On June 26, 2026, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on eight individuals and entities tied to procurement and recruitment networks fueling the civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The action was taken under Executive Order 14098 on destabilizing Sudan, in close partnership with U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center.
What distinguishes this package is that it strikes both sides at once: a network of companies supplying weapons and materiel to the army, and a network recruiting Colombian mercenaries for the RSF. Washington paired the designations with an explicit call for an “immediate, unconditional three-month humanitarian truce,” and a call on external actors to halt all financial and military support. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that “the networks profiting from the conflict jeopardize the prospects for the truce that the Sudanese people desperately need.”
This report focuses on the army’s side — the companies and the chain linking them to the military institution — and then on the impact of the designations on the course of the war.
- The Companies and Their Links to the Army
The sanctions reveal a hierarchical procurement architecture that begins at the apex of Sudan’s military industry and descends to a layer of intermediaries and suppliers. The structure is as follows:
1. The Apex — The Defense Industries System (DIS): Sudan’s largest defense enterprise and the backbone of the army’s armament: it maintains the army’s arsenal of weapons, ammunition, vehicles, and materiel, much of which — per the text of the sanctions — is acquired “from Iran and other external backers.” DIS controls a web of subsidiaries through complex and opaque structures from which it has generated billions of dollars. OFAC originally designated it on June 1, 2023, but today’s action reaches below that apex to target the import layer that kept operating despite the first designation.
2. The Holding Arm — Giad Industrial Group (Sudan Master Technology): The conglomerate through which DIS controls its operating companies, also designated since 2023. Ownership of the entities targeted today runs through it, making it the link between the military institution and the commercial front companies.
3. The Newly Designated Entities:
- Target Multiactivities Company Ltd. (TMAC): A Sudan-based company controlled by DIS through Giad. It imported explosives and related materiel from Egyptian and Indian companies, subsequently used in bombs deployed by the army. It is the direct import channel for explosive materials.
- Tariq Hussain Muhammad Madani: A senior DIS officer who serves as TMAC’s managing director. His presence establishes the organic link between the front company and the military institution — the manager himself is an officer within DIS.
- SBL Energy Limited (India): An explosives manufacturer that supplied TMAC with over 200 shipments of explosives and related materiel since 2024 — a figure that reveals the scale of the supply line, not merely a one-off deal.
- Alok Choudhari: SBL Energy’s chief executive, designated as the head of the supplying company.
- Ports Engineering Company Ltd.: A public construction company owned by Sudanese state-owned enterprises, including Giad. Since the war began in April 2023, it has imported uniforms and footwear for Sudanese intelligence personnel from an Emirati company, and ammunition belts and boxes of weapons from a Turkish company.
Where the designation actually hurts:
- Overcompliance: The “strict liability” and “50%-or-more ownership” rules will push banks, shippers, and insurers to avoid Giad’s entire commercial perimeter, raising the cost and risk of every subsequent import of explosives and materiel.
- The India line: Targeting India’s SBL pressures a non-traditional supplier and may deter other Indian firms from dealing with Sudan for fear of secondary sanctions — more effective than striking an Iranian supplier already accustomed to operating under sanctions.
- Official documentation: Cementing “Iranian arming of the army” in an official Treasury document keeps a card available for later escalation.
The political dimension: Tying the package to a “three-month truce” places it in the category of coercive diplomacy: simultaneous pressure on both sides (the army’s procurement + the RSF’s recruitment) to force them to the table. But its success hinges on the parties’ willingness, and the more likely near-term outcome is rejection or stalling by the army, which sees itself in a position of battlefield superiority that does not warrant concessions.