered fragility has rendered it intolerable to those invested in regional pliancy.
Sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and economic isolation have all served a singular goal: dismantling the possibility of a self-governing, strategically anchored African state outside hegemonic control.
The Architecture of Pressure: Sanctions as Pretext
The evolution of U.S. sanctions against Sudan is not just chronological—it is architectural. What began in 1988 under the pretext of debt enforcement escalated in 1993 with Sudan’s designation as a “State Sponsor of Terrorism,” culminating in Executive Order 13067 issued by President Clinton in 1997, which froze Sudanese government assets and imposed a comprehensive trade embargo.
Even Sudan’s post-9/11 intelligence cooperation failed to shift policy. The Sudan Peace Act (2002) and the Darfur Accountability Act (2006) entrenched economic strangulation as a bipartisan doctrine. In 2017, President Obama issued Executive Order 13761, easing sanctions conditionally. In 2020, President Trump removed Sudan from the terrorism list—formally, but not functionally. Core mechanisms of financial coercion, such as the “50% Rule” and OFAC restrictions, remained intact.
On January 16, 2025, the U.S. reactivated its sanctions apparatus under Executive Order 14098: “Imposing Sanctions on Certain Persons Destabilizing Sudan and Undermining the Goal of a Democratic Transition.” Among those designated was Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council and Commander-in-Chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), along with the Military Industrial Corporation and affiliated civilian sectors.
Though presented as balanced—mirroring earlier sanctions on RSF militia leaders—the asymmetry was unmistakable. The target was not the UAE-backed militia undermining Sudan’s survival, but the Sudanese state itself.
This was not principled enforcement. It was a performance of legality designed to communicate that sovereignty, not subversion, is the actual offense.
Narrative Warfare and the Weaponization of Allegations
On January 16, 2025, The New York Times reported that Sudan’s military had used chemical weapons—specifically chlorine gas—during two unspecified operations against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia in 2024. The article cited anonymous U.S. officials but offered no dates, locations, victim identities, forensic data, or corroboration from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)—the only international authority empowered under the Chemical Weapons Convention to verify such claims.
On May 22, 2025, the U.S. formally invoked these claims and announced new sanctions, set to take effect June 6, 2025. No referral was made to the OPCW, no fact-finding mission was dispatched, no samples were collected, and no technical report was issued.
A sovereign state was sanctioned based on a single anonymously sourced media article.
This was not the application of international norms. It was narrative warfare—a methodical attempt to delegitimize Sudan’s national army while shielding its adversaries and their foreign sponsors from scrutiny.
The tactic is familiar. In 1998, the U.S. bombed Sudan’s Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory based on false claims of chemical weapons production. In 2003, fabricated intelligence justified the invasion of Iraq. In each case—as now—evidence was secondary, and outcomes preordained.
Verification no longer governs action. Alignment does.
Unilateral Lawfare: U.S. Statutes vs. International Norms
The new U.S. sanctions were justified under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 (CBW Act)—a domestic statute that allows the executive to impose sanctions on foreign states based solely on suspicion, without requiring international verification or OPCW involvement.
This law bypasses treaty mechanisms and collapses evidentiary standards into executive discretion. It enables geopolitical punishment masked as a legal procedure.
The implications are profound: a state can be isolated, economically strangled, and politically delegitimized by decree—not by investigation or consensus.
This is not the enforcement of international law. It is its transformation. A domestic statute becomes an instrument of extraterritorial coercion—deployed under the banner of non-proliferation but detached from legal neutrality.
Sudan’s offense was not proven to be the use of chemical weapons. It was the refusal to capitulate. In today’s paradigm, asserting sovereignty becomes an act of defiance—and defiance becomes criminal.
When the law ceases to constrain power, it becomes its servant. What follows is not a global order—it is codified impunity.
The Cost of Defiance: Sudan’s Legal Stand Against Power
In early 2025, Sudan filed a case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the United Arab Emirates (UAE), accusing it of genocide, arms trafficking, and direct sponsorship of the RSF. Though the case was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds—not substance—it marked a bold legal challenge to a U.S.-aligned proxy power and the RSF’s militia principal benefactor.
