Sudan army chief's Islamist ties complicate peace efforts

CAIRO - The already Herculean task of putting an end to the long-running war in Sudan is being further complicated by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan's complex relationship with Islamists, whom he relies upon for support.

The camp has seen its influence grow since the start of the war, supplying fighters and shaping the strategy of de facto leader Burhan, who since April 2023 has battled his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

But with mediators now pushing for an end to the fighting, analysts say the Islamists fear a peace deal and the return of civilian government will sideline them once again.

"The Islamists are very upset at the prospect of a ceasefire. They want the war to continue as much as possible," Sudanese analyst Kholood Khair told AFP.

Burhan welcomed a recent promise by US President Donald Trump -- made at the request of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman -- to use his influence to end the war, but the military chief has so far rejected mediators' ceasefire proposals.

The UnitedNations, diplomats and analysts, meanwhile, have all warned that the war will not end until external forces stop fuelling the violence.

But Burhan must also carefully navigate inside his own camp, including the Islamists, without whom he could lose support and territory in the two-thirds of the country his forces still hold.

In Sudan, the term "Islamists" generally refers to a grouping of parties, leaders and patronage networks cultivated under longtime Islamist-military autocrat Omar al-Bashir.

Both Burhan and Daglo rose through Bashir's security architecture.

Though a lacklustre career soldier, Burhan was propelled upwards within the capital's Islamist-dominated networks of power, which held only disdain for Daglo -- relegated to doing Khartoum's "dirty work" violently crushing far-flung rebellions in Darfur.

After Bashir's ousting in 2019, these Islamist networks, which in the 1990s sheltered Osama bin Laden, resigned themselves to keeping a low profile.

But in the current war under Burhan, Bashir-era cronies have beenreleased from prison in an apparent jailbreak, rallied troops for the army and regained political clout.

Daglo -- once considered Bashir's protector -- has repeatedly sought to portray the war as a battle against "radical Islamists" and the remnants of Bashir's government.

According to Cameron Hudson, a former White House adviser on Sudan, the paramilitary leader was "given these talking points" by the United Arab Emirates, which denies widespread accusations of politically and militarily backing the RSF.

'LITTLE BY LITTLE'

Last week, Burhan denied having members of the Muslim Brotherhood in his government entirely. "We do not know who they are, we only hear about them in the media," he said in a video address.

But in August, he struck a secret deal with US envoy Massad Boulos to "little by little" create distance from his Islamist allies, a senior diplomat close to the negotiations told AFP.

"He's in a very difficult position," the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

"If he abandons them, they abandon him, and he could very well lose."

After the secret meeting with Boulos in Switzerland, Burhan quietly dismissed a handful of officers with Islamist ties.

But his about-face seems to have stopped there, to the chagrin of mediators, all of whom consider the Muslim Brotherhood a destabilising threat.

In September, the US, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt -- jointly leading peace efforts -- said "Sudan's future cannot be dictated by violent extremist groups part of or evidently linked to the Muslim Brotherhood", chapters of which Trump has moved to designate as "terrorist organisations".

The same day, the US sanctioned Burhan's finance minister, Gibril Ibrahim, and the Islamist militia Al-Baraa ibn Malik Brigade in an attempt to "limit Islamist influence... and curtail Iran's regional activities".

In 2024, Iran reportedly supplied the Sudanese army with drones which, along with Al-Baraa ibn Malik's fighters, proved integral to a counteroffensive that saw the army recapture Khartoum in March.

NO ALTERNATIVE FOR BURHAN

Today, Burhan is under immense pressure.

Within his camp, "he is struggling to maintain unity within a system... that was designed to compete against itself" to prevent challenges to Bashir's authority, according to Hudson.

On the battlefield, his troops -- reeling from losing their last stronghold in the vast Darfur region -- are depleted and exhausted as they try to stop the RSF from gaining ground on the route to Khartoum.

And the two countries seen to hold the most leverage over him -- Saudi Arabia and his biggest backer, Egypt -- are pressing hard for an end to the war, which they see as a threat to their own national security.

Yet Burhan, Khair said, "hasn't been given a branch to hang on to so he could let go of the Islamist branch".

A prolonged war is good for the Islamists, she added, because it makes the pro-democracy forces that once pushed them out seem "less and less viable in a vastly militarised spectrum".