Appetite for Destruction: The Military Counter-Revolution in Sudan

The military coup d’état in Sudan on 25 October 2021 sent shockwaves across the region and through diplomatic circuits. Following the arrest of the civilian Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and several prominent senior officials from the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), demonstrators took to the streets across Khartoum. They were confronted by soldiers from the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries in the capital, with reports emerging of Central Reserve Police paramilitaries also being deployed (Human Rights Watch, 29 October 2021). Over 10 people have reportedly been killed by state forces thus far and over 160 wounded (Radio Dabanga, 29 October 2021; UN OCHA, 28 October 2021), with at least some victims uninvolved in the demonstrations (Eye Radio, 27 October 2021). Demonstrations have since spread across much of Sudan.

The ringleader of the coup — Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan — is the military head of the Sovereign Council, and the commander-in-chief of SAF. On 25 October, he announced that a state of emergency was in effect, and that civilian political institutions established under the Constitutional Declaration of August 2019 would be dissolved. Bodies tasked with investigating the massacre of 3 June 2019 (discussed below) and with dismantling the ‘deep state’ of ex-President Omar al Bashir and the National Congress Party (NCP) were also dissolved (Al Jazeera, 25 October 2021), perhaps tipping the hand of the generals who organized the coup in the process.

By 26 October, amid widespread condemnation at home and abroad, Burhan re-emphasized that the seizure of power would only last until elections in mid-2023, and that Prime Minister Hamdok would be released from custody later that day. While Hamdok and his wife were released that evening, further arrests of civilian politicians and trade unionists were reported (AP, 27 October 2021). On 27 October, Sudan’s membership of the African Union was suspended for the second time since the removal of Bashir in April 2019 (Al Jazeera, 27 October 2021).

The fierce resistance to the coup — and the failure of the coup leaders to forge links with any ideological or politically viable constituency (Berridge, 2021) — suggests that the coup leaders will have to hurriedly cut deals with FFC elites who are prepared to do business with the military, or attempt to ride out the storm of protests coming their way. There is a palpable risk that the political bargain which has stitched together Sudan in the aftermath of Bashir will disintegrate. The prospect of serious violence against demonstrators in urban areas is increasing, while a reorganization or unravelling of alliances between military, paramilitary, and rebel elites threatens to plunge peripheral regions of Sudan into renewed war.

The first section below explores the growing disenchantment with Sudan’s so-called ‘transition,’ amid political realignments within and between military, rebel, and civilian elements of the Transitional Government. The second section discusses the growing tensions in Eastern Sudan and their connection to these developments, while the third section discusses the potential consequences of the coup for Darfur and the ‘Two Areas.’ The fate of these regions is tied to developments in Khartoum, thus sections two and three outline patterns of violence in these regions since the signing of the JPA in October 2020. This analysis concludes by reflecting on the international and regional responses to the coup, and the prospects for further conflicts in the fractious military apparatus which has seized power, particularly involving Burhan and his deputy Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (a.k.a. Hemedti, who commands the RSF).¹

The Prelude to the Coup

As argued in ACLED’s report Danse Macabre, the uprising which began in December 2018 was the delayed response to Sudan’s rapid (and from the perspective of its ruling elite, entirely unwelcome) decarbonization after South Sudan seceded from the country in 2011. The uprising ultimately morphed into a platform for various groups with quite distinct interests and objectives to carve out a space in the post-Bashir order. Activists and trade unions were at the forefront of initial efforts to overthrow the deeply repressive and decaying system of Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP), and found popular support among many urban Sudanese to replace this system. Urban middle-class constituencies which had previously supported — or at least tolerated — the Bashir regime were also becoming increasingly alarmed at Sudan’s economic trajectory, while the military and security establishment underpinning the regime now viewed Bashir as a liability. Meanwhile, many of Sudan’s traditional political parties and rebel groups swam alongside the revolutionary currents, in the hope of exploiting the upheaval to embed themselves within the political dispensation that would emerge from the toppling of Bashir.