26/11/2025
Alert! 🇸🇩 - The 25 October 2021 Coup and the Loss of Legitimacy
By: Journalist - Mujahid Bashir
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan began his article in The Wall Street Journal by describing the current conflict in Sudan as a “brutal rebellion against the state” led by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), while ignoring his own direct role in undermining the state’s legitimacy in 2021. On 25 October 2021, Burhan carried out a coup that toppled the civilian transitional government and suspended the Constitutional Document that governed the transitional period. As a result, the African Union suspended Sudan’s membership in the organization following this coup, in line with its principles rejecting unconstitutional changes of government.
In other words, Burhan speaks today about an RSF “rebellion against the state” when that very state had already lost its constitutional legitimacy from the moment of his coup in 2021. The former Deputy Chair of the Sovereignty Council, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), explicitly stated that there has been no legitimate government in Sudan since the 25 October coup. The irony here is that the same Burhan who calls on the world to stand with “the state” is the one who dismantled the constitutional foundations of that state by his own actions.
Burhan justified his 2021 coup as necessary to correct the course of the transition and prevent a civil war, but in practice he stalled democratic transition and opened the door for the return of figures from the former regime. In an audio recording, Hemedti indicated that Burhan carried out the 2021 coup for the purpose of restoring Islamists to power, and that many leading figures from Omar al-Bashir’s regime were appointed to state positions after the coup. Burhan’s coup also led to Sudan’s isolation regionally and internationally, including the suspension of its African Union membership as mentioned, weakening Sudan’s position and raising serious doubts about its leaders’ credibility regarding democratic transition. All of this makes Burhan’s talk in his article about defending the state and its citizens starkly inconsistent with his actual record of damaging state institutions and the democratic process.
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The Real Role of the RSF and Its Legal Formation
In his article, Burhan portrays the RSF as a militia operating outside the state apparatus since its inception. He overlooks the fact that this force was created and formally legalized by the Sudanese state itself. The RSF was restructured and integrated into the National Intelligence and Security Service in 2013 by a decision from former President Omar al-Bashir. In 2017, the Sudanese parliament under Bashir passed the Rapid Support Forces Act, which made the RSF an independent military force subordinate to the armed forces. Under this law, the RSF was defined as a “national military force” committed to the general principles of the Sudanese Armed Forces.
In other words, the RSF was not a force rebelling against the state, but rather part of the state’s own security architecture under a law approved by the regime.
Moreover, the 2019 Constitutional Document (adopted after Bashir’s fall) explicitly recognized the RSF as an official military entity parallel to the army. Article 35 of the document states that “the armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces are a national military institution that protects the unity and sovereignty of the homeland and are subordinate to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and subject to the sovereign authority.”
This means that post-revolution Sudan, as a state, explicitly recognized the RSF as part of the national military structure under the authority of the Commander-in-Chief – who at that time was Burhan himself as Chair of the Sovereignty Council. Thus, Burhan’s description of the RSF as nothing more than an extra-legal militia contradicts the legal and historical reality which he personally helped shape.
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Burhan’s Role in Empowering the RSF
Burhan claims he long understood that the RSF was a “powder keg”, yet he conveniently forgets that his own decisions and policies directly strengthened the RSF’s power and influence over recent years.
After Bashir’s ouster in April 2019, Burhan became head of the Transitional Military Council and appointed Hemedti as his deputy. Burhan himself admitted in a television interview that he persuaded Hemedti to accept the position of deputy in the military council after Bashir’s removal, which demolishes the impression that he had always seen him as a threat to the state. On the contrary, Burhan and Hemedti were close allies in leading the first phase of the transition, and this alliance was consolidated through several steps taken by Burhan that boosted the RSF’s position:
• Amending the RSF Act in 2019: On 30 July 2019, acting as head of the Transitional Military Council, Burhan issued Constitutional Decree No. 34, which substantially amended the 2017 RSF Act. Most notably, the decree abolished Article 5 of the RSF law, which had subjected the RSF to the Armed Forces Act during states of emergency and war. By removing this article, Burhan entrenched the RSF’s full independence from the army even in wartime, such that orders were to come directly through the RSF chain of command rather than through the regular army hierarchy. The decree also abolished the clause that allowed for integrating the RSF into the armed forces, making any future integration far more difficult and creating a situation of two parallel armies. The irony is that in his article Burhan claims he sought to “responsibly” integrate the RSF into the army in late 2022 to prevent conflict, when in fact it was he who removed the legal basis for that integration back in 2019, which casts serious doubt on the sincerity and timing of his professed integration plans.
