Beware Sudan's Islamist Army Generals

Memri

2 days ago

It was the English writer Oscar Wilde who said that second marriages were like the "triumph of hope over experience." That we hope things work out better "the second time" could apply to the terrible civil war raging in Sudan and the role of the Sudanese Army (SAF), led by General (and interim Head of State) Abdel Fatah Al-Burhan.
In 1989, the Sudanese Army overthrew a civilian government and imposed harsh Islamic rule. What was supposedly a regime run by a clever Islamist civilian, Dr. Hassan Al-Turabi, eventually became a regime run by SAF generals, led by General Omar Al-Bashir, committed to Islamist ideology. The Al-Bashir regime which ruled the country for almost 30 years until 2019 oversaw not one but two genocides – one in South Sudan and the other in Darfur – and promoted terrorism both regionally and internationally. Of course, Sudan harbored Osama bin Laden and what became Al-Qaeda in the early days. In those years in Sudan – 1992-1997 – Bin Laden had already forged an agreement with the terrorists of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) which became a key part of Al-Qaeda and provided bin Laden with his second in command, Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri. Even today, Al-Qaeda's leadership sheltering in Iran is led by an Egyptian, Saif Al-Adel.
It is while in Sudan and protected by SAF General and President Al-Bashir, or shortly thereafter, that Al-Qaeda tried to assassinate Egyptian President Mubarak in Addis Ababa in 1995 and bombed the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. The SAF-ruled regime in Sudan continued support for terrorism long after bin Laden departed and Hassan Al-Turabi was purged. The Khartoum regime later played a key role in supporting the so-called Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) terrorist group in Uganda.[1] Sudan served as a key smuggling partner for Iran in supplying missiles to Hamas in Gaza, a fact that would lead to Israeli airstrikes in Sudan in 2009, 2011, and 2012.[2]
The Al-Bashir regime was overthrown in 2019, in the face of massive public demonstrations, by his own generals. Al-Burhan quickly moved to consolidate power and in 2021 overthrew a fragile interim civilian government under technocrat Dr. Abdullah Hamdok. In 2023, SAF and their longtime military allies-turned-rivals in the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) began fighting among themselves, plunging the country into a brutal civil war that still continues.[3]
Like Al-Bashir in the early days of his rule, Al-Burhan is supposed to shine in comparison with others, supposedly being "the moderate" compared to the many extremists in his camp. In addition to Islamist senior army officers, a key part of the SAF formations fighting the RSF are now units made up of and led by Islamists.[4] Among them are the former Darfur rebels of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) led by Dr. Jibril Ibrahim, currently Sudan's minister of finance. JEM used to be adversaries of the Sudanese Army – now they are allies. Ibrahim played a key role in the egging on of the overthrow of the interim civilian government (of which he was a part) in 2021. Not surprisingly, he kept the finance minister job after the military coup.
Also fighting alongside SAF are Islamist formations, such as the Al-Bara Bin Malik Brigade, the military wing of the Islamist Movement in Sudan and the Bunyan Al-Marsous Brigade.[5] According to the Lebanese research site Daraj, there are also thousands of other Islamists, including former members of the Al-Bashir regime's state security – NISS – that have flooded into the ranks of other SAF units.[6] At the beginning of the war, SAF was outnumbered by the RSF and the army has been able to at least partially remedy the situation by taking in as many of these extremist factions as they can, either individually or collectively.[7] Of course, most of the senior leadership of SAF as it existed in 2019 or 2021 or today is essentially the same force that Al-Bashir created through the years, purging secular or disloyal officers. Multiple reports say that Al-Burhan is empowering the Islamists rather than try to limit their sway.[8]
Given that the war continues to rage and that propaganda is a key part of the battle, one would think that SAF would be on its best behavior, wanting to reassure the Sudanese people and the international community that it is very different from the army that ruled and brutalized Sudan from 1989 to 2019. But that is not the case.
Not only has SAF been creditably accused (as has RSF) of numerous war crimes, it has also protected former senior officials of the Al-Bashir regime, including the former dictator himself. SAF has also behaved brutally against many Sudanese civilians after "liberating" them from RSF. And, as the Al-Bashir regime did more than a decade ago, SAF has forged ties with Iran, their old partner, in supplying them arms (including Iranian drones) for the SAF war machine.[9]
Al-Burhan himself – the statesman, the "moderate" – has shown himself to be an intolerant and aggressive figure but surprisingly pliable and amenable to extremist penetration of the military and the bureaucracy.[10] While there are rumors of Islamist dissatisfaction with Al-Burhan, others say that he is either too weak to stop Islamist influence within SAF or that he agrees with the Islamist trend.[11] The concern is not that he is forced to deal with Islamists because of circumstances, but that he is in lockstep with them and intends to rule with them.
An early July Cairo 2025 meeting between Al-Burhan and Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar, arranged by Egypt, seems to have gone disastrously wrong, with a fiery Al-Burhan making an already tense situation worse. Reportedly Egypt's President Al-Sisi, who sought to mediate and improve relations between Libya and Sudan, was not pleased.[12] If Al-Burhan is like this now, when he has not won the war yet, how will he be if he triumphs?
*Yigal Carmon is President of MEMRI.