Sudan's outsider general

How the leader of a powerful militia fell out with the Sudanese army and plunged the country into civil war

- Nesrine Malik

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 what they were afraid of. The only 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.

By February, inside Sudan, people were growing increasingly afraid that Burhan and Hemedti could come to blows and plunge the country into armed conflict. Still, life went on. Alongside the heavy security presence, there existed a broadly functioning city, kept afloat by families and communities pooling resources as inflation soared and public infrastructure crumbled. Khartoum's shops and restaurants shone late into the night, casting their colours on to the checkpoints. As we pulled into our street just before dawn, a single bright makeshift light hung over a table on the side of the road. Gathered around, some of the neighbourhood teens were playing cards.