Sudan war: El Burhan visits Omdurman, Egypt ‘may host talks’

Lt Gen Abdelfattah El Burhan, commander-in-chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and head of Sudan’s Sovereignty Council, yesterday visited the Corps of Engineers in Omdurman. Abdalla Hamdok, chair of the Civil Democratic Forces alliance, who is currently in Cairo, says that the Egyptian government “may host a meeting” between the commanders of the warring parties.

El Burhan’s visit to the Engineers Corps in El Mohandisin in Omdurman, for the first time since the outbreak of the war on April 15 last year, comes after the army managed to tighten its control over central Omdurman, and seized the National Radio and Television Corporation buildings and the El Mulazimin neighbourhood in old Omdurman yesterday morning.

In end December, the SAF began an offensive against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) which occupied the city when the war broke out on April 15 last year. The army realised a breakthrough in central Omdurman in mid-February. “The breakthrough relieves the 10-month siege of a military district known as Corps of Engineers, and it represents the army’s first major offensive success of the war,” Sudan War Monitor (SWM) reported at the time.

El Burhan said in his address to the Corps of Engineers that the SAF will continue to besiege the RSF in Khartoum, El Gezira, Darfur, and “in any other place in the country”. The SAF “is in good condition and has a high morale,” he stated.

After the SAF broke the RSF siege in Omdurman in mid-February. SWM noted that the army’s success is attributable to drone-corrected artillery strikes, superior logistics and more plentiful ammunition, deployment of the army’s most elite units to the area, precision drone strikes, limited use of armoured vehicles, urban combat equipment including night vision goggles and tear gas, and a more reliable system of pay and benefits.

The RSF has not reacted to its defeats in Omdurman so far. Its latest post on X, yesterday, reported that “the West Darfur Native Administration* places a million fighters ready for the deployment by the RSF command”.

Meeting in Cairo?

Abdalla Hamdok, former PM and chair of the Civil Democratic Forces alliance (Tagaddum), who is currently in Cairo on an official invitation of the Egyptian authorities, told El Sudani newspaper yesterday that Cairo “may host a possible meeting between El Burhan and RSF Commander Mohamed ‘Hemedti’ Dagalo”.

He said that the Egyptian officials “welcomed the matter”. Hemedti already agreed to meet in Cairo “in order to stop the war”. With regard to El Burhan’s categorical refusal to meet with Hemedti, Hamdok has discussed this problem with the Egyptian leadership.

* The Native Administration was instituted by British colonial authorities seeking a pragmatic system of governance that allowed for effective control with limited investment and oversight by the state. The stae-appointed native administration leaders also took on new responsibilities for executing policies, collecting taxes, and mobilising labour on behalf of the central government. According to the Darfur Bar Association (DBA), the Native Administration during the 30-year rule of dictator Omar Al Bashir did not represent the real community leaders.