General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan

General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan is the military commander who has been the de facto leader of Sudan for several years. General al-Burhan has a long history with the Sudanese military, having been involved in various capacities including a posting in Darfur and rising to become a regional commander by 2008. By 2019, he had become the chief of staff of the Sudanese army and later the inspector general of the army. He played a pivotal role in the uprising that toppled President Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and subsequently became the head of the Transitional Military Council (TMC). Later, he was the head of the Sovereign Council, a civilian-military partnership formed to steer the country towards elections. In 2021, al-Burhan and his second-in-command, Hemedti, led a coup, seizing power and derailing Sudan’s path to democracy