The word enforce has abruptly slipped out of the closed-door discussions underway in Washington, where diplomats are scrambling to secure a humanitarian ceasefire in Sudan’s civil war. Its emergence marks a shift from persuasion to coercion — a sign that patience with the warring parties is rapidly running out.

An unnamed Western diplomat reportedly told the Sudan Tribune that members of the Quad group, comprising the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, are now considering imposing a ceasefire by force. The diplomat spoke of working with international partners such as the European Union and regional actors to ensure the truce is implemented in practice, not just on paper. “I do not rule out imposing it by force as violations and atrocities continue in a wide part of the country,” he said.

These negotiations sit on the edge of an impasse. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), having captured el-Fasher and now controlling all five provinces of Darfur while threatening the northwest, habitually say yes to ceasefire talks. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) just as habitually say no, reiterating their determination to crush the militia, despite the fact that any credible military or diplomatic observer, and indeed the RSF itself, can see that outright battlefield victory is a fantasy.

As the RSF consolidated its hold on el-Fasher, independent monitors and medical groups reported staggering civilian losses. The Sudan Doctors Network have claimed that roughly 1,500 people were killed in only a few days as residents tried to flee the assault. The United Nations Human Rights Council has adopted a resolution ordering the UN’s independent fact-finding mission on Sudan to urgently investigate. The text also called on the investigative team to “identify, where possible,” suspected perpetrators in a bid to ensure they are “held accountable.”

New documentation from Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab based on satellite imagery has increased concern about the death toll in el-Fasher, with fears of large-scale killings and burials. Verification has been challenging in this conflict. Similar images were exposed by France 24 to have been misinterpreted. In late October, Internet users shared a screenshot from Google Earth allegedly showing mass killings in Sudan.

The image went viral, with over 15 million views to date. However, France 24, together with Benjamin Strick from the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), has shown that the image is old and actually depicts livestock around a waterhole. German broadcaster Deutsche Welle alerted viewers that a viral video of a mother and children seemingly being threatened by RSF soldiers, which had been viewed 13 million times on social media, was “entirely fake and generated by AI.”

There seems little doubt, however, about the misconduct on both sides. Recent international concerns about the RSF in el-Fasher are well-documented, as is the use of chemical weapons by the SAF, as reported by the New York Times, and for which the SAF and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan are under U.S. sanctions. SAF targeting of civilians has been an ongoing concern, especially when involving Iranian and Turkish drones. The death toll, famine, and displacement make the drive for peace increasingly urgent.

Enforce is the word international mediators would have preferred to keep off the table. In an ideal world, the combatants would come to the negotiating table of their own accord. Yet the SAF’s intransigence, evident in statement after statement from Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his circle, has forced the international community, confronted with a human catastrophe not seen in decades, to consider what once seemed unthinkable.

The SAF will almost certainly denounce any enforcement mechanism as an intolerable violation of Sudan’s much-vaunted sovereignty. But that sovereignty, in practice, operates as a fig leaf for the intention to perpetuate the dominance of Sudan’s traditional ruling elite: Khartoum-centered, heavily Islamist, and deeply entrenched. This is the same elite that ran the country under Omar al-Bashir’s long presidency, until he was pushed aside by his own generals in an effort to contain a civilian uprising that demanded democratic reform.

The SAF will therefore resist outside enforcement tooth and nail. It is no surprise that the Quad has widened its consultations to include Turkey and Qatar, both major supporters of the SAF regime. Ankara and Doha will now be under pressure either to bring their proxy into line or to face possible repercussions from the Trump administration, whose foreign-policy doctrine of “peace through strength,” or to recoin the phrase, “our way or the highway,” is already being tested in Sudan.

What would enforcement look like in practice? The first step would almost certainly be to deny weapons to both sides, backed by monitoring of airspace and entry points by land and sea, and by closer cooperation among the states that surround Sudan. Cutting off the flow of arms and matériel would give an enforcement mission something firmer than statements of concern.

Drones have already played a central role in the fighting; the question now is whether they could be turned into tools of peace, deployed under U.S., European, and broader Quad capabilities overhead. On both sides of the conflict, drones have been used for surveillance, electronic warfare, and precision strikes. Air superiority no longer depends solely on piloted aircraft, because drones can remain in the air longer and operate with less risk to personnel, allowing near-constant surveillance and rapid interdiction across contested terrain.

Anti-jamming technology, loitering munitions, and remotely operated drone swarms have all increased the effectiveness and reach of these systems. At the same time, they have heightened the vulnerability of logistics chains, command-and-control nodes, and fixed defenses. Enforcing a humanitarian truce and maintaining stability would therefore mean protecting strategic assets and airfields, drone control hubs, and key infrastructure such as communications networks, logistics depots, hospitals, and humanitarian shelters. It would also require oversight of border crossings and trade routes, from Port Sudan on the Red Sea to the Owaynat Triangle on the borders with Libya and Egypt.

It would be shrewd to bring in Ukrainian instructors, given that this is how Ukraine has managed to survive the largest military onslaught in Europe since the Second World War. They understand how to use drones and layered air defenses to blunt superior firepower and keep supply lines functioning under constant attack.

Finally, both SAF and RSF leaders would need to know, without any ambiguity, that violations will be met with equal punishment on both sides. Only then would Sudan’s civilians, caught between a collapsing state and predatory militias, have reason to believe that the new word in Washington’s vocabulary might actually mean something in their daily lives.