• Economic and military empowerment: After the 25 October 2021 coup (in which Hemedti participated alongside Burhan), reports emerged of unilateral decisions taken by Burhan to expand the RSF’s privileges. Investigative journalist Natif Salah al-Din (Monte Carloo) revealed that Burhan decided to grant the RSF a 34% stake in Sudan’s national Military Industrial Corporation, without consulting army leadership or other members of the Sovereignty Council, provoking deep resentment within the army ranks. In practice, this meant giving the RSF a share in ownership and armament of Sudan’s military-industrial complex, and thus dramatically increasing its firepower and financial capacity. After the coup, investment and recruitment doors were also opened widely to the RSF, with no meaningful civilian or military oversight to curb its expansion. Burhan personally enabled this vast empowerment through his sovereign decisions, and now he claims the RSF is an out-of-control force threatening Sudan’s stability. Anyone examining his actions can see that they are precisely what strengthened the RSF and turned it into a parallel army, despite his belated warnings about the danger of having two armies.
• Public praise and power-sharing: From 2019 up until shortly before the war, Burhan consistently praised the RSF and Hemedti in official statements and media appearances. He presented them as a key partner in maintaining security and combating terrorism and irregular migration, tasks that had been formally assigned to the RSF through legal amendments in July 2019. This constant praise and broad mandate signaled that the army leadership and the state – that is, Burhan himself – were fully satisfied with the RSF’s performance and considered it part of the national security framework. How can he now suddenly portray it as a rogue gang with a record of brutality, while he was, until very recently, a full political and military partner to Hemedti and his forces?
In short, Burhan’s contradictions are stark. He now blames the RSF for the war and the collapse of the state, whereas the record shows that his own decisions made the RSF into a parallel force that is extremely hard to contain. Since 2019, he could have restricted its autonomy and pushed for gradual integration, or at least refrained from further empowering it. Instead, he chose the opposite path, likely to secure Hemedti’s loyalty and that of his troops in his internal power struggle. Sudan is now paying the price for those choices.
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The RSF and the Foiling of Coup Attempts (2019–2021)
Burhan claims the war erupted because the RSF betrayed him and rebelled against the state. Yet when we look at the record of the past few years, the question becomes: who was actually loyal to the partnership, and who was seeking to monopolize power?
In reality, up to April 2023, the RSF was a key ally of the army in protecting the transitional period from military coups led by remnants of the old regime. Sudan witnessed several serious coup attempts between 2019 and 2022 – all of which targeted Burhan himself from within the army, with the aim of restoring Bashir-era figures or halting democratic transition. In each case, the RSF played a decisive role in confronting these plots alongside the regular army.
One of the most prominent attempts came in July 2019, when the General Command announced it had thwarted a coup led by Gen. Hashim Abdelmutalib Ahmed (then Chief of the Joint Staff). Abdelmutalib admitted that he had consulted leaders of the Islamist movement and the former regime before the coup attempt, and acknowledged that he had belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood since high school. Alongside him were senior officers who coordinated with Islamist leaders and members of the National Congress Party (Bashir’s party). The stated aim of the coup was to crush the revolution and restore Bashir’s regime.
What was the role of the RSF? After the plot was exposed and the conspirators arrested, RSF forces under Hemedti took control of the Operations Authority compounds of the National Intelligence and Security Service, in order to secure them and prevent loyalists of the old regime from using them as bases. In this moment, the RSF stood clearly on the side of the revolution and the protection of the transition, against a coup led by a former Chief of Staff closely tied to Bashir. The RSF also arrested civilian leaders from the former regime implicated in the plot (such as al-Zubair Ahmed al-Hassan and Ali Karti), according to credible sources. These events show that the RSF was not operating outside the state, but was in fact defending the newborn transitional authority headed by Burhan.
