Sudan army chief names Bashir-era diplomat as acting premier

KHARTOUM: Sudan’s army chief and de facto leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan appointed on Wednesday a career diplomat as the country’s new acting prime minister, two years into the country’s brutal war.

Ambassador Dafallah al-Haj Ali, a veteran envoy who once served as Sudan’s representative to the United Nations under longtime Islamist-military ruler Omar al-Bashir, was most recently the country’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

The kingdom was the destination of Burhan’s first foreign trip after the army regained control of the capital Khartoum from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) last month.

Since April 2023, the war in Sudan has pitted the forces of Burhan’s army against those loyal to his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The conflict has killed tens of thousands, displaced 13 million and created what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Ali replaces Osman Hussein, a largely symbolic prime minister installed by Burhan after a 2021 military coup that toppled civilian premier Abdalla Hamdok’s transitional government.

Burhan also named Omar Sediq, another veteran diplomat who was involved in negotiations between the army and the RSF in Jeddah last year, as acting foreign minister.

Burhan had earlier said that he would form a technocratic wartime government to help “complete what remains of our military objectives, which is liberating Sudan from these rebels”.

Early this month, the RSF announced it would form its own rival government, a few weeks after signing a charter in Kenya with a coalition of military and political allies.

The move has raised international fears that Sudan could be permanently split between the two sides, both of which have been accused of atrocities.

The conflict has already divided Africa’s third largest country in two, with the army controlling the centre, north and east, while the RSF holds nearly all of the western Darfur region and parts of the south.

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