Sudan’s Opposition Guarded on Army Pledge to Leave Talks to Civilians

Sudan's President of the Transitional Sovereignty Council Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, attends the 39th Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) extraordinary summit in Nairobi, Kenya, 05 July 2022. (EPA)
Sudan's President of the Transitional Sovereignty Council Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, attends the 39th Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) extraordinary summit in Nairobi, Kenya, 05 July 2022. (EPA)
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Sudan’s Opposition Guarded on Army Pledge to Leave Talks to Civilians

Sudan's President of the Transitional Sovereignty Council Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, attends the 39th Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) extraordinary summit in Nairobi, Kenya, 05 July 2022. (EPA)
Sudan's President of the Transitional Sovereignty Council Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, attends the 39th Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) extraordinary summit in Nairobi, Kenya, 05 July 2022. (EPA)

Sudanese political parties sidelined by a coup last October gave a guarded response on Tuesday to the army's pledge to step aside from a dialogue initiative and let civilian groups hold talks to form a government.

The Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) coalition said a speech on Monday by army leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan failed to spell out how the military would withdraw from politics, as demanded by the civilian opposition.

Burhan's decisions "are a clear maneuver and tactical retreat that appear to accept the principle of the army returning to the barracks, while emptying this principle of any content", a statement from the FFC said.

Last year's military takeover ended a power-sharing arrangement between the military and civilian groups agreed following the 2019 overthrow of long-time leader Omar al-Bashir.

It has led to more than eight months of mass street protests against the military, with most civilian groups refusing to negotiate with the army.

During the latest rallies, on Thursday, medics said nine people were killed by security forces, and protesters have since been holding sit-ins in the capital, Khartoum.

On Monday, Burhan said the military would not take part in internationally-backed dialogue efforts to break the stalemate, but leave civilian groups to negotiate to form a government.

The existing ruling council, which Burhan heads and which includes some civilian members, would then be dissolved, and a high military council would be formed, he said.

Khalid Omer Yousif, an FFC leader and senior cabinet member before the coup, said Burhan's speech was an attempt to absorb public pressure while maintaining military authority over the political process.

"Yesterday's speech did not address the essence of the crisis, which is the military coup last October," he told Reuters.

"We reject the speech of Burhan," said Bashir Suleiman, a 33-year-old protester at the sit-in in central Khartoum, who said the army would retain power through the high military council. "Our demand is for a fully civilian state."



Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

 Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
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Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

 Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)

Family members of Syrians who disappeared in the 14-year civil war on Sunday gathered in the city of Daraa and called on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them.

The United Nations in 2021 estimated that over 130,000 Syrians were taken away and disappeared, many of them detained by Bashar al-Assad's network of intelligence agencies, as well as by opposition fighters and the extremist ISIS group. Advocacy group The Syrian Campaign says some 112,000 are still missing to this day.

When opposition led by group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham overthrew President Bashar Assad in April, they stormed prisons and released detainees from the ousted government's dungeons.

Families of the missing quickly rushed to the prisons seeking their loved ones. While there were some reunions, rescue services also discovered mass graves around the country and used whatever remains they could retrieve to identify the dead.

Wafa Mustafa held a placard of her father, Ali, who was detained by the Assad government's security forces in 2013. She fled a week later to Germany, fearing she would also be detained, and hasn't heard from him since.

Like many other Syrians who fled the conflict or went into exile for their activism, she often held protests and rallied in European cities. Now, she has returned twice since Assad's ouster, trying to figure out her father's whereabouts.

“I’m trying, feeling both hope and despair, to find any answer on the fate of my father,” she told The Associated Press. “I searched inside the prisons, the morgues, the hospitals, and through the bodies of the martyrs, but I still couldn’t find anything.”

A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the government led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared and to pursue perpetrators.

Some foreign nationals are missing in Syria as well, notably American journalist Austin Tice, whose mother visited Syria in January and met with al-Sharaa. Tice has not been heard from other than a video released weeks after his disappearance in 2012 that showed him blindfolded and held by armed men.

Syria’s conflict started as one of the popular uprisings of the so-called 2011 Arab Spring, before Assad crushed the largely peaceful protests and a civil war erupted. Half a million people have been killed and more than 5 million left the country as refugees.