In October 2021, hundreds of thousands of Sudanese people took to the streets to protest a military coup. Orchestrated by generals Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (or Hemedti as he’s known in Sudan), it came less than three years after a popular uprising had brought down Omar al-Bashir, the military dictator who had ruled for 30 years.
Sudan’s new democracy was fragile from the outset. After Bashir was deposed in 2019 an interim Sovereign Council was established, made up of army generals who were aligned to Bashir’s regime and civilian leaders; democratic elections were promised for 2022. But figures in the military remained reluctant to hand over the power and influence they had enjoyed for so long.
