Al-Burhan and Ezzat: Did the war come out of an aborted coup?

Abdullah Ali Ibrahim

In a speech of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces SAF and President of the Sovereignty Council TSC Lt.Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, before officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers of the “18th Division” in the city of Kosti in the White Nile State, renewed the debate on the question of who ignited the ongoing war in Sudan in a useful way to achieve its goal.
This is the question that our political elite dealt with, despite its danger, with negligence, if not with spiteful partisanship. The Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC), which represents the modernists, liberals and the left, and the Islamist forces hid it in the dungeons of their historical differences.
Each of them claimed that the other ignited the match of war, even in isolation from the two warring military forces. The FFC said that the Islamists were the ones who ignited the war and dragged the army by its reins with them to return to power. In contrast, the Islamists said that the FFC ignited the war after warning everyone of a devastating war if people did not humble themselves to the framework agreement signed between the SAF and the Rapid Support Forces RSF in December 2022.
This was also, of course, out of concern for the return of the rule that was removed from it by the army and Rapid Support Forces RSF coup in October 2021. Appointing the torchbearer of war is a serious matter. It is the appointment of the aggressor party that is authorized by the humanitarian law of war to commit violations that even extend to civilians whenever they use their headquarters for hostile military action. It is a violation with conditions known as proportionality, meaning that the aggressor party refrains from using this license whenever the loss among these civilians is not proportionate to the military benefit from it, not to mention the right of the attacked party to seek the assistance of whomever it wants or desires, such as the United Nations UN to help it repel the aggression against it. Appointing the aggressor party is a ruling matter for managing the war from A to Z.
We ended up arbitrarily asking who started the war into a Safavid war. Behind the war, the war witnessed, mobilizes every group of public opinion to stand with its belief in who started the war, which is purely a harmful partisan Safavid revenge, which we have historically burdened by saying about such things, “Dahes and Al-Ghabraa.” Al-Burhan came to Kosti to be as close as he could to offer condolences for the martyrs of the village of Wad Al-Noura in Gezira state, who were killed by the Rapid Support Forces RSF on June 5. During his speech at that condolence, he accused the Rapid Support Forces RSF of starting the war with a coup that was prepared for him. This is of course his old opinion, but he came with what supports his statement, which is the presence of the “Rapid Support RSF advisor, Yousuf Ezzat, in the Radio and TV buildings in Omdurman to broadcast the coup statements to the public.
He provided evidence for this with recordings from surveillance cameras in the building that the SAF recaptured from the “Rapid Support RSF two months ago or so.
The national television showed these recordings in a report titled “Threads of the Conspiracy.” It stated that Ezzat was in the radio and television building at seven o’clock in the morning on April 15, 2023, the day of the war, and for four days after. Ezzat appears in the recordings in the TV control room, going in and out, and in some clips he appears with a “Rapid Support RSF officer and an engineer wearing a galabiya without a turban or cap, as if he had been summoned quickly from his home for the mission that the “conspiracy threads” claimed the other engineers had risen above the temptation of its carrot and were not afraid of its stick. It is clear from the video that Ezzat was tense as he stood next to the engineer who was trying to operate the TV broadcast in vain.
The reason for the malfunction, according to the report, was that the TV engineers had withdrawn the broadcast signal from “Arabsat”. One of the funniest things in the recording is that two members of the “Rapid Support RSF armed men were seen searching Ezzat’s bag while he was absent from the room, and as soon as they heard him move, they quickly gathered it and ran to sit on a sofa at the other end.
Ezzat did not delay in responding to Al-Burhan. He said that he was indeed in the Radio and TV building on the evening of April 15, 2023, to broadcast the Rapid Support Forces’ statements after the treachery incident in the Sports City.
He said that he broadcasted statements by the Rapid Support Forces RSF none of which included a statement about the coup. The report had transmitted three of them.
One stated that the battle that people had been following since yesterday was nearing its end. The SAF is the aggressor against the Rapid Support Forces RSF which, along with the honorable members of the armed forces SAF is cleaning up the remaining pockets of the attackers. He added that it was a battle that the Rapid Support Forces RSF were forced to engage in in order to confront their brothers in the armed forces, and that after the gang’s defeat, Sudan would have a single, strong army working to serve Sudan.
As for the second statement, the Rapid Support Forces RSF denied the news that the army had seized its headquarters or closed the roads to the General Command, which the Rapid Support Forces RSF had seized and within which battles were taking place.
He said that “support” actually controls all vital locations in the capital and the states, and that he found elements of the Operations Authority of the Intelligence and Security of the “Salvation Regime” that had been dissolved and inhabited by the “Rapid Support RSF after the revolution, and the shadow battalions attributed to the Islamists that fight with the army against them and the honorable members of the armed forces, and they are defeated and pursued. In a third statement, the “Rapid Support RSF announced its control over the general command and the presidency of the military divisions in Darfur, in addition to seizing SAF camps in Jebel Awliya, Soba, Al-Baqeir and the Military Industries. He added that they had identified the locations of Burhan and Lt.Gen.Shams El-Din Kabashi and that they were being arrested. He announced that the Inspector of the Armed Forces, Maj. Gen. Mubarak Kodi Katmur, had joined their ranks, and that they had arrested 42 Islamist snipers led by Ali Karti, a leader in the “Salvation Regime”.
What frustrated the investigation as a profession in this war or other disasters was the disbursement of the document with any circumstances surrounding it, as if the investigation could proceed without documentation, or that it would not be approved except with the document that one party was satisfied with.
The Coordination of Democratic and Civil Forces (Taqddum)dismissed the recordings of Ezzat not because of a defect in their text, but because Burhan, according to them, only revealed them to cover up his shame in betraying the village of Wad al-Noura. It seemed as if Burhan had decided to relieve himself of the embarrassment and planned to accuse the “Rapid Support” of a coup that was the origin of this war.
