Why the feud between two Sudanese military leaders caught the world by surprise

1 / 5
Gen. Abdel Fattah Al- Burhan, right, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, left, attending a ceremony in Khartoum on August 17, 2019, during which they signed a "constitutional declaration" that paved the way for a transition to civilian rule. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 01 May 2023
Follow

Why the feud between two Sudanese military leaders caught the world by surprise

  • Tension had been brewing between Al-Burhan and Hemedti, yet few outsiders sensed the depth of their mutual mistrust
  • Some Sudanese think the international community and aid agencies ought to have anticipated the eventual falling-out

ROME: Although Sudan has been in the throes of political turmoil since authoritarian leader Omar Al-Bashir was toppled in 2019, the sudden explosion of violence that began on April 15 appeared to catch the world by surprise.

Explosions and gunfire in the capital Khartoum and elsewhere across the country, in defiance of repeated attempts to broker a cease-fire, have forced nations to hastily extract embassy staff and citizens who were at risk of being caught in the crossfire.

However, for many Sudanese citizens now forced to decide whether to remain in their homes, deprived of basic utilities, with food and medicine dwindling, or risk their lives by taking one of the increasingly lawless roads out of the country, signs of the coming crisis were all too clear.

Clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces, led by the country’s de-facto ruler General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and a paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, stem from plans to incorporate the latter into the regular army.

Tensions between the two men over the plan, which formed part of the democratic transition framework, had been growing for months, yet many in the international community appeared to have failed to sense the depth of their mutual mistrust — and were consequently blindsided.




Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, ;eft, and his archrival, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. (AFP photos)

“This is the worst of worst-case scenarios,” Volker Perthes, the UN special representative to Sudan, told colleagues during a virtual meeting shortly after the violence began. “We tried even with last-ditch diplomacy ... and we have failed.”

Sudanese fighter jets have continued to pound paramilitary positions in Khartoum in recent days, while deadly fighting and looting have flared in the troubled Darfur region, despite the army and the RSF agreeing to extend a cease-fire deal.

More than 75,000 people have fled their homes to escape the fighting, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, while tens of thousands have crossed into neighboring countries including Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia and South Sudan.

Many Sudanese say that foreign powers and international aid agencies should have been far better prepared for the likelihood of the feud between the two generals escalating into armed conflict and for the consequent humanitarian emergency.

“Hemedti and Al-Burhan are ready to fight to the death,” said Sudanese political cartoonist and writer Khalid Albaih.

Albaih, who has performed advocacy work for artists and creatives in Sudan, believes Sudanese could sense in recent months that the situation was reaching a breaking point.




Khalid Albaih

“Everyone saw it coming. Everyone knew something was going to happen soon,” he told Arab News. “The army was building defenses and the janjaweed leader (Hemedti) was moving into the city. You could feel the tension. There was no money in the country except for the money in Hemedti’s hands.”

Albaih calls what is happening now a “delayed war.”

“The international aid organizations were moving forward, pitting the two together more for stability in the country than for actual democracy,” he said.

“This is what is unsettling. We (the Sudanese public) have been fighting for peace for years and still we haven’t found a seat at the table. It seems like the message was to get a gun and you’ll get a seat at the table.”




Sudanese pro-democracy activists had been demonstrating for the reinstatement of Abdalla Hamdok, the prime minister ousted in the October 2021 military coup, to no avail. (AFP file)

The counterargument of course is that there were no “early warning” signs of a dramatic and violent falling-out. Proponents of this theory say that while an escalation was always a possibility — perhaps inevitable even — the international community was completely wrong-footed by the scale and ferocity of the feud.

“I think the criticism is misplaced,” Martin Plaut, senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, told Arab News. “Yes, there was tension between Al-Burhan and Hemedti, but it could have gone on for another 18 months and just fizzled out, or it could have exploded, and it exploded. But you can’t predict when that’s going to happen.”




Martin Plaut

The real problem, said Plaut, “is that Hemedti had forces large enough to counter the Sudanese army directly, and the army was aware of this. As the African saying goes, you can’t have two balls in the field. The monopoly of force, which is supposed to be the right of the army, was just no longer going to hold.”

However, at least one prominent diplomat has acknowledged that foreign powers might have contributed to the crisis by bestowing legitimacy on both Al-Burhan and Hemedti, while turning a blind eye to their obvious antipathy toward one another and their reluctance to cooperate.

In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Jeffrey Feltman, the former US special envoy for the Horn of Africa, called the conflict “sadly predictable” given the West’s willingness to pander to both Sudanese strongmen.