Then, in January 2020, a mutiny broke out within the General Intelligence Service led by officers and personnel of the Operations Authority – a paramilitary unit within the intelligence service loyal to former chief Salah Gosh. The mutineers fired into the air in some parts of Khartoum in protest at their demobilization terms. This incident almost escalated into widespread clashes and chaos, were it not for the combined intervention of the army and the RSF, who moved together to neutralize the situation. Hemedti openly accused Salah Gosh of planning this armed mutiny to destabilize the country, hinting at possible foreign involvement as well. Army and RSF units surrounded the rebellious compounds within hours, forcing the operatives to surrender and ending the crisis quickly. Once again, the RSF stood by the state (the Sovereignty Council and transitional government) against an armed rebellion by security elements loyal to the old regime. Afterward, Hemedti pushed for restructuring the intelligence service and purging Gosh’s loyalists, and the Operations Authority was dissolved altogether. In other words, the RSF actively contributed to dismantling the deep-state power centers of the former regime inside Sudan’s security apparatus.
In September 2021, another coup attempt led by Gen. Abdelbagi al-Bakrawi and a number of officers was foiled. At that time, Burhan and Hemedti appeared together and announced that the attempt had failed and that the perpetrators had been arrested. Burhan even took Hemedti with him to the Armored Corps to demonstrate unity and praised his role in aborting the coup. Investigations revealed that those involved in the coup were a mixture of army and armored corps officers linked to the Islamist movement, seeking to exploit political tensions to seize power. After this, Hemedti delivered strong statements criticizing the military leadership’s reluctance to uproot remnants of the old regime, stating that the plot had been in the making for 11 months and hinting at a single mastermind behind this and previous attempts – a reference to Islamist networks inside the army. He called for restructuring the armed forces and purging infiltrators. This angered the Islamist faction within the military, but it showed that Hemedti remained committed at that time to the revolution and the democratic transition. He did not exploit these coups to take power himself, despite having a powerful force at his disposal.
Taken together, where exactly is this supposed “rebellion against the state”?
The record clearly shows that between 2019 and 2021, the RSF fought multiple rebellions and coup attempts directed against the transitional government and against Burhan himself, and that all those plots originated within the army and former regime networks, not within the RSF. Hemedti and his forces kept Burhan in power when he was under threat from generals loyal to the old regime. If Hemedti had harbored ambitions to overthrow the state or seize power alone, he could simply have allowed one of those coups to succeed, or colluded with their planners, or staged a coup of his own when opportunity knocked. He did none of that. On the contrary, he remained Burhan’s partner in the Sovereignty Council and a supporter of the civil-military partnership (until the 2021 coup).
So when people ask: “If Hemedti wanted power, why didn’t he take it earlier?” the answer from the record is clear: he did not seek to rule alone at that time; he was part of the ruling arrangement and defended it against their common enemies. This flips Burhan’s narrative upside down: rather than being an enemy of the state, the RSF functioned as a shield for the state against the real coup attempts engineered by remnants of the former regime within the army and security organs – and even against armed movements which Burhan himself had previously fought in Darfur and elsewhere and committed war crimes against their communities.
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From the 25 October Coup to the April War: Who Betrayed Whom?
When Burhan repeats in his article that the RSF “betrayed” him on 15 April 2023, he is deliberately ignoring the chain of events that preceded the outbreak of fighting and led the relationship between him and Hemedti to the breaking point.
The rift between Burhan and Hemedti widened after their joint 25 October 2021 coup against the civilian component. After ousting Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and dissolving his cabinet, Hemedti saw Burhan re-empowering regime loyalists within state institutions, which he considered a betrayal of the revolution’s goals. By 2022, Hemedti publicly stated that he regretted participating in the October coup, calling it a “failure to bring change” and urging a return to civilian rule.
This was a fundamental political divide:
• Burhan pushed ahead with military dominance and power-sharing with the old regime.
