Sudan is in trouble: stalemate as the power struggle between Al-Burhan and Hemedti continues
Sudan Events – Agencies
Black smoke and flames appear in a market in Omdurman on May 17, 2023, in a screenshot taken from a video bulletin obtained by Reuters. A year after the start of the confrontation between them, neither Sudanese general appears to be in a position to win the war.
It seems that the continuation of the power struggle to resolve the conflict is more unlikely than ever. For the first time since the beginning of the war on April 15, 2023, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan was the offensive. While more than two-thirds of Sudan’s capital remained in the hands of his rival, Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as “Hemedti”, head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, the army had regained ground in Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city on the west bank of the Nile. This turning point in the conflict began in mid-February, after fierce fighting, elite soldiers supported by drones broke the siege of a military base south of Omdurman. A month later, on March 12, armed forces seized the public broadcasting building a few kilometers to the north.
Read more about Sudan’s war: Millions on the brink of famine and the humanitarian situation dire These successes provided Burhan with an opportunity to gloat. On a visit to the Omdurman base, far from his reserve headquarters in Port Sudan, the 64-year-old commander of the armed forces and the country’s de facto ruler praised his troops for their “good conditions and morale.” This was his way of signaling the end of the invasion phase at the hands of his enemy Hemedti, who is fifteen years younger than him, the former second-in-command in the Transitional Sovereignty Council, and alongside whom he dismantled, the democratic transition in the post-Bashir era. In order to struggle for power, Hemedti, a former member of the Janjaweed militia and originally from an Arab tribe in Darfur, extended his control over vast areas of the country, first in the various provinces of his western stronghold, followed by the Gazira region in November 2023, the capital of this state, Wad Madani, a refuge for many Khartoum residents, fell in just two days. Crossing the desert, about 4,000 RSF fighters surprised 10,000 to 20,000 soldiers stationed along the Nile River, forcing most of them to flee. Since then, the paramilitary forces have not launched any major attack. The current power struggle has exposed the weaknesses of both sides. “Neither side can achieve complete military victory,” says Suleiman Baldo, director of the Sudan Research Center for Transparency and Policy Tracking.
On the Rapid Support Forces side, Hemedti is struggling to control his forces spread across several regions and responsible for committing atrocities against civilians. As for Al-Burhan, his air force, the army’s main asset in wartime, suffered heavy losses and was forced to reduce bombing campaigns.
An editorial stated: Hemedti Sudan, the criminal who wins the diplomatic war. This situation did not encourage the two opponents to find a peaceful solution. None of the ceasefire agreements agreed upon in Jeddah under the joint leadership of Saudi Arabia and the United States have been adhered to it. The recent “secret” talks in Manama also failed to find a way out of the crisis, despite high-level meetings between Lieutenant General Shams al-Din Kabashi, who was sent by Burhan to Bahrain, and General Abdul Rahim Dagalo, Hemedti’s brother. The army has no interest in accepting a ceasefire while it makes progress on the ground. In early March, in response to a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire during the month of Ramadan, the second-in-command of the armed forces, Major General Yasser Al-Atta, took the initiative to decide on a ceasefire. Al-Atta pointed to the precondition that the Rapid Support Forces return to their barracks.
The RSF had already made this unrealistic request in January, after a meeting in the Ethiopian capital with Hemedti and former civilian Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. During this meeting, the RSF commander said he supports a cessation of hostilities and the specter of civil war. “The army has no interest in accepting a ceasefire when it makes progress on the ground,” says Kholoud Khair, founding director of the Khartoum-based Confluence Advisory Research Center. According to Khair, Al-Burhan will participate in the negotiations as soon as he “regains the upper hand militarily.” Within this pressure, the two generals are continuing the recruitment and arming campaigns that they launched several months ago. With about 100,000 men in each camp at the start of the war, the death toll on both sides is already in the thousands. In Darfur, the leader of the Rapid Support Forces relies on Arab tribal militias. In the north and east, Burhan relies on Islamist networks affiliated with the former regime, as well as civilians who have had to arm themselves in order to prevent looting rather than break their allegiance to the army. Former rebels Minni Minawi and Jibril Ibrahim, Burhan’s allies, are also contributing their own units.
Egypt mediates Sudanese peace talks: As it tightens its grip on Hemedti, who is protected by the UAE and has become extremely wealthy through his control of gold mines in Darfur, he has never seen his resources dry up. On the other hand, Al-Burhan can no longer rely on the help of his Egyptian sponsor, who is himself suffering from bankruptcy, and who increasingly relies on funding from former members of the National Congress Party led by former President Omar Al-Bashir, which exposes him to the risk of offending his party from his neighbor. The northern and closest support. At the same time, recruitment from outside the ranks of the army or Rapid Support Forces is on the rise. Military success now depends on each side’s ability to “mobilize for specific goals,” says Deshaies, a Sudan specialist at France’s National Institute of Research for Sustainable Development (IRD). There are battles and warnings about the “proliferation of weapons” and the “dispersion of the conflict” that could become a prelude to civil war.
