Sudan as a Battleground for Foreign Interference What Is at Stake for Europe?

Sudan’s war is more than a struggle for power between two former allies. In this policy report, Sara Senno and Dr Elisabetta Arba map the foreign actors behind the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), grade the evidence on each, and assess what the war means for Europe.

European attention has focused largely on the UAE’s support for the RSF. The army’s backers – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Iran – have received less scrutiny, and so have the Islamist networks fighting alongside it, including the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, designated as a terrorist organisation by the United States in 2026.

The report examines the consequences for Red Sea security, migration, the Horn of Africa and the EU’s own credibility, since European-made weapons have reached the RSF. With the UN sanctions regime on Sudan expiring on 11 December 2026, it calls on the EU to apply the same standards to both warring parties and the networks that supply them. Its recommendations include a UN arms embargo covering the whole country, expanded sanctions on the warring parties and their supply networks, an assessment of listing the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood at EU level, and post-delivery controls on European arms exports.

The full report is available here