One needs to hear Burhan’s speech to know that his tongue stumbled over the incident of this recording without prior planning. He brought it up at the end after he appeared three times as if he had finished what he had to say, only to return and speak again. Sudanese politicians, particularly the military ones, do not know when they have exhausted what they have to say to their audience in order to leave.
After one of them is about to bid farewell to the people, something occurs to him to continue his speech again. So saying that the news of the recordings was for a purpose in Burhan’s mind is an exaggeration that we do not want to exempt us from analyzing the text of the recordings as one of countless witnesses that are urgently needed in order to identify the aggressor in this war professionally and not partisan confusion.
The reasons for accepting the recording and its investigation almost cry out for us to accept it. For example, the “Threads of the Conspiracy” report said that Ezzat was inside the radio and TV building on the morning of the coup, while Ezzat said that he came to the building that evening. The “Threads of the Conspiracy” report included a recording of Ezzat speaking to a TV channel that asked him what he was doing on the first day of the war.
He said that he was sleeping in his house when his mother knocked on the door of his room and told him to wake up, and when he woke up she told him, “There was shooting,” and he said, “There was shooting around our house.” To know whether what “Threads of the Conspiracy” said or what Ezzat said is true, it is necessary to investigate the time the recording was recorded, and this recording will spare us a lot of nonsense if it happens. The news of the “Rapid Support RSF coup that led us to the destruction of war has been reported many times. If we had not been negligent about the testimonies about the circumstances of the outbreak of the war, we would have had a body of it that would suffice instead of partisan blasphemy in it.
The respected journalist and editor-in-chief of Al-Tayyar newspaper, Osman Mirghani, was among the first to say that the beginning of this war was a coup orchestrated by a group of the FFC, not all of them, with a Sovereignty Council TSC and civilian ministers. The coup would have been carried out under the front of the army and its first statement was what people are used to from it. They will accept it with all its flaws. The Rapid Support Forces RSF will provide support and protection for the coup. Osman said that the plan failed due to the resistance shown by Burhan’s guard team, who were ordered to be quietly arrested and imprisoned. The war broke out and this testimony from an experienced journalist dissipated under the attraction of another account by Osman in the same testimony. He said in it that he had met with Hemeti for three hours before the war at his invitation after an article in which he advised him to stop his roughness with the army because he would lose his army, money and position.
People clung to his account of Hemeti rather than the one about the coup. They turned it into an investigation that became familiar and faded away like a single word in the puzzle of who started the war, waiting to be included with others in the search for the aggressor.
The news of the “Rapid Support RSF coup that led us to the destruction of war came many times. If we had not been negligent about the testimonies about the circumstances of the outbreak of war, we would have had a body of them that would suffice for partisan blasphemy in it. The respected journalist and editor-in-chief of “Al-Tayyar” newspaper, Osman Mirghani, was among the first to say that the beginning of this war was a coup arranged by a group of “Freedom” forces, not all of them, with a Sovereignty Council TSC and civilian ministers. The coup would have been carried out under the front of the army and its first statement was what people are used to from it. They will accept it with all its flaws. The “Rapid Support RSF will provide support and protection for the coup. Osman said that the plan failed due to the resistance shown by Burhan’s guard team, who were ordered to be arrested quietly and imprisoned. The war broke out and this testimony from an experienced journalist was dispelled under the attraction of another story by Osman in the same testimony. He said in it that he had met with Hemedti for three hours before the war at his invitation after an article in which he advised him to stop his roughness with the army because he would lose his army, money and position.
People clung to his story about Hemeti without the one about the coup. They turned it into an investigation that made it disappear and it faded away like a single word in the puzzle of who started the war, waiting to be included with others in the search for the aggressor. The news of the “Rapid Support” coup in solidarity with the “Freedom” Forces, which led to the war, came from an unexpected source, namely Khaled Mohieddin, an activist in “Taqddum “and its predecessors, in a circulating video. He said that the dispute over the military reform managed by the “Freedom” Forces, which is an advanced part of the framework agreement, was not about the period for completing the integration of the Rapid Support Forces RSF into the armed forces. The real dispute over the framework, in his words, was between those who want the army to monopolize the rifle without others, so that it does not become a supporter of the civilian forces.
To put the dots on the letters, he said that the advocates of the army’s plan to monopolize weapons are the “Islamic Movement” that has the reins of the army and wanted to free others from the weapons. He added that he had another version of the incident before, but he reconsidered it, and he is responsible for his last version that he declared. He said that the truth of the matter is that understandings were reached between those who arranged for the establishment of a civilian government, namely the FFC, and without a doubt, the Rapid Support Forces RSF will play the role of its security police.
The Rapid Support Forces RSF agreed after presenting the plan to them.
It is our right, and while there are calls to involve the civilian political class in the negotiations to end the ongoing war in Sudan and the arrangements for what comes after it, to ask whether there is any benefit in involving this class that has withdrawn from the war itself by turning it into a popular strife between its right and left.
We saw how its parties turned away from testimonies about the war and disposed of them indiscriminately instead of accumulating them as a whole body to investigate it with sobriety, professionalism and responsibility.
Contrary to that, we find that it improvised the investigation and reached a ridiculous level. It blamed the Islamists for starting the war, and their goal was to return to power.
However, after that, “Taqddum “had doubts about who started the war, as one of the decisions of its conference in Addis Ababa on January 1 was to form a credible national international committee to investigate who started the war.
But it quickly returned in the “Political Vision” report for its founding conference on May 30th to its old ways of blaming the Islamists for starting the war and working to continue it.
This is a confusion that requires advice for those who want to deal with the civil forces to take it with a “grain of salt.”