The civilians of Sudan have been trying to throw off military rule for decades, but now find themselves caught in the middle of a deadly power struggle between former allies turned bitter opponents
When I landed in Khartoum in late February, the city was tense. On the short journey to my family home in the suburbs of Sudan’s capital, our car was stopped twice at checkpoints that in recent months have been erected after midnight. A car full of women – my mother, my sister and me – was clearly not the threat the officers were looking out for, so we were ushered onwards. Those manning the checkpoints were an inconsistent crew. Some were in plainclothes, others in military fatigues, the rest in police uniform. You never quite knew who you were dealing with, or exactly what they were afraid of. The only common feature they shared was a jittery menace. They were keeping a close eye on movements in a city where tensions had been rising between the two most powerful men in the country.
Sudan’s leader, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the Sudanese army, and the country’s deputy leader, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti), the head of a paramilitary organisation called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), had been sharing power since late 2021, when they had jointly carried out a coup that had ejected civilians from a transitional government. But their alliance soon frayed and they began to regard each other with suspicion.
