Three men who hold Sudan’s fate in their hands

For 30 years Omar al-Bashir stood at the top of the Sudanese power structure. Now, power is more disparate. After a revolution in which women played a prominent role, three men have emerged as the central figures of the transition. They make for odd bedfellows.

Abdalla Hamdok, prime minister of Sudan

Mr Hamdok, 65, is an economist and technocrat who had spent years out of Sudan. After studying at the University of Khartoum in the 1970s, he earned a doctorate in economics at the University of Manchester. Erudite, mild-spoken and academic, he is not obviously cut out for the rough-and-tumble of a country in transition.

After a stint at Sudan’s finance ministry in the 1980s, Mr Hamdok spent most of the next 30 years working abroad specialising in economic development. After the revolution, he emerged as the choice for prime minister ahead of rivals with deeper Sudanese roots and more experience in opposition. Still, he was welcomed by many as a hero.

Mr Hamdok is in a delicate position. He must seek to represent ordinary Sudanese, take hard and mostly unpopular economic decisions and work with generals who once stood with Bashir. There are rumours of plots to remove him. “Yes, there are challenges here and there,” he said in an FT interview last year. “But I think the constitutional document, and the practices, have allowed us to, by and large, operate in an environment which is helping us to steer this process.”

Osman Mirghani, a journalist, deems him too weak. “I don’t think he can control things, or even influence the future of Sudan,” he says.

But Cameron Hudson, a Sudan expert at the Atlantic Council, argues Mr Hamdok may be more wily than he is given credit. While the generals accused him of dithering, Mr Hamdok held out for a better deal with Washington, Mr Hudson says, eventually winning $700m in assistance.

“It was a dangerous gambit but in the end it paid off.”

General Abdel Fattah Burhan, chairman of sovereign council

On the day of the coup against Omar al-Bashir, Gen Burhan was one of three members of the armed forces who told the president it was time to go.

“I went to see him and informed him,” he told the BBC shortly after he had been named head of the transitional military council, which took power immediately after Bashir’s removal. “I told him the leadership of the armed forces had decided the situation was getting out of hand and therefore he should step down.”

The armed forces’ top general only emerged as de facto ruler 24 hours after the coup and following the sudden resignation of Lt Gen Awad Ibn Auf. Gen Burhan, now chairman of the military-civilian sovereign council, was considered more moderate and less associated with the Islamist ideology adopted by Bashir.

Gen Burhan has spoken of a clear break with the previous regime, saying the military intervened on the people’s side.

Born to a religious family, he was educated to intermediate level at a village school before joining the army. He fought in both Darfur and in South Sudan, but has denied committing atrocities.

Gen Burhan is close to Saudi Arabia. As head of the armed forces, he helped supply soldiers to fight on the kingdom’s behalf in Yemen and has described Riyadh as an “eternal ally”. As chairman of the sovereign council he is forbidden from running in the election, although some observers think that stipulation may be watered down, and some government insiders worry he is amassing too much power.

Gen Burhan is adamant he has no long-term political ambitions. As soon as the transition is completed, he says, the generals will return to barracks.

Lt Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the Rapid Support Forces

Better known by his nickname of Hemeti, Lt Gen Hamdan is a former camel trader, who grew up in a Chadian Arab clan, receiving formal education only up to primary level.

He moved to Darfur, where he became head of the notorious Janjaweed horseback militia, initially a ragtag force accused of widespread atrocities.

Later the militia was converted into the Rapid Support Forces, a praetorian guard formed to protect former president Bashir, who did not want power concentrated in the armed forces.

Lt Gen Hamdan told some people that he broke with Bashir in April 2019 when the president asked him to clear protesters from outside military headquarters at whatever cost to human life. He said he refused.

At the time of the protests, in some people’s eyes, that transformed his image from chief protector of Bashir to hero of the revolution.

However, after that turning point, his RSF militia was accused of carrying out a massacre of protesters on June 3 2019, in which at least 120 people were killed and many bodies dumped in the River Nile.

Lt Gen Hamdan has denied ordering the attack, the subject of a long, and so far inconclusive, investigation.

A savvy businessman, Lt Gen Hamdan has amassed considerable wealth through interests including gold trading, security operations and organising mercenaries to fight for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen.

With a militia of 50,000 soldiers under his control, he is considered by many observers to be the most powerful — and the most unpredictable — man in Sudan.