Libya and Sudan are not two separate crises. Recent weeks suggest that Washington, along with other capitals, has begun to treat them as a single, interwoven file in which maps of influence, energy networks, gold mines, ports, military bases and Donald Trump’s pursuit of swift gains all converge.
In both countries, war has reached the same dead end. No side is strong enough to unify the state, and none is broken enough to surrender. In Libya, a de facto authority in the east is led by Khalifa Haftar, while an internationally recognised government in the west is headed by Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh. In Sudan, the army holds the heart of the state and the mantle of formal legitimacy, while the Rapid Support Forces consolidate their power in Darfur and across vast stretches of the west.
Each domestic actor now has external extensions. Regional and international powers are seeking allies within the geography of political influence. Russia is trying to offset its diminished role in Syria and the wider Middle East by securing a lasting foothold on the Red Sea and, through eastern Libya, on the Mediterranean. Arab, regional and European powers are also competing for leverage, turning Benghazi, Tripoli, Khartoum, Darfur and Port Sudan into links in a chain of influence stretching from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and the African Sahel.
As for the United States, after years of UN initiatives, local mediation efforts and wagers on military victory, the Trump administration appears to have shifted course. Hungry for quick successes and seeing oil as both an entry point and a currency of understanding, it is moving toward an approach that recognises de facto authorities, sets aside questions of legitimacy and abuses, and seeks to convert those authorities into arrangements of power‑sharing and interests rather than leaving them to persist as military fronts.
