On the Quest for Biblical Lineage and the Abrahamic Frame: When the Wanderer Outpaces His Master

By Fawzi Bushra

General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s op-ed in The Wall Street Journal carried a set of assumptions and conclusions that sit uneasily atop a history whose ink has not yet dried and whose pools of blood have not yet evaporated. It would have been more fitting for the General—having chosen to present his “goods” to the public—to refine his craft, grounding his argument for war and peace in clear reasoning and in a frank admission of the grave misjudgment he made when he insisted on “bringing the Rapid Support Forces along” — a force whose record is burdened with atrocities — in shaping Sudan’s post-revolution order. This was no accidental choice; it was one that Burhan himself had pressed for relentlessly.

To denounce the RSF after the war, to attribute heinous crimes to it, and to specify its sources of weapons and sponsorship—all this is material that the very audience Burhan sought to address already knows well. Western governments, satellite imagery, international organizations, and global media have documented these facts comprehensively. The crimes of the RSF speak for themselves; they are now common knowledge. The General’s real dilemma lies in explaining his relationship with the RSF before the war. Here, his complaints about the RSF’s expansion, its advanced weaponry, its autonomy, and its accumulation of wealth—the country’s wealth—ring hollow in light of the partnership the two men forged from the fall of Bashir in April 2019 until their joint coup against Abdalla Hamdok’s government in October 2021.

Had I been in Burhan’s place, I would have avoided the terrain of explaining the RSF before the war and focused my artillery on the RSF after the war. For prior to the conflict, the RSF served as a pillar of support for Burhan, tirelessly promoting his “national virtues” to the Sudanese public—a campaign the civilian forces joined in, with Abdalla Hamdok framing the relationship as one of “harmonization.” This was the very “harmony” that Hemedti sought to express in his own idiom by saying that their “eyes and ears” should remain united.

Burhan could have simply said that, despite fully knowing the RSF’s origins and conduct, he had sought to integrate it into the state’s military structure—but it betrayed him. Yet even this claim of “betrayal” collapses when viewed against the history of their cooperation, beginning from the moment Burhan conditioned his leadership on Hemedti joining him in the “national mission” that had fallen into Lt. Gen. Ibn Auf’s hands for scarcely a day.

In his op-ed, Burhan was tiptoeing across a field of mines, leaping from one to the next in a desperate search for firm ground. To portray the RSF as a “cancerous growth” that army leadership only discovered on the morning of April 15, 2023, is a dangerous falsification of history. Many senior officers—and even soldiers—had long seen the tumor and warned of it, often at the cost of their positions. Ordinary Sudanese had seen it too, and watched their army wither as they clutched at the heart of the nation in fear it might fail. Intelligence assessments had noted what no one else could. Many accused Burhan of willfully blinding himself to the danger, even attacking those who questioned the RSF by labeling them “hypocrites”—all while the RSF’s forces sprawled across the horizon, equipped with advanced weapons from known sources entering the country through known routes.

Yet in his Wall Street Journal piece, Burhan suddenly claimed full awareness of the RSF threat. This assertion can be tested against the events of 2019–2023: What did Burhan actually do in those years that translated his supposed awareness into policy or action?

As for the civilian prime minister ushered in by the revolution—more precisely, brought to it—he served as the maestro and composer of the “harmonization” symphony arising from the dismal military and political realities after Bashir’s fall.

The easier path for Burhan, rather than this elaborate discourse on the RSF’s corruption and crimes, would have been to say simply: the RSF, whose commander was my deputy, is an armed faction that has rebelled against the state, and we will deal with it as any state deals with rebellion within its military ranks. Period.

The core problem of this war, from day one, has been its shaky narrative of legitimacy. Condemning the RSF’s pre-war behavior is unconvincing unless it is framed as rebellion. Complaints about its swelling ranks and sophisticated weaponry only invite the retort: You tied the knots with your own hands and blew the sails yourself, General.

Burhan’s intent in his op-ed was to present a “national petition” to global public opinion and to international influencers—to explain why the war began and how it can end. But this effort came late, and worse, arrived in the form of an inelegant and clumsy argument attempting to “win hearts and minds” in the West—an effort easily dismissed by a Westerner with the Sudanese colloquial quip: “A Torah tale for your undershirt.”