Jeffrey Feltman

“We avoided exacting consequences for repeated acts of impunity that might have otherwise forced a change in calculus,” he wrote. “Instead, we reflexively appeased and accommodated the two warlords. We considered ourselves pragmatic. Hindsight suggests wishful thinking to be a more accurate description.”

Both Al-Burhan and Hemedti began their careers in the killing fields of Darfur, where a tribal rebellion descended into ethnic cleansing during the early 2000s.




ohamed Hamdan Daglo (Hemeti), right, rose from the ranks of the Janjaweed militia that figured in former strongman Omar Al-Bashir's ethnic cleansing campaign in southern Darfur about 20 years ago. (AFP photos)

After the fall of Al-Bashir in 2019, following months of unrest, the country had been on the path to a democratic transition. The process was derailed in 2021, however, when Al-Burhan and Hemedti joined forces to mount a coup against the transitional government of Abdalla Hamdok.

Although a new UN- and US-backed framework was eventually hammered out in late 2022 to facilitate a transition to civilian rule and implement security reform, many felt that a showdown between Al-Burhan and Hemedti was inevitable.

Indeed, their relationship evidently had turned into bitter animosity, culminating in violent clashes that now threaten to escalate into full-blown civil war.




Sudan's former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok (right), together with Generals Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan (middle) and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (left) during a deal-signing ceremony in Khartoum to restore the transition to civilian rule . (AFP)

In a scathing oped last week in the Wall Street Journal, the American columnist Walter Russell Mead, pointing out that Sudan has a history of 17 attempted coups, two civil wars and a genocidal conflict since independence in 1956, said: “A blind hamster has a better chance of building a nuclear submarine than the State Department had of orchestrating a democratic transition in Khartoum.”

The question for the international community now is whether it bears some moral responsibility for the diplomatic efforts that in hindsight strengthened the hands of both Al-Burhan and Hemedti, and for failing to prioritize peace building and conflict resolution when it had the chance.

The general consensus seems to be that as the Western-led economic and political order fades in the Middle East and Africa, actors such as Al-Burhan and Hemedti should be seen as who they are: powerful regional commanders interested in seizing economic opportunities and entrenching themselves, not aspiring democrats eager to share power with civil society.

Meanwhile, the World Food Programme has given warning that the violence could plunge millions more into hunger in Sudan, a country where 15 million people — one third of the population — already need aid to stave off famine.

At least 528 people had been killed and 4,599 wounded in the fighting as of April 30, according to health ministry figures, although the real toll is likely far higher. The Sudanese doctors’ union has given warning that the collapse of the health care system is “imminent.”

Appeals by UN chief Antonio Guterres to the two warring Sudanese generals to “put the interests of their people front and center, and silence the guns,” have gone unheeded so far.

 


Shadowy extremist group claims Damascus church attack

Updated 6 sec ago
Follow

Shadowy extremist group claims Damascus church attack

Saraya Ansar Al-Sunna said a group operative “blew up the Saint Elias church in the Dwelaa neighborhood of Damascus“
It came after unspecified “provocation“

BEIRUT: A little-known Sunni Muslim extremist group on Tuesday claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a Damascus church over the weekend that authorities have blamed on the Daesh group.

Sunday’s attack killed 25 and wounded dozens of others, striking terror into the Syrian Arab Republic’s Christian community and other minorities.

A statement from Saraya Ansar Al-Sunna said a group operative “blew up the Saint Elias church in the Dwelaa neighborhood of Damascus,” saying it came after unspecified “provocation.”

The Islamist authorities who took power after ousting longtime ruler Bashar Assad in December had quickly blamed the attack on Daesh and announced several arrests on Monday in a security operation against Daesh-affiliated cells.

But the Saraya Ansar Al-Sunna statement on messaging app Telegram, where it counts several hundred followers, said the government’s version of events was “untrue, fabricated.”

The group, which was formed after Assad’s ouster, vowed that “what is coming will not give you respite” warning that “our soldiers... are fully prepared.”

In March, a dispute took place in front of the Saint Elias church, as residents expressed opposition to Islamic chants being played on loudspeakers from a car.

Sunday’s attack was the first suicide bombing in a church in Syria since the country’s civil war erupted in 2011, according to a Syrian monitor.

It followed sectarian violence in recent months including massacres of members of the Alawite sect to which Assad belongs and clashes with Druze fighters, with security one of the new authorities’ greatest challenges.

The bloodshed has raised concerns about the government’s ability to control radical fighters, after Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) led the offensive that ousted Assad.