• Hemedti moved closer to revolutionary forces and worked toward a Framework Agreement to restore civilian authority (the preliminary agreement was signed in December 2022).
Thus, Burhan’s depiction of the current war as a “war between a rebellious militia and the state” ignores that the other side – the army led by Burhan – is filled with remnants of the old regime he chose to ally with. Hemedti said it plainly: “There is no army now; there are remnants.” He meant that the institution of the army has been hijacked by old-regime elements, and that his war is with them rather than with the army as a national institution. This is also an oversimplification on his part, but it contains a kernel of truth: the April 2023 war broke out against a backdrop of a political struggle over the fate of the democratic transition, not because the RSF woke up one day and decided to “rebel for rebellion’s sake,” as Burhan suggests.
To further unpack Burhan’s narrative of how the war began, we must look at the ten days preceding 15 April 2023. Burhan claims the RSF secretly massed its forces around Khartoum and moved suddenly to stab the army in the back. The counter-narrative from Hemedti is very different and is backed by testimonies from civilian witnesses: he says he met Burhan between seven and ten days before the war and agreed with him to de-escalate tensions.
That meeting took place at the farm of businessman Moawia al-Barir on 8 April 2023, in the presence of civilian figures. The two men agreed on a “twinning” arrangement between the army and the RSF, meaning coordination and avoiding friction. In an audio recording, Hemedti says he informed Burhan at that meeting that he would deploy RSF forces to Merowe in the north, where foreign aircraft (Egyptian air force units training at Merowe airbase) were present. He insists that Burhan did not object and agreed to the RSF deployment as long as it was for securing the country and not for confrontation.
Thus, the RSF movement toward Merowe was not some hidden conspiracy, but a declared step within the framework of an understanding between the two sides – at least from Hemedti’s perspective. Civilian mediators also proposed a meeting between Burhan and Hemedti at the General Command in Khartoum on 15 April to discuss security arrangements and force integration, in the presence of international actors. But on the morning of 15 April, clashes erupted hours before that meeting was due to take place, with each side accusing the other of firing the first shot.
If we take these events into account, it becomes clear that Burhan deliberately omitted key details from his presentation to international readers: he did not mention that he had approved the RSF’s presence in Merowe before the war, nor that there were ongoing talks with Hemedti on integration, with disagreement mainly over timelines and command structures. Nor did he admit that some elements inside the army (Islamist-aligned officers) may have seen an opportunity in the heightened tension to strike the RSF pre-emptively before any integration could weaken their own influence.
Burhan paints the story as if “the RSF suddenly betrayed us on 15 April,” when in fact the reality is far more complex: there was an accumulation of mistrust, mutual buildup, and conflicting plans. Hemedti accuses Burhan of launching a dawn attack on RSF positions in Khartoum in violation of their earlier understanding, describing it as a betrayal of the agreement reached days before. Burhan, in turn, accuses Hemedti of intending to seize the General Command and the Presidential Palace. None of this nuance appears in Burhan’s article; he presents only the version that criminalizes the RSF alone.
The early days of the war are also revealing. Contrary to the expectations of Burhan and his supporters that the RSF would be swiftly crushed, the opposite happened: the army suffered heavy defeats in Khartoum and Darfur in the first weeks of fighting. RSF forces captured numerous bases and military camps and seized massive stockpiles of heavy weapons and ammunition.
Hemedti himself later mocked this reality, saying:
“It’s true we didn’t have tanks or aircraft, but we took them all from you, except the planes, and we are now using them against you.”
This statement shows how much the RSF benefited from the Sudanese army’s own depots in boosting its firepower. Here we see a striking paradox: all those weapons the RSF captured and turned against the army are part of the arsenal that the army accumulated over years – and in some cases through arrangements that Burhan and Hemedti made together when they were allies. Even the military-industrial projects from which Burhan gave the RSF a 34% share backfired on the army itself, as the RSF found an abundance of munitions and weaponry at its disposal.
