Millions in Sudan are bracing for an escalation in fighting that is widely expected after the completion of the evacuation of foreign nationals which is under way with assurances of co-operation from the warring parties – the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
After the US and UK moved troops to neighbouring Djibouti last week, indicating their readiness to support the evacuation militarily if needed, the chairperson of the military junta and chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, assured his co-operation. “We share the international community’s concern about foreign nationals,” he said in an interview last Saturday, promising in another to provide the “necessary airports and safe passageways”.
General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, aka Hemeti, the deputy chairperson of the junta and head of the RSF that is fighting against SAF, also stated his readiness to partially open the airports under his troops’ control to help with the evacuation.
Four years after seizing power together to protect military rule from the pro-democracy movement known as the December Revolution which forced the
