Two generals, for one country. Since Saturday April 15, Sudan has been on fire and bloodshed. At the origin of what is now emerging as a civil war, already killing hundreds: the clash between two rival soldiers, in power since a coup in 2019. Abdel Fattah al-Burhane against Mohammed Hamdane Daglo.
Their story begins in 2019. Abdel Fattah Al-Bourhane, then a general in the conventional army, gets rid of President Omar El-Bashir, with the support of the crowd. When he came to power, he refused a democratic transition and sealed an alliance with Mohammed Hamdane Daglo, head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a militia that sows terror in Darfur. The man is too influential not to give him a piece of the pie.
At their own risk. “Two generals, each with his army. Never, since the Roman Empire, has this situation been able to lead to anything other than a conflict”, explains in an interview with L’Express, Claude Rilly, historian of ancient Sudan and director of research at the CNRS. In the street today, it is the men, now integrated into the Rapid Support Forces (FSR), who since Saturday have been trying to wrest power from the army, and therefore from Abdel Fattah al-Burhane.
Daglo, the gold mines and Wagner
He who was a cog in the military-Islamist dictatorship of General Al-Bashir now poses as a paragon of the civil state and a fierce opponent of political Islam. He now aligns himself with civilians to denounce the army and claim the “acquis of the revolution” of 2019. At the time of the Darfur war, “the elite in Khartoum saw him as an illiterate, an upstart thug who ‘She only armed to do the dirty work of the Darfur war,’ Alan Bosweel, a researcher at the International Crisis Group (ICG), told AFP.
At the head of his militia, he notably fought in Darfur, at the time on the orders of former President Omar El-Béchir. A carnage. Hundreds of thousands of dead and more than two million displaced later, “Hemetti” extended his sphere of influence: from Darfur, where he still has his quarters, he began to reign also over Khartoum, his corridors of power, diplomatic appointments and trade agreements.
For months, he has been invited on social networks, multiplying accounts on Facebook, Instagram or even TikTok to address the youngest – two thirds of Sudanese are under 30 years old. According to the United States, the man would have teamed up with the men of Wagner, this Russian militia guided by Vladimir Putin. The two forces would co-run most of the country’s gold mines, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). Did Russia participate in starting the war? Nothing proves it.
Egypt very close to Burhane
This Saturday, Mohammed Hamdane Daglo would have launched his men at the HQ of General Burhane, trigger of the war. An attack carried out “at nine o’clock in the morning” in the middle of Ramadan and under a burning sun. General Burhane, popular in 2019, has lost his hegemony, notably after several campaigns against him. His staunchest opponents, the last strongholds of protesters who continue to brave a deadly crackdown to demand civilian power, accuse him of being a Trojan horse of Islamists and Bashir-era caciques – many of whom have already been reinstated. to their posts.
Coming from the ranks of the army and the Egyptian military academy – like Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi – the man is very close to his influential neighbor to the north. It is moreover Cairo which recently proposed to the Sudanese political forces an initiative giving the upper hand to General Burhane. Friendship, only? “Egypt has always considered Sudan as its backyard. Until recently, school books did not indicate the border,” explains Sudan specialist Claude Rilly. In the Gulf, the army chief was also received on several occasions with great fanfare. But many observers have noted that often his great enemy Daglo has gone before him.