HTS was once affiliated with Al-Qaeda before breaking ties in 2016.

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, a Syria-based analyst and researcher, said Saraya Ansar Al-Sunna could be “a pro-Daesh splinter originating primarily from defectors from HTS... and other factions but currently operating independently of IS.”

He also said it could be “just a Daesh front group.”

Citing a Saraya source, Tamimi said a disillusioned former HTS functionary heads the group, whose leadership includes a former member of Hurras Al-Din, the Syrian Al-Qaeda affiliate which announced in January it was dissolving, upon the orders of the new government.

The monitor said Saraya Ansar Al-Sunna had previously threatened to target Alawites and had carried out an attack in Hama province earlier this year.

The group is accused of involvement in the sectarian massacres in March that the monitor alleged to have killed more than 1,700 people, mostly Alawite civilians.

Sirens in north Israel after army detects Iranian missiles

Updated 24 June 2025
Follow

Sirens in north Israel after army detects Iranian missiles

  • Israel and Iran on Tuesday accepted a ceasefire plan proposed by US President Donald Trump to end their 12-day war
  • Iran has not formally accepted a ceasefire

The Israeli military reported two missiles fired from Iran mid-morning on Tuesday, leading sirens to blare in the north several hours after US President Trump announced a ceasefire plan.

“Two missiles were launched from Iran and they were intercepted,” a military official told AFP on condition of anonymity, with the army saying people could leave shelters around 15 minuutes after the first alert.

Trump announced a phased 24-hour ceasefire process beginning at around 0400 GMT Tuesday, which Israel said it had agreed to. Iran has not formally accepted a ceasefire.

US President Donald Trump announced a phased 24-hour ceasefire process beginning at around 0400 GMT on June 24, which Israel said it had agreed to. Iran has not formally accepted a ceasefire. (AFP)

Israeli defence minister orders attacks on Iran after ceasefire 'violation'

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday he had ordered the country’s military to respond forcefully to what he said was Iran’s violation of a ceasefire with Israel.

The directive followed an announcement by the military that it had detected missile launches from Iran towards Israel.

Less than three hours earlier, US President Donald Trump had said that the ceasefire was now in effect.

Katz said the military had been instructed to carry out high-intensity operations against targets in Tehran.

Israel and Iran on Tuesday accepted a ceasefire plan proposed by US President Donald Trump to end their 12-day war. (AFP)

Israel and Iran accept ceasefire

Israel and Iran on Tuesday accepted a ceasefire plan proposed by US President Donald Trump to end their 12-day war that roiled the Middle East, after Tehran launched a retaliatory limited missile attack on a US military base in Qatar.

The acceptance of the deal by both sides came after Tehran launched a final onslaught of missiles targeting Israel that killed at least four people early Tuesday morning, while Israel launched a blitz of airstrikes targeting sites across Iran before dawn.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had agreed to a bilateral ceasefire with Iran in coordination with Trump.

Israeli PM Benjamin Natanyahu said he supported the ceasefire. (FILE/AFP)

Israel says agreed to Trump proposal for bilateral ceasefire with Iran

Israel said Tuesday it had agreed to a “bilateral ceasefire” with Iran proposed by US President Donald Trump, following 12 days of war with its arch-foe.

“Last night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened the cabinet... to announce that Israel had achieved all the objectives of Operation ‘Rising Lion’ and much more,” the government said in a statement, adding that it had removed “an immediate dual existential threat: nuclear and ballistic”.

“Israel thanks President Trump and the United States for their support in defence and for their participation in removing the Iranian nuclear threat,” the statement said, adding that “Israel will respond forcefully to any violation of the ceasefire.”

Israel rescuers say 4 dead in multi-wave Iran missile attacks

At least four people were killed in Israel in a multi-wave Iranian missile attack Tuesday shortly before a staggered ceasefire announced by US President Donald Trump was meant to enter force, emergency services and the army said.

Writing on X, the Magen David Adom rescue service said three people were pronounced dead at the scene of a strike in southern Beersheba while a fourth was added in an update to its figures.

Another two people were “moderately injured” while 20 were treated for minor injuries and anxiety, it said.


