Burhan wants UN envoy dismissed
Sudan army chief takes aim at UNMIS
KHARTOUM: Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has accused UN special envoy Volker Perthes of stoking a brutal conflict with paramilitaries, the latest in a series of apparent moves to bolster his war effort.
United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said he was “shocked” by Gen Burhan’s letter, which requested “the nomination of a replacement” to Mr Perthes and accused him of committing “fraud and disinformation” in facilitating a political process which broke down into six weeks of devastating urban warfare.
Gen Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, were meant to meet for negotiations facilitated by the UN on April 15, the day they turned Khartoum into a war zone.
The meeting aimed to restore a transition to civilian rule disrupted since 2021 when Gen Burhan and Gen Daglo together seized power in a coup before falling out. As their feud worsened, the international community tried to get them to reach a deal on integration of Gen Daglo’s RSF into the regular army.
Since late last year Mr Perthes and the UN mission in Sudan (UNMIS), which he heads, have been the target of several protests by thousands of military and Islamist supporters who accused Mr Perthes of “foreign intervention” and demanded his dismissal.
Similar protests have taken place in the eastern city of Port Sudan since the war started. Mr Perthes had maintained his “optimism” and said the war took him “by surprise”.
In the letter, Gen Burhan accused Mr Perthes of bias and of not respecting “national sovereignty.”
He said Mr Perthes presented a misleading picture “of consensus” in his reports to the UN, and “without these signs of encouragement, the rebel leader Daglo would not have launched his military operations”.
It has never, however, been possible to verify who fired the first shots.
The fighting across Sudan has killed more than 1,800 people, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.
Mr Perthes is currently in New York, where last Monday he briefed the Security Council on Sudan. He responded to those who “accuse the UN” by saying those responsible are “the two generals at war”.
Mr Perthes “may not be allowed back into Sudan,” according to Sudanese analyst Kholood Khair, founder of Khartoum-based think tank Confluence Advisory.
“His visa will be a litmus test to gauge the resurgence of the Islamists,” she wrote on Twitter.
She and other analysts have said the international community, in its efforts to broker a political solution for Sudan before the war, was guilty of appeasing the two generals.
Pro-democracy voices have long accused Gen Burhan of being a Trojan horse for Islamists from the regime of strongman Omar al-Bashir, whom the military ousted in 2019 after mass protests.
Several high-ranking officials from the Bashir era have found roles in Burhan’s administration since the coup.
During the fighting Gen Burhan’s backing has only grown clearer, including “a web of crony-capitalist corporations, from banks and telecom companies owned by Islamists and intelligence officers to companies owned by the military itself,” according to Sudan expert Alex de Waal.
Gen Daglo himself has called Burhan an “Islamist” and a “coup plotter” intent on reviving “the vestiges of the old regime”.
Gen Daglo, whose RSF are descendants of the notorious Janjaweed militia unleashed by Bashir in Darfur, has links to gold mines and Mr de Waal has said he has thrived in an environment “where money and guns determine everything.”
In a statement from UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric, Mr Guterres said he was “proud of the work done by Volker Perthes and reaffirms his full confidence in his Special Representative”.
The US State Department voiced its “strong support” for Mr Perthes and its “concern” over Gen Burhan’s letter calling for his resignation.
A one-week ceasefire brokered by the US and Saudi Arabia expires tonight.
The two nations called on the warring parties to continue talks on extending the ceasefire to help in the “delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance” to civilians, according to a report by the official Saudi Press Agency.