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The General Who Led Sudan’s Coup

Sudan’s top general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. (AFP)
Sudan’s top general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. (AFP)
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The General Who Led Sudan’s Coup

Sudan’s top general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. (AFP)
Sudan’s top general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. (AFP)

Sudan’s top general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has led a military takeover in Khartoum, dissolving a ruling council in which the army and civilians had shared power and throwing the country’s democratic transition into turmoil.

Who is Burhan?
- He was little known in public life until taking part in the coup against veteran autocrat Omar Hassan al-Bashir in 2019 after a popular uprising against his rule. At the time, he was Sudan’s third most senior general and inspector general of the armed forces. A day after the coup, the defense minister stepped down amid protests and named him head of a transitional military council.

- In August, 2019, his role as de facto head of state was affirmed when he became head of the Sovereign Council, a body comprising civilian and military leaders that was formed to oversee the transition towards elections. Burhan announced the dissolution of the Sovereign Council on Monday.

- As head of Sudan’s ground forces, he oversaw Sudanese troops who were deployed in 2015 to fight as part of the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemen war.

- He has been at the forefront of Sudan’s tentative moves towards normalizing ties with Israel. In October 2020, along with Abdalla Hamdok - the prime minister ousted on Monday - Burhan took part in a phone call with then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former US President Donald Trump in which they agreed to take steps to normalize ties.

Burhan met Netanyahu in Uganda in February, 2020. Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of State at the time, thanked Burhan by phone “for his leadership in normalizing ties with Israel”.

- He was posted in Darfur in western Sudan during the conflict there in the 2000s. The transitional authorities Burhan led had pledged to cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has issued arrest warrants for Bashir for alleged atrocities in Darfur. But the pursuit of justice over Darfur was a point of tension between the army and civilians.

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Syrians Face Horror, Fearing Loved Ones May Be in Mass Graves

People search for human remains at a trench believed to be used as a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus - AFP
People search for human remains at a trench believed to be used as a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus - AFP
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Syrians Face Horror, Fearing Loved Ones May Be in Mass Graves

People search for human remains at a trench believed to be used as a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus - AFP
People search for human remains at a trench believed to be used as a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus - AFP

After losing hope of finding his two brothers among those freed from Syrian jails, Ziad Alaywi was filled with dread, knowing there was only one place they were likely to be: a mass grave.

"We want to know where our children are, our brothers," said the 55-year-old standing by a deep trench near Najha, southeast of Damascus.

"Were they killed? Are they buried here?" he asked, pointing to the ditch, one of several believed to hold the bodies of prisoners tortured to death.

International organizations have called these acts "crimes against humanity".

Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime on December 8 and the takeover by an Islamist-led opposition alliance, families across Syria have been searching for their loved ones.

"I've looked for my brothers in all the prisons," said the driver from the Damascus suburbs, whose siblings and four cousins were arrested over a decade ago.

"I've searched all the documents that might give me a clue to their location," he added, but it was all in vain.

Residents say there are at least three other similar sites, where diggers were frequently seen working in areas once off-limits under the former government.

- 'Peace of mind' -

The dirt at the pit where Alaywi stands looks loose, freshly dug. Children run and play nearby.

If the site was investigated, "it would allow many people to have peace of mind and stop hoping for the return of a son who will never return", he said.

"It's not just one, two, or three people who are being sought. It's thousands."

He called on international forensic investigators to "open these mass graves so we can finally know where our children are."

Many Syrians who spoke to AFP in recent days expressed disappointment at not finding their loved ones in the prisons opened after the takeover by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

A few kilometres (miles) from Najha, a team of about 10 people, most in white overalls, was transferring small white bags into larger black ones with numbers.

Syrian Civil Defense teams have received numerous calls from people claiming to have seen cars dumping bags by the roadside at night. The bags were later found to contain bones.

"Since the fall of the regime, we've received over 100 calls about mass graves. People believe every military site has one," said civil defence official Omar al-Salmo.

- Safeguard evidence -

The claim isn't without reason, said Salmo, considering "the few people who've left prisons and the exponential number of missing people."

There are no official figures on how many detainees have been released from Syrian jails in the past 10 days, but estimates fall far short of the number missing since 2011.

In 2022, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor estimated that more than 100,000 people had died in prison, mostly due to torture, since the war began.

"We're doing our best with our modest expertise," said Salmo. His team is collecting bone samples for DNA tests.

On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch urged the new Syrian authorities to "secure, collect and safeguard evidence, including from mass grave sites and government records... that will be vital in future criminal trials".

The rights group also called for cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross, which could "provide critical expertise" to help safeguard the records and clarify the fate of missing people.

Days after Assad's fall, HRW teams visiting Damascus's Tadamun district, the site of a massacre in April 2013, found "scores of human remains".

In Daraa province, Mohammad Khaled regained control of his farm in Izraa, seized for years by military intelligence.

"I noticed that the ground was uneven," said Khaled.

"We were surprised to discover a body, then another," he said. In just one day, he and others including a forensic doctor exhumed a total of 22 bodies.