Abdel Fattah al-Burhan | A force of the status quo

Sudan’s army chief has seized power, throwing transition into chaos

Little is known of Gen. al-Burhan, 61, who was already the chairman of the Sovereignty Council of Sudan (SCS). The Council was formed after the Sudanese revolution in 2019 that ousted dictator Omar al-Bashir’s regime. The transition was first conducted by a Transitional Military Council (TMC) under the leadership of Lt. Gen. Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf, who served as de facto head of State for one day, before naming General al-Burhan as his successor and head of the Council.

After civilian protests, aimed at rejecting this council which consisted of military officers who either served or were seen as close to the Bashir regime, were violently put down, the African Union suspended Sudan and imposed sanctions even as agitations led by Force of Freedom and Change (FFC), a joint social movement comprising 22 Sudanese political parties and social groups, escalated. The TMC under Gen. Burhan’s leadership finally relented and the FFC was incorporated into a new body, the SCS, which was formed after the Draft Constitution Declaration was signed on August 4, 2019, along with a power sharing agreement, promising elections in late 2022.

Return of tensions

Initially, there were some promising signs that the civilian-military transitional partnership was working. But tensions between the civilian leadership and the military leaders remained over at least one issue — bringing Bashir’s regime to account for genocidal acts, human rights abuses and corruption. Analysts say the military was uncomfortable with this as it would expose their own acts and their financial interests that were entrenched during Bashir’s rule. Gen. Burhan, after all, played a key role as inspector general of the armed forces during the fag end of Bashir’s tenure – overseeing Sudan’s intervention in the Yemen Civil War. He had also been a regional army commander in Darfur between 2003 and 2008, a period that coincided with the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Gen. Burhan’s military cohort that came into prominence are also accused of being part of a small elite that had garnered significant financial clout during the oil boom in the 2010s along with select supporters of the Bashir regime. A New York Times report points out that Gen. Burhan and Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that is accused of genocide in Darfur and is also the deputy Chairman of the TMC, together controlled “hundreds of state-owned enterprises dealing in the production and sale of minerals, including gold, imports and exports of livestock, construction materials and pharmaceuticals”.

Clearly, the military coup is an attempt to deter greater civilian control in a country ravaged by poverty and years of misrule. Western governments have promptly cancelled promised tranches of aid and are compelling the return to the transitional regime even as new protests have erupted. But Gen. Burhan seems to be emboldened due to his regime’s closeness with those in Egypt and some Gulf countries and would seek to control the transition of power with a pliant technocrat in charge rather than an assertive civilian-linked to political and social movements. Sudan is in for another spell of turmoil.

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