Abdel Fattah al-Burhan

Overview

Abdel Fattah al-Burhan is a Sudanese general who emerged as a leader of Sudan’s interim military government after the removal of Omar al-Bashir in 2019. As chairman of the transitional Sovereignty Council and commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces, he held power during a planned transition to civilian rule. His deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, commanded the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The two men supported a 2021 coup against the transitional government, then became enemies in a civil war that began in April 2023. Their forces’ struggle for Khartoum devastated the capital and deepened Sudan’s humanitarian crisis.^{1, 2, 13}

Al-Burhan also played a central role in Sudan’s opening to Israel. He met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in February 2020 and joined an October 23, 2020, announcement to normalize relations and end the two countries’ state of belligerence. That diplomatic step and his subsequent coup are both central to his record: cooperation with Israel advanced while Sudan’s transition to civilian government failed. During the civil war, al-Burhan renewed ties with the Iranian regime and sought its military assistance, raising an Israeli security concern because Sudan had previously served as a route for Iranian weapons bound for Gaza.^{3, 6, 11, 17}

Career

Mass demonstrations in 2019 preceded the military’s removal of longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir. A transitional government, with civilian and military representatives, was formed to prepare Sudan for elections. Al-Burhan became chairman of its Sovereignty Council, with Hemedti as deputy. Their positions gave the army and the RSF substantial influence over the transition. Tensions between military leaders and civilian officials were already visible when Sudan began considering relations with Israel: al-Burhan and Hemedti favored normalization, while Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok called for discussion within Sudanese society before such a decision.^{1, 3}

On February 3, 2020, al-Burhan met Netanyahu in Uganda. They agreed to open channels of communication and work toward normalizing relations. For Sudan, removal from the United States list of state sponsors of terrorism and relief from economic isolation were major incentives. Al-Burhan later traveled to the United Arab Emirates for U.S.-sponsored talks concerning normalization, the terrorism designation, and Emirati economic assistance. His meeting with Netanyahu broke a longstanding diplomatic barrier between the two countries and helped make the October announcement possible.^{1, 4, 5, 17}

On October 23, 2020, al-Burhan, Hamdok, Netanyahu, and U.S. President Donald Trump discussed normalization in a four-way call. Their joint announcement committed Sudan and Israel to end their state of belligerence and begin economic and trade relations, initially focused on agriculture. Israeli and Sudanese delegations were to negotiate further cooperation agreements. Trump signed an order to remove Sudan from the U.S. terrorism list that day. The proposed opening formed part of the wider diplomatic framework of the Abraham Accords, although Sudan’s planned formal peace-agreement signing in Washington was delayed after the 2021 coup.^{3, 5, 6, 7}

Contacts continued under al-Burhan. Israeli Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen met him in Sudan on January 25, 2021. Cohen’s delegation also met Defense Minister Yassin Ibrahim, and Cohen and Ibrahim signed a memorandum on security matters. Israeli intelligence officers visited Khartoum in January 2022, followed by a Sudanese security delegation to Tel Aviv the next month. In February 2022, al-Burhan said intelligence exchanged with Israel had helped Sudan dismantle groups that threatened regional security. These exchanges showed that security cooperation continued even after the coup disrupted the civilian transition.^{1, 7, 16}

Cohen returned to Khartoum as Israeli foreign minister in February 2023 and met al-Burhan to advance relations. Their discussions covered agriculture, energy, health, water, and education, with particular attention to security and military cooperation. Cohen announced that Sudan’s formal entry into the Abraham Accords would follow a transfer of power from military to civilian leadership. The talks marked further diplomatic progress, but Sudan’s impending conflict prevented a completed transition from accompanying them.^{7, 16}

Ideology and statements

Al-Burhan’s public support for normalization did not amount to a commitment to civilian democracy. On October 25, 2021, he led a military coup alongside Hemedti, ending Sudan’s transitional government. The alliance that had given both commanders influence over civilian rule became the basis for direct military control. Al-Burhan subsequently gave qualified support to reviving an agreement for a Russian naval facility near Port Sudan. His decisions reflected the importance of military power and foreign security relationships in his government’s policies.^{2, 3, 13}

