New government in Sudan following army victories

A new government is set to form in Sudan after the recapture of Khartoum by army forces, military sources told Reuters on 9th February.

This comes a day after Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudanese army leader stated plans to form a technocratic wartime government. Burhan, alongside his political opponent Hemedit, was sanctioned by the US in January over accusations of destabilisation and harm to civilians.

The Sudanese army has in recent weeks seen a turn of tides in their fortune, regarding their war with the rebel paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces, following successive January victories, in which it reclaimed territories captured by the RSF. The RSF, which stated that it would support the formation of a new government in Sudan, has retreated.

“We can call it a caretaker government, a wartime government, it’s a government that will help us complete what remains of our military objectives, which is freeing Sudan from these rebels,” Burhan told a meeting of army-aligned politicians in the army’s stronghold of Port Sudan on the 8th.

The RSF controls most of the west of the country and is currently engaged in an intense campaign to cement its control of the Darfur region by seizing the city of al-Fashir. Burhan ruled out a Ramadan ceasefire unless the RSF stopped that campaign.

The civil war erupted in April 2023 over disputes about the integration of the two forces after they worked together to oust civilians with whom they had shared power after the uprising that ousted autocrat Omar al-Bashir.

The conflict has caused one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with the displacement of more than 12 million, and widespread hunger.

Reuters