UN condemns ‘weaponization of food’ in Gaza

Updated 24 June 2025
Follow

UN condemns ‘weaponization of food’ in Gaza

GENEVA: The United Nations on Tuesday condemned Israel’s apparent “weaponization of food” in Gaza, a war crime, and urged Israel’s military to “stop shooting at people trying to get food.”
“Israel’s militarised humanitarian assistance mechanism is in contradiction with international standards on aid distribution,” the UN human rights office said in written notes provided before a briefing.
“Desperate, hungry people in Gaza continue to face the inhumane choice of either starving to death or risk being killed while trying to get food.”
The US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began food distribution operations in Gaza on May 26 after Israel completely cut off supplies into the occupied Palestinian territory for more than two months, sparking warnings of mass famine.
The UN said in May that “100 percent of the population” of the besieged territory were ” at risk of famine.”
The UN and major aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF — an officially private effort with opaque funding — over concerns it was designed to cater to Israeli military objectives.
UN rights office spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan warned in the briefing notes of “scenes of chaos around the food distribution points” of the GHF.
Since the organization began operating, “the Israeli military has shelled and shot Palestinians trying to reach the distribution points, leading to many fatalities,” he said.
He pointed to reports that “over 410 Palestinians have been killed as a result, (while) at least 93 others have also been reportedly killed by the Israeli army while attempting to approach the very few aid convoys of the UN and other humanitarian organizations.”
“At least 3,000 Palestinians have been injured in these incidents,” he said.
“Each of these killings must be promptly and impartially investigated, and those responsible must be held to account.”
Kheetan cautioned that the system “endangers civilians and contributes to the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.”
“The weaponization of food for civilians, in addition to restricting or preventing their access to life-sustaining services, constitutes a war crime, and, under certain circumstances, may constitute elements of other crimes under international law,” he warned.
The UN rights office demanded immediate action to rectify the situation.
“The Israeli military must stop shooting at people trying to get food,” Kheetan said, also demanding that Israel “allow the entry of food and other humanitarian assistance needed to sustain the lives of Palestinians in Gaza.”
“It must immediately lift its unlawful restrictions on the work of UN and other humanitarian actors,” he said.
And he called on other countries to “take concrete steps to ensure that Israel — the occupying power in Gaza — complies with its duty to ensure that sufficient food and lifesaving necessities are provided to the population.”


Oman Air resumes flights as Iraq, Syria reopen airspace after Iran-Israel truce announcement

Updated 24 June 2025
Follow

Oman Air resumes flights as Iraq, Syria reopen airspace after Iran-Israel truce announcement

  • Iraq reopened its airspace 12 days after closing it amid the Iran-Israel conflict

DUBAI: Oman Air on Tuesday announced the resumption of flights as Iraq and Syria reopened their airspace following Israel and Iran’s acceptance of a ceasefire plan to end their 12-day war that had destabilized the region.

Iraq reopened its airspace 12 days after closing it during the Iran-Israel conflict, aviation authorities confirmed. The Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority said the move came “following a comprehensive assessment of the security situation and coordination with relevant national and international authorities.”

The reopening of airspace and resumption of flights is expected to ease regional flight disruptions and allow airlines to resume more direct and efficient routes. 


Gaza rescuers say Israeli forces killed 21 people waiting for aid

Updated 24 June 2025
Follow

Gaza rescuers say Israeli forces killed 21 people waiting for aid

  • Thousands of Palestinians have gathered daily in the hope of receiving food rations in Gaza, as famine looms across the territory after more than 20 months of war

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli forces killed 21 people waiting for aid near a distribution site in the center of the Palestinian territory on Tuesday, the latest deadly incident targeting aid-seekers.

Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that 21 people were killed and around 150 wounded “as a result of the Israeli occupation forces’ targeting of gatherings of citizens waiting for aid... in the central Gaza Strip with bullets and tank shells” in the early hours of Tuesday.

AFP has contacted the Israeli military for comment on the incident.

Israeli restrictions on media in the Gaza Strip and difficulties in accessing some areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by rescuers and authorities in the Palestinian territory.

Bassal added that five people were killed and several injured in an Israeli air strike that targeted a house in Gaza City at dawn.

Thousands of Palestinians have gathered daily in the hope of receiving food rations in Gaza, as famine looms across the territory after more than 20 months of war.

According to figures issued on Saturday by the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, at least 450 people have been killed and nearly 3,500 injured by Israeli fire while seeking aid since late May.

Many of those have been near sites operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, according to rescuers.

The privately run foundation’s operations in Gaza have been marred by chaotic scenes. UN agencies and major aid groups have refused to cooperate with it over concerns it was designed to cater to Israeli military objectives.

Israel’s opposition leader on Tuesday called for an end to the war in Gaza, after Israel announced it had agreed to a ceasefire with Iran.

“And now Gaza. It’s time to finish it there too. Bring back the hostages, end the war,” Yair Lapid wrote on X.