Rival generals unleash intense fighting in Sudan
Clashes dash nation’s dreams of democracy
NAIROBI — Fighting raged Saturday across the capital of Sudan as months of rising tensions between rival factions of the armed forces suddenly spiraled into an all-out battle for control of one of Africa’s biggest countries.
Clashes that erupted early in the day at a military base in the capital, Khartoum, quickly spread to the presidential palace, the international airport, and the headquarters of the state broadcaster. Residents cowered in their homes as gunfire and explosions rang out. Warplanes screeched over rooftops at low altitudes.
By Saturday evening, it was unclear who was in control of the country.
The chaos was an alarming turn for a nation that only four years ago was an inspiration to both Africa and the Arab world. Jubilant protesters, symbolized in part by a young woman in a white robe, toppled their widely detested ruler of three decades, President Omar al-Bashir, ushering in expectations of democracy and an end to the country’s global isolation.
The revolution faltered 18 months ago when two generals, now fighting each other, united to seize power in a coup. But the future of Sudan, a strategically important country just south of Egypt, has preoccupied pro-democracy protesters who have continued to lose their lives in demonstrations, as well as Western countries, notably the United States.
In the past year, Sudan has become an important battleground in the West’s rivalry with Russia. Russia’s private military company Wagner has deployed mercenaries to Sudan and runs a major gold mining concession, while the Kremlin has pressed Sudan for permission to allow Russian warships to dock at ports on the country’s Red Sea coastline.
Any hopes for a peaceful transition to democracy were shattered early Saturday, however, when strained relations between the two generals in charge of the country — the army chief, General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and Lieutenant General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, the commander of the powerful Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries — turned violent.
Videos on social media showed soldiers firing in the streets, armored vehicles speeding through residential areas, travelers taking shelter on the floor of the airport amid reports of battles inside the terminal.
Sudan’s doctors’ committee, which tracks casualties during disturbances, said by Saturday afternoon that at least three people had been killed and dozens injured.
Saudia Airlines said in a statement that one of its planes was damaged on the runway at the airport. One person posted a video, shot inside an airplane, saying that two people had been killed in the seats behind him. It was unclear if the two incidents were linked.
By Saturday afternoon, both sides had issued dueling statements accusing each other of starting the fight and making conflicting claims about who controlled key positions, like the presidential palace, the airport, and military airfields in other cities, including al-Obeid and Meroe. The claims could not be independently verified.
An official at a Western embassy in Khartoum said clashes had erupted in the city of Nyala, in the western Darfur region.
“We are sorry to be fighting our countrymen, but this criminal is the one who forced us to do it,” Dagalo told Al Jazeera Mubasher, an Arabic-language television station, during a strongly worded interview.
“We will capture Burhan and bring him to justice, or he dies like any dog,” he added.
An army spokesperson called Dagalo the leader of “rebel” forces, and said the only viable future for the country was “under one army under disciplined military command.”
The scenes of combat and chaos unfolding Saturday, often outside the windows of terrified residents filming with their cellphones, were alarming even in a country with a long experience of military takeovers. Although Sudan, which gained independence in 1956, has had more successful coups than any other African country, none have involved such intensive combat between two wings of the armed forces in the center of the capital.
Although it was too early to say if the country was tumbling into a civil war, several people reached by phone said it felt like that.
“There is fighting in Khartoum. There is fighting in Meroe. There is fighting around the Khartoum airport,” Amgad Fareid Eltayeb, a former adviser to Abdalla Hamdok, Sudan’s civilian prime minister who was ousted in the bloodless October 2021 military coup, said in a phone interview. “How else do you define civil war?”
The violent mayhem was also a major blow to US, United Nations, African Union, and other foreign officials who had been scrambling this past week to head off the possibility of just such clashes.
In fact, this was supposed to be a moment when Sudan’s warring generals would surrender power, not battle over it. Under a Western-backed deal signed in December, Burhan and Dagalo agreed to hand power back to a civilian-led government as early as this month.
But the handover required them to agree on how quickly they would merge their forces into a single army, and that became a source of burning, apparently insurmountable, disagreement. Diplomats involved in the talks said that army hardliners wanted Dagalo to disband his Rapid Support Force within two years. Dagalo insisted it would take at least 10 years.
As fighting intensified Saturday, Internet access remained open, which allowed some Sudanese to vent their anger at the warring military leaders they said were holding the country hostage. But some also turned their ire against foreign diplomats they accused of pushing forward with an unviable political deal.
“The political process did not address the most dangerous issue,” said Eltayeb, the former official. “There was an assumption that by ignoring it, it would solve itself. That was nonsense.”