General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan is the military commander who has been the de facto leader of Sudan for years.
Violence erupted between the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan on Saturday, jeopardizing previous efforts to transition the country to civilian rule.
As violence escalates into a second day of fighting, with nearly 600 wounded and the country locked down, experts say the Sudanese army appears to have superior power for now.
General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan is the military commander leading the army against the RSF. But who is the man who has been the de facto leader of Sudan for years?
Darfur Days
Although al-Burhan only came to prominence in 2019, he had an active role in the country’s military long before that, with a posting to Darfur in the early 2000s during the conflict there, where he rose to regional commander by 2008.
While former President Omar al-Bashir and other senior Sudanese officials have been charged by the International Criminal Court with genocide and crimes against humanity over the events in Darfur, al-Burhan has not. Neither does Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, chief of the RSF, his former ally and current rival.
Over the years, al-Burhan has distanced himself from atrocities committed there, where the army, backed by the RSF, put down a rebellion in a conflict that has killed some 300,000 people and displaced another 2.7 million.
Riots, coups and a derailed civil transition
By 2019, al-Burhan had traveled to Jordan and Egypt for further military training and became chief of staff in the Sudanese army – a position to which he was promoted in February 2018.
At the time of the April 2019 uprising that toppled al-Bashir and ended his nearly 30-year rule, al-Burhan was the inspector-general of the army and Sudan’s third-senior general.
Amid public protests against the Bashir-era defense minister who headed the Transitional Military Council (TMC) after it was ousted, al-Burhan was appointed chairman of the TMC.
A few months later, international pressure led to the formation of the Sovereign Council (SC), a civil-military partnership, to lead the country to elections that year in place of the TMC.
As head of the SC, al-Burhan became the de facto head of state, working alongside the country’s civilian pro-democracy forces.
In 2021, however, al-Burhan and his deputy Hemedti led a coup, seized power and derailed Sudan’s short-lived path to democracy.
As de facto head of state, al-Burhan has forged closer ties with the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, states which had encouraged the general and Hemedi, the head of the RSF, to support al-Bashir’s removal.
The Gulf states in particular provided significant aid to Sudan when Sudanese troops were deployed in the Saudi-led coalition to fight Iran-allied Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Al-Burhan also has close ties with Egypt, as the two armies hold joint military exercises and al-Burhan himself has trained with many Egyptian generals at his military school.
Relations between the army and the RSF have been deteriorating for some time as the parties vied for power, and the recent spate of violence appears to be an articulation of these tensions.
Under a framework agreement reached last December between the army, the RSF and Sudan’s civilian pro-democracy forces, the army had agreed to return to its barracks and the RSF to be welcomed into its ranks, with the two forces working under the army’s leadership were merged.
As the time approached for the signing of a follow-up agreement to implement these agreements, alliances seemed to shift and public discourse to become more tense.
The recent outbreak of violence has dashed many hopes for the restoration of civilian rule in Sudan.