It is one more bump on the painful road of political transition in Sudan. While civilians, soldiers and paramilitaries were to conclude, on Saturday April 1, an agreement tracing the path leading to the appointment of a government then to the adoption of a Constitution and the election of democratic institutions, the signature was postponed the same day. The new date is now set for April 6, announced the spokesperson for this process, Khaled Omar Youssef.
On the horizon, the return of power to civilians
This signature was to take the place of a conclusion to the succession, for several weeks, of workshops on the conditions for the return of power to civilians, from which it was confiscated by a coup d’etat in October 2021 – the 5th since the independence of the Sudan, in 1956. A dynamic launched by an agreement concluded last December under the aegis of the United Nations and numerous foreign diplomats, gathered at the bedside of a country whose 45 million inhabitants live to the rhythm of almost weekly demonstrations since the coup. And this, despite a crackdown that left more than 120 dead.
But the momentum, which had raised hopes, came to a halt with the last seminar, which concerned the thorniest subject: the future of the security forces created by the former regime of Omar Al-Béchir, overthrown general by the streets in April 2019 after almost thirty years in power, and their reunion in a unified army alongside former rebel groups. Khaled Omar Youssef, one of the civilian officials sacked and arrested in the 2021 coup, was forced to admit “lack of consensus on certain issues” in a press release.
Rivalries between two generals
Two generals are vying for authority: Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, author of the putsch, and his second, Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, says « Hemedti »the boss of the much feared paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), militiamen who came to battle through the bloody war in Darfur.
Both showed up at the opening of discussions on the reform on March 26, showing their goodwill. “During our history, the armed forces have supported dictatorial governments, we want to end this”, launched General Burhane, himself a former commander of the army of dictator Omar el-Bashir before participating in his dismissal. General Daglo had meanwhile said he wanted a “unified army”. But both were absent, like most of their trustees, at their closing.