Groups aligned with Political Islam later fought alongside al-Burhan’s army. Sudanese Islamists organized within the Broad Islamic Current joined the Sudanese Armed Forces during the civil war. Their participation did not make al-Burhan’s opening to Israel irrelevant; it showed that the coalition around his army included actors whose political outlook differed from that diplomatic course. Both al-Burhan and Hemedti continued to voice support for normalization while their forces fought each other. Al-Burhan’s ties to allied fighters, his role in the coup, and his diplomatic statements must therefore be considered together when assessing his political record.^{8, 10, 14}

Role in attacks or conflicts

Before the civil war, al-Burhan’s government maintained close military coordination with Egypt. Egyptian and Sudanese forces held the joint “Nile Eagles 2” exercises in March 2021, while the two governments coordinated their positions concerning Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam. Egyptian forces were stationed at northern Sudan’s Merowe base when fighting began in April 2023. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi favored al-Burhan’s camp as Sudan’s governing force, although Egypt faced the difficult task of protecting its interests amid an expanding war.⁹

The dispute between al-Burhan and Hemedti centered on how the Rapid Support Forces would be integrated into Sudan’s regular army. Their former alliance collapsed as each commander sought control over the country’s armed institutions. In April 2023, fighting erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces under al-Burhan and the RSF under Hemedti, beginning the Sudanese civil war (2023–present). Their battle for Khartoum spread to other Sudanese cities, destroying infrastructure, displacing civilians, and worsening a severe humanitarian emergency. Army forces under al-Burhan later captured Khartoum’s presidential palace despite Hemedti’s appeal to defend it.^{2, 9, 13, 15}

Al-Burhan established his wartime headquarters in Port Sudan on the Red Sea. His army remained a comparatively cohesive national institution after Bashir’s fall, but its campaign depended in part on allied groups, including fighters aligned with Political Islam. Al-Burhan claimed authority for Sudan’s state institutions and sought a military victory over the RSF. The war’s destruction in Khartoum demonstrated how a dispute over command of the armed forces had become a nationwide conflict, with civilians bearing its consequences.^{8, 9, 10, 13}

Foreign relationships became increasingly important to al-Burhan’s war effort. Sudan renewed diplomatic relations with the Iranian regime, and al-Burhan used the rapprochement to seek military assistance against Hemedti’s forces. He sent a Sudanese ambassador to Tehran, visited the Iranian capital during the war, and the Iranian regime reopened its embassy in Port Sudan. Iranian military support was consequential beyond Sudan’s battlefield: under Bashir, Sudan had served as a route for Iranian weapons bound for Gaza. Renewed Iranian access therefore carried implications for Israel’s security as well as for Sudan’s civil war.^{10, 11, 15, 17}

Al-Burhan also pursued backing from Saudi Arabia, which identified with Sudan’s regular army while presenting itself as a mediator. A visit to Riyadh served both his effort to advance a ceasefire and his attempt to strengthen Saudi support. Hemedti, by contrast, received support from the United Arab Emirates. The two Gulf states’ differing relationships with Sudan’s rival commanders made the war part of a wider regional struggle for influence along the Red Sea. In December 2024, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called al-Burhan and offered to mediate Sudan’s dispute with the United Arab Emirates.^{2, 11, 12}

Death or current status

Al-Burhan remained commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces during the civil war and used Port Sudan as his wartime capital. His forces’ capture of the presidential palace in Khartoum marked a battlefield gain, but fighting against Hemedti’s RSF continued. Saudi diplomatic efforts, regional mediation offers, and al-Burhan’s pursuit of outside military assistance unfolded alongside the unresolved struggle over who would govern Sudan and command its armed forces.^{10, 12, 13, 15}

Legacy

Al-Burhan’s leadership links three major turns in Sudan’s recent history: the fall of Bashir’s government in 2019, the opening to Israel in 2020, and the collapse of the civilian transition in the 2021 coup. The agreement to end belligerence with Israel was a historic change from decades of hostility. Yet al-Burhan and Hemedti, who initially backed that change, also displaced the transitional government and then fought a destructive war against one another. Diplomatic progress with Israel did not resolve Sudan’s contest over military and civilian authority.^{1, 2, 3, 6}

His wartime partnerships further complicated the consequences of normalization. Fighters aligned with Political Islam joined his army, while renewed relations with the Iranian regime supplied a route to military assistance. Sudan’s earlier role in moving Iranian weapons toward Gaza made that rapprochement especially significant for Israel. Al-Burhan’s record thus includes both an opening toward Israeli-Sudanese cooperation and decisions that deepened military rule, civil conflict, and regional security concerns.^{8, 11, 15, 17}