General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, de facto leader of Sudan since the putsch of 2021, sacked his deputy who became his enemy, General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, on Friday, more than a month after the start of a war between the troops of the two men.
“General Burhane has published a constitutional decree appointing Malik Agar to the post of vice-president of the Transitional Sovereignty Council as of today”, in place of General Daglo, announces this body in a press release.
Bringing together soldiers and civilians, the Sovereignty Council was set up in August 2019, with the aim of leading the transition between the fall of dictator Omar al-Bashir, in April of the same year, and the establishment of institutions democratic.
But General Burhane, who was its president, and General Daglo – known as “Hemedti” -, the vice-president, had led a putsch in October 2021, ousting civilians from this body.
Originally from Blue Nile, a state bordering Ethiopia, of which he was governor, Mr. Agar had signed peace with the power of Khartoum in 2020 when he was a rebel leader. He had been a member of the Sovereignty Council since February 2021.
His group, the SPLA-North, was formed in 2011 by members of the rebellion who remained in Sudan after South Sudan’s independence that year.
It split in 2017 between a wing that demanded a secular state as a prerequisite for a peace deal, and another led by Mr. Agar that did not make it a condition.
According to observers, his promotion to number two should not be a game changer in the war for power between the two generals.
Since April 15, the fighting has left nearly a thousand dead and more than a million displaced and refugees.
Less than a year after the putsch, Hemedti had denounced a “failure”, and the tension between the two generals had only grown.