Khartoum, May 5 (Reuters) – General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has promised to democratize Sudan, but that looks like a distant promise after he went to war with his former partner last month in a military coup. .
As his military planes rain down on the capital and his army battles the Rapid Relief Force, the militia of rival General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedoti), Barhan shows no inclination to compromise. Is not …
“There is no other option than a military solution,” he said five days after the fighting, initially believed to be directing from the president’s guesthouse near the airport.
The war will determine Sudan’s fate by removing veteran dictator Omar al-Bashir during the 2019 popular uprising and halting the transition to democracy by ousting the civilian government in 2021. Happened after I flipped the 2 times already.
A career soldier in his sixties who served Bashir loyally for decades, Barhan rose through the ranks in the wars in South Sudan and Sudan’s Darfur region. Few expected the day when he would rule as chairman of the “Sovereign Council” established after Bashir’s fall.
Hemedoti, whose powerful RSF had been operating with the military during the war in Darfur, intervened on behalf of Barhan in the Council. Despite occasional tensions, they presented a united front and dissolved the government in a coup in 2021.
Their relationship was never close, as they fought for the upper hand over the terms of the promised transition to democracy and the merger of the RSF into the regular army, which Barhan wanted to accelerate.
As relations soured before clashes erupted on April 15, Burhan was already preparing for war as the Air Force surveyed bomb targets, military sources said.
Reconciliation seems impossible.
“We will come to you and bring you to justice or you will die like any other dog,” Hemedi said of Barhan on the day the fight began.
No objection
A military takeover in 2021 makes Barhan the latest in a long line of coup leaders that have dominated most of Sudan’s history since its independence from Britain in 1956.
Barhan, who headed the ruling party council with Hemedi as vice president, told Reuters that civilian rule was the “natural situation” and repeated his promise to hold elections this February. He vowed to hand it over.
But pro-democracy activists have always been skeptical. They accuse him and other military leaders of killing protesters and say his coup was aimed at prolonging military rule, something he denies.
In July 2022, he dismissed five civilian members of the Sovereignty Council and said the military would no longer participate in internationally-led efforts to dialogue with them.
Those who have met Burhan describe him as brief and short-tempered. His language betrays a fierce aversion to criticism.In April 2022, he threatened to expel the UN envoy. He recently commented on the country’s political turmoil, accusing him of “lying, outright lying,” and saying, “We’ll kick you out.”
“I will cut off the tongues of those who oppose the military,” he said in a speech at an army base after protests by Bashir supporters in November 2022.
Service in Darfur
Born in 1960 in a village north of Khartoum, adjacent to Bashir’s home village, Barhan studied at the Sudan Military Academy and later at the Jordanian and Egyptian Military Academy.
Analysts say his attitude to rule was shaped by 41 years of military service. Meanwhile, Sudan has been a pariah of the West, having been placed on the US terrorism list under Bashir, who hosted Osama bin Laden in the 1990s and is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes. was
During the war against rebels in Darfur, Barhan held the rank of Brigadier General, worked in a district of heavy fighting, and became acquainted with Hemedoti.
In a terrifying harbinger of new conflicts against each other, the military and RSF have been accused of grotesque war crimes, including massacres and rapes during the Darfur war.
When Bashir was overthrown in 2019, Barhan, who was the fourth-highest-ranking officer in the army and held a managerial position, was one of the generals who confronted him, he said.
“The military leadership decided that the situation was getting out of hand and told him he should resign,” he told the BBC.
During Bashir’s last year in power, Burhan began to develop foreign relations. He was at the forefront of an interim move to normalize relations with Israel. The move was applauded by the Gulf States.
And in March 2021, he cemented ties with Cairo by hosting Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Khartoum.
Written by William McLean and Angus McDowall.Editing by Andrew Cawthorne
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