The delay in addressing Western power centers can only be explained by the General’s own uncertainty about his case—writing, erasing, adding, and deleting until, three years later, he deemed it ready for publication. More likely, the op-ed was inspired by the renewed global attention generated by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s briefing to former President Donald Trump, urging serious engagement to end Sudan’s tragedy. After that intervention, it became Burhan’s turn to present “the Sudanese file” to the world—from the “Kingdom of Kush to the present day”—resulting in the WSJ article.

Here, Burhan erred twice: once in explaining the logic of the war, and a second time in choosing the wrong vehicles to deliver his message to the world.

The logic of the war rests on one word: rebellion—not merely armed confrontation with the state, but the murder of civilians, the looting of property, and the abduction and rape of women.

No state tolerates rebellion.
No state negotiates with those who commit genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Yet Burhan chose instead to alarm Americans by noting that the RSF had killed a guard at the U.S. embassy and nearly attacked a diplomatic convoy—claims unnecessary for stirring American concern. What the world needed from Burhan was a simple, firm, unequivocal explanation of why the Sudanese army and people are fighting the RSF.

What he should have asked from the world is not mediation but assistance in ending a rebellion and stopping ethnic cleansing—actual and threatened, including calls to exterminate entire tribes.

Instead of frightening others about the RSF, Burhan only needed to point to the killing of Sudanese civilians—men, women, and children—as reason enough for any state to fight such a force. The United States attacks boats in the Caribbean merely on suspicion of carrying narcotics; what then of verified massacres that have displaced millions and devastated a nation?

Burhan failed to tell the world how many Sudanese the RSF has killed, even approximately; how many women and children suffered grave abuses; and what the estimated economic destruction has been—$100 billion? $200 billion? $300 billion? These numbers matter, especially for the question of reparations and reconstruction.

Having previously accused the UAE of fueling the war and supplying the RSF, Burhan should have boldly told the world that the UAE and the RSF bear full responsibility for compensating Sudan for its losses. Yet his op-ed remained silent where speech was essential.

Another concern seemed to haunt Burhan: his attempt to reach the world’s “heart” through familiar pathways—methods he had tested before under the cover of night until dawn exposed them and everyone in government disavowed them, as in the secret Entebbe meeting. Burhan now revived the outcomes of that visit, if not its details.

Thus he appealed to Christian Zionism and Israel using two brittle crutches: Biblical Kush and the Abrahamic ideology, or the Abraham Accords. These are not references that stir the Sudanese people to say, “Yes, indeed, this is who we are—biblical, Abrahamic.” Burhan’s historical expedition to claim Kush as “Biblical” kinship is far-fetched, costly, and faintly absurd.

Kush was not a Biblical entity. It was a deeply Sudanese and African civilization rooted in its own worldview. If it had any spiritual links, they lay with Egyptian theology. To label the Kingdom of Kush as “Biblical” is religious appropriation unsupported by history.

Burhan then links this forced “Biblicality” to a modern political theology—the Abrahamic doctrine, whose warp and weft are normalization with Israel—reminding us of Entebbe and the free normalization offered as a down payment for foreign approval.

The War of Dignity is far too noble to be pursued through these shallow waters that confuse the desires of Caesar with the needs of the homeland. Worse still, the frail mounts chosen for this journey can neither carry Sudan to its goals nor satisfy Caesar’s ambitions.

Whatever the origins of Burhan’s op-ed—his ideas or those of his advisers—it sought a destination but lost the road. The world recognizes only strength, which comes from internal cohesion, especially in wartime. Nothing irritates global powers more than pleading, flattering, or fabricated kinship. Even genuine kinship offers no protection when interests are threatened: America, a product of Europe, constantly scolds Europeans on security and restrains its support. Gaza stands as another stark example of abandoned kin.

The shortest path to the center of history is to face it directly as you pursue your goal. Fail to do so, and history will seat you on its margins. What you sought by speaking outward must first be earned by speaking inward. Only then will the door open.