Furthermore, the RSF did not initially show any explicit intention to monopolize power. On the contrary, Hemedti put forward a four-point initiative in the early weeks of the war to end the fighting and return to negotiations, which Burhan rejected, insisting instead on a military solution. When Hemedti later sensed that Burhan was trying to form a loyal government in Port Sudan, he responded by threatening to form a civilian government in areas under his control “with Khartoum as its capital” if Burhan continued to claim what he called a false legitimacy.
All this indicates that the core of the conflict is political, centered on legitimacy and representation, more than it is a simple military rebellion. Burhan claims in his article that the RSF does not seek peace, whereas the facts show that when Hemedti signaled willingness for political solutions, he paired that with demands to dismantle the old regime’s influence within the army – demands Burhan refused, rejecting any settlement that would remove or weaken him. So who is really “fighting for survival” in the personal sense? Is it not Burhan, who has rejected every initiative that preserves the army as an institution but removes him from the scene, while insisting on pretending that he is defending “the state” against a rogue militia?
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Claims of Foreign Support and the Nature of the War
In his article, Burhan argues that the RSF could not have waged this war without “generous support from regional powers” driven by narrow interests, hinting at unnamed actors (though he mentions the Trump administration as sharing the belief that the RSF has external backing). It is well known that Burhan alludes here to actors such as Russia’s Wagner Group, its ally Khalifa Haftar in Libya, and some regional states that have ties to the RSF.
There is no doubt that the RSF has benefited from its external networks – whether from gold revenues funneled abroad or links with Russia that may have provided training and equipment. However, Burhan’s heavy emphasis on this factor looks more like an attempt to internationalize what is fundamentally an internal war.
The roots and drivers of this conflict remain overwhelmingly Sudanese:
• a power struggle between competing military centers,
• betrayal of commitments between former allies,
• and an attempt by the old regime’s network to regain influence through the army.
On the other side, Burhan glosses over the external support he himself has received. Before and during the war, he enjoyed explicit backing from Egypt (which sees the regular army as its traditional ally and sent troops and aircraft to Merowe for joint exercises), and political and logistical support from Arab and Iranian actors who have bet on the formal army. Burhan also enjoys de facto international recognition as Sudan’s head of state, which implies a degree of intelligence and military assistance from certain powers (reports have mentioned supplies of night-vision equipment and ammunition, for instance).
The point is that both sides have foreign fingerprints on their war effort. Using this accusation selectively to demonize the RSF alone lacks credibility. Sudanese themselves understand the game of external interests. Burhan has said that Sudan has become an arena for others’ ambitions – yet he wants to pin that entirely on his opponents.
Now we come to the most glaring contradiction in his messaging toward Washington.
Burhan tries to convince U.S. audiences that the RSF poses “a direct threat to American interests,” citing an attack on a diplomatic convoy early in the war that U.S. media attributed to RSF-linked elements.
What he deliberately omits is that one of the men convicted of killing U.S. diplomat John Granville in Khartoum in 2008 – Abdelraouf Abu Zaid – was released from prison in January 2023, just months before the war.
The United States itself had placed Abu Zaid on its terrorism lists, frozen his assets, and issued an official statement objecting to his release.
Even worse: Abu Zaid has appeared armed among forces loyal to Burhan in Omdurman, according to photos and reports published by Sudanese local media – and he was later transferred for treatment to Atbara Hospital.
So how can Burhan speak of a “threat to American interests” while one of the killers of a U.S. diplomat is fighting in his own ranks?
How can he present himself as a credible partner in “counter-terrorism” while integrating into his forces individuals convicted of murdering Americans?
This single fact alone is enough to demolish his narrative in front of Washington.
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On War Crimes and Violations
Regarding war crimes and abuses, Burhan devotes space in his article to describing terrible atrocities attributed to the RSF: massacres in El-Geneina and El-Fasher, r**e, looting, and so on, citing UN reports and a Yale human rights lab estimate of some 10,000 killed in one attack.
There is no denying that this conflict has been marked by shocking violence against civilians, especially in Darfur, and that human rights organizations have documented widespread abuses. But Burhan’s narrative is again one-sided.
