SUDAN GRIPPED BY WORST DAY OF DEADLY UNREST YET
▶ Khartoum residents report shelling and air strikes as violence continues amid calls for calm
A battle for Khartoum between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces intensified yesterday.
Residents in the Sudanese capital reported shelling and air strikes throughout the third day of fighting.
“It’s by far the worst day since the fighting began. The shelling, the explosions and the roar of jets never stopped,” said university lecturer and rights campaigner Sulaima Ishaq.
The UAE’s President Sheikh Mohamed emphasised the need for peace during a call with Charles Michel, President of the European Council.
Sheikh Mohamed “stressed the importance of stopping the escalation, ensuring the protection of civilians, upholding the supreme interest of Sudan, and returning to the political track”, state news agency Wam reported.
Sudan has been scarred by civil wars since independence in 1956.
But Khartoum, home to about seven million people, has never witnessed violence of the magnitude seen since the unrest began on Saturday.
More than 180 have been killed in the fighting and about 1,800 have been injured, a UN envoy said yesterday.
Neither military officials nor members of the RSF have released casualty figures, but both are believed to have lost dozens of soldiers.
Sudan’s army chief, Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, yesterday said he was willing to negotiate an to end the fighting, a shift away from an earlier resistance to the idea of holding talks with RSF commander Gen Mohamed Dagalo.
“Every war ends at the negotiation table, even if the opponent is defeated,” Gen Al Burhan told Sky News Arabia.
The RSF is refusing to integrate into Sudan’s armed forces as demanded by Gen Al Burhan and civilian politicians who are trying to restore the
Sudan’s latest bout of civil strife is largely a fight over the principle of one nation, one army. It is a battle between two generals vying for dominance at a time when the nation is striving to shift to democratic rule.
Army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and Gen Mohamed Dagalo – commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces – had been loosely allied since 2019.
The army and the RSF together removed former president Omar Al Bashir from power in 2019 during an uprising against his 29-year rule.
Gen Dagalo has served as deputy chairman of the ruling, military-led Transitional Sovereignty Council, led by Gen Al Burhan.
They again joined forces and staged a military takeover in 2021 that upended Sudan’s democratic transition.
At the heart of their differences now is the RSF’s full integration into the country’s armed forces.
Gen Al Burhan has recently insisted on the step as a condition of signing a deal to end the country’s political crisis.
Gen Dagalo has voiced his support for the principle of “one army” but has never clearly stated his willingness to accept the assimilation of his well equipped and experienced paramilitary group into the armed forces.
Gen Dagalo, an ally of Russia with strong links to some regional powers, has recently promoted himself as an advocate of democratic rule, while casting his rivals in the military as power-hungry figures clinging to power.
His effort to reinvent himself as a supporter of democracy has been met with scepticism. Most Sudanese see him and Gen Al Burhan as resistant to civilian rule.
A member of Darfur’s camelherding Arab Rizeigat tribe, Gen Dagalo made his name as a leader of the Janjaweed militia that fought on the government’s side in Darfur’s civil war in the 2000s.
Al Bashir legalised the militia and gave it its present name in 2013.
In 2017, the Sudanese Parliament passed a law making the RSF a part of the armed forces, albeit with a large degree of autonomy.
In the face of mass protests in 2018 and 2019 against his rule, Al Bashir ordered the RSF to Khartoum to help protect his government.
Gen Dagalo arrived in the capital with his men but, sensing Al Bashir’s regime was likely to collapse, did not take part in suppressing the uprising, leaving that task to Sudanese troops.
He hoped his decision would win him the support of protesters and the pro-democracy movement at large.
But that act of political opportunism did not stop demonstrators from continuing to demand that the RSF be part of a single national army.
Their position was soon validated. In June 2019, RSF members were widely suspected of leading the violent break-up of a sit-in protest outside the armed forces headquarters in Khartoum.
At least 100 were killed in the violence and there were reports of sexual assaults on some protesters.
Gen Al Burhan, 62, is a career soldier from northern Sudan who rose through the ranks under Al Bashir.
Gen Al Burhan commanded Sudan’s ground forces before Al Bashir appointed him as inspector general of the army in February 2019, two months before the military removed the former president from power.
His leadership of the Transitional Sovereignty Council began in August 2019, when the transitional military-civilian government he would take over in 2021 first took office.
Gen Al Burhan has been the subject of intensifying speculation about his political ambitions and how close his links are to militants loyal to Al Bashir.
Gen Al Burhan is the latest in a long line of army officers who have seized or attempted to take power in Sudan since the country declared independence in 1956.
His commitment to democratic rule, which he has profusely expressed in recent months, is questionable given the takeover he led with Gen Dagalo 18 months ago.
Seeing in the fighting a chance to settle the score once and for all and emerge as the nation’s supreme soldier, Gen Al Burhan wants the RSF to be dissolved.