The retaliation was swift.
Sudan’s temporary capital, Port Sudan, came under sustained drone attacks—executed by high-altitude systems reportedly linked to UAE-backed networks. The bombardment continued for days, underscoring the cost of legal defiance in a conflict where diplomacy and warfare are inseparable.
Sudan severed diplomatic relations with the UAE and declared it an “aggressor state,”—a formal escalation against a foreign actor waging proxy war through militia intermediaries.
Weeks later, the U.S. imposed CBW Act sanctions—again, without referral to the OPCW, investigation, or verifiable evidence.
Simultaneously, the U.S. finalized a $1.4 trillion strategic partnership with the UAE, announced during President Trump’s 2025 visit to Abu Dhabi, spanning defense, artificial intelligence, and infrastructure, according to [source]. The visit also coincided with the UAE’s $2 billion in Trump’s stablecoin project and the announcement of a new Trump Tower in the heart of Dubai.
This occurred while the UAE stood credibly accused—by UN-adjacent reports, U.S. congressional efforts, and independent media investigations—of systematically arming and financing the RSF:
- A UN Panel of Experts report dated 14 April 2025 (S/2025/239, para. 95) cited ongoing airlifts of weapons from Abu Dhabi to Am Djarass airport in eastern Chad, routed via Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda. The weapons were later smuggled to RSF militia bases in Zuruk (North Darfur) and Khartoum. These findings were based on an earlier investigation into external support to the RSF militia detailed in paras. 41–42 of the Panel’s final report (S/2024/65).
- Weapons seized in Darfur bore UAE-backed networks. confirming traceable supply paths. This has been reported by Reuters, (29 April 2025), and Intun Watch, which noted that the UN investigation centers on weapons allegedly supplied to RSF fighters through Emirati networks.
- France 24 Observers documented Colombian mercenaries and Bulgarian weapons delivered through UAE logistics.
- U.S. lawmakers Sen. Van Hollen & Rep. Jacobs proposed halting arms sales to the UAE until it ceased RSF support.
Sudan was punished based on a news article. Despite documented complicity, the UAE was elevated as a strategic partner.
This is not a contradiction. It is the mechanism itself..
Conclusion: When Sovereignty Is a Crime
Sudan is not being sanctioned for aggression. It is being sanctioned for refusing to collapse. Its true offense lies in defending territorial integrity against foreign-sponsored militias and resisting externally engineered transitions.
This is not the breakdown of legal norms. It is their strategic repurposing.
In today’s global order, the aggressor wears the mask of neutrality, while the defender is recast as the threat. Legal mechanisms no longer restrain power—they are redesigned to serve it.
Sudan’s national military—the SAF—its last institutional safeguard, is equated with the RSF, a militia accused of war crimes. Its self-defense is criminalized, while the militia’s financier—the UAE—is rewarded with immunity and strategic partnership.
These sanctions are not instruments of justice. They are tools of enforced obedience.
Sudan’s crime was legal audacity: treating international law as if it were reciprocal.
The system’s response was immediate and unmistakable: challenge a sponsor, and you will be punished—not only by bombs, but by laws.
This is more than a regional dispute. It is a reckoning for the global legal order itself.
If international law is to survive, it must return to principle: that no state is above scrutiny, and no accusation is beyond evidence.
Justice must cease to be geopolitical currency. And sovereignty must no longer be treated as sedition.
The question is not whether Sudan survives.
The question is whether the law does.
About the Author
Sabah Al-Makki is a Sudanese writer and Assistant Editor at Brown Land News. Her work explores political violence, international law, cultural resistance, and social awareness through the lens of Sudan’s unfolding realities. She challenges dominant narratives by centering the voices of Sudanese citizens—both within the country and across the diaspora—whose perspectives are often excluded from global discourse.
Her writing interrogates the definitions of war, peace, and justice, insisting that true change begins with dismantling colonial paradigms. Sabah confronts the structures that sustain conflict, silence, and imposed transitions through cultural, cognitive, and philosophical resistance.
She writes from within the storm.