He mentions only RSF crimes while ignoring violations committed by the armed forces and their allies. Credible reports – including from the UN – have noted indiscriminate shelling by the army on densely populated neighborhoods in Khartoum and elsewhere, causing hundreds of civilian casualties, as well as the use of chemical weapons that killed thousands, and a pattern of arbitrary detention, torture, and enforced disappearance by military intelligence.
The urban war has also seen the mobilization of pro-army militias (some with extremist Islamist backgrounds) that have carried out abuses against civilians from particular ethnic groups accused of siding with the RSF.
In short, the atrocities are not the work of one side alone.
Yet Burhan approaches the matter selectively: he denies any responsibility or failure on the part of his forces to protect civilians or refrain from abusing them, and places all evil on the RSF. This lacks credibility and falls squarely into the realm of demonizing the enemy to justify refusing to negotiate.
Hemedti, for his part, has accused Burhan of bringing war criminals back into the army and re-mobilizing them, saying: “You brought back into the army those who broke up the sit-in and carried out coups… You brought back the remnants.” In reality, many members of the notorious security services and Bashir’s “shadow battalions” were integrated into the army and police after Burhan’s 2021 coup, and these actors have almost certainly committed new abuses alongside government forces in the 2023 war.
If Burhan were truly committed to a “just peace,” as he claims, he would have to acknowledge that neither side is completely innocent or wholly guilty; both have committed grave wrongs against the country and its people. A genuine end to the war must be accompanied by accountability for all perpetrators, regardless of their affiliation. That is something Burhan never even hints at.
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Truth Amid the Rubble of Propaganda
Burhan’s article in the U.S. newspaper is clearly an attempt to convince the world that his army is fighting on behalf of the Sudanese state against a foreign-backed criminal militia. But the deconstruction above shows just how full his narrative is of distortions and historical omissions: it ignores his coup against constitutional legitimacy in 2021; denies his role in building up the RSF over the years; erases the RSF’s part in thwarting Islamist coup attempts and defending the transition; and presents a highly selective reading of how the war began, who is fighting it, and what horrors it has produced.
The reality is that Sudan today is paying the price of a power struggle between two generals who were allies yesterday and fell out over the future.
Burhan wants to depict the conflict as one between a “legitimate state” and a “rebel militia.” He ignores the fact that this militia was, until very recently, part of that state and an officially recognized component of its armed forces – constitutionally and legally endorsed by Burhan himself. He ignores that the “state” he speaks for currently lacks any democratic legitimacy since he overthrew the Constitutional Document.
He also ignores that his slogan of “one army” could have been achieved through negotiation and gradual reform rather than all-out war – especially given that he was the one who made integration harder by removing the legal clause that allowed it in the first place. As for his talk of protecting the region and American interests from the RSF, it is heavily exaggerated and crafted for foreign consumption.
Ultimately, what Sudan needs is not for the world to rally behind Burhan or Hemedti as individuals, but to rally behind the truth, as Burhan himself likes to say.
And the truth, when placed in its proper historical context, is that this war could have been avoided had both men honored their partnership and their commitments within a genuine transitional process. Durable peace will not be achieved unless the structures of violence and patronage inside both the army and the RSF are dismantled, and military dominance over politics is ended altogether.
If Burhan is serious about a “just and balanced peace”, he must first acknowledge his own share of responsibility for the disaster Sudan has reached – something he clearly did not do in his propagandistic article. Repeating the tired line that he represents a “legitimate state” fighting a rogue militia no longer convinces most Sudanese, who have seen the inner workings of power within the Sovereignty Council since 2019.
Deconstructing Burhan’s discourse is essential to exposing these lies and ensuring that each party bears its share of blame.
The Sudanese people know that power dynamics in their country cannot be reduced to black and white. The current war is the product of a struggle between former partners and of decades of military encroachment on politics.
The way out of this catastrophe is not blind alignment with one general against another, but supporting a comprehensive political solution that returns power to the people through a new transitional phase under genuine civilian leadership.
That is the truth Burhan’s article tries to hide – the truth that, if recognized by Sudanese and the world alike, could open the door to a peace built not on illusions, but on hard facts and the bitter lessons of this war.
