One of the rival factions of the Sudanese armed forces fighting on Saturday is led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, a powerful military commander who has for years been a de facto leader of the African nation.
Little known before 2019, General al-Burhan rose to power in the tumultuous aftermath of the military-led coup that ousted Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the authoritarian leader who was deposed after popular uprisings in 2019.
Then the inspector general of the armed forces, he had also served as a regional army commander in Darfur, when 300,000 people were killed and millions of others displaced in fighting from 2003 to 2008.
General al-Burhan had been closely aligned with Mr. al-Bashir. But when Mr. al-Bashir was ousted, his defense minister, Lt. Gen. Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf, took over, pushing protesters to demand for his resignation. When General Ibn Auf stepped down, General al-Burhan replaced him, becoming the most powerful leader of the country in a tenuous transitional period. General al-Burhan then went on to progressively tighten his grip on Sudan.
After civilians and the military signed a power-sharing agreement in 2019, General al-Burhan became the chairman of the Sovereignty Council, a body that would oversee the country’s transition to democratic rule. But as the date for the handover of power to civilians got closer in late 2021, General al-Burhan seemed reluctant to hand over power.
As tensions rose, Jeffrey Feltman, the U.S. envoy to the Horn of Africa at the time, arrived in Sudan to talk with both sides. Despite his differences with the civilian side, Mr. al-Burhan gave no indication that he wanted to seize power.
But on Oct. 25, just hours after the U.S. envoy left, General al-Burhan detained Abdalla Hamdok, the prime minister at the time, in his own house, blocked the internet and seized power, effectively derailing the country’s transition to democratic rule.
Two weeks later, he also appointed himself the head of a new ruling body that he promised would deliver Sudan’s first free election. But that did not assuage opposition groups and civilian protesters, who continued to pour into the streets every week to demand his resignation and the end to military rule.
In December 2022, the military, represented by General al-Burhan, and a coalition of civilian pro-democracy groups, signed a preliminary agreement brokered by members of the international community to end the political standoff. But that deal did not satisfy the demands of some civilians who continued to protest, or his biggest rival, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, the leader of the Rapid Support Forces, a powerful paramilitary group.
