DUBAI: Thousands of men who worked as intelligence operatives under former president Omar Al-Bashir and have ties to his Islamist movement are fighting alongside the army in Sudan’s war, three military sources and one intelligence source said, complicating efforts to end the bloodshed.
The army and a paramilitary force have been battling each other in Khartoum, Darfur and elsewhere for 10 weeks in Africa’s third largest country by area, displacing 2.5 million people, causing a humanitarian crisis and threatening to destabilize the region. Reinforcements for either side could deepen the conflict.
The army has long denied accusations by its rivals in the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that it depends on discredited loyalists of Bashir, an Islamist long shunned by the West, who was toppled during a popular uprising in 2019.
In response to a question from Reuters for this article, an army official said: “The Sudanese army has no relation with any political party or ideologue. It is a professional institution.”
Yet the three military sources and an intelligence source said thousands of Islamists were battling alongside the army.
“Around 6,000 members of the intelligence agency joined the army several weeks before the conflict,” said a military official familiar with the army’s operations, speaking on condition on anonymity.
“They are fighting to save the country.”
Former officials of the country’s now-disbanded National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS), a powerful institution composed mainly of Islamists, confirmed these numbers.
An Islamist resurgence in Sudan could complicate how regional powers deal with the army, hamper any move toward civilian rule and ultimately set the country, which once hosted Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, on a path for more internal conflict and international isolation.
Reuters spoke to 10 sources for this article, including military and intelligence sources and several Islamists.
In a development indicative of Islamist involvement, an Islamist fighter named Mohammed Al-Fadl was killed this month in clashes between RSF forces and the army, said family members and Islamists. He had been fighting alongside the army, they said.
Ali Karti, secretary general of Sudan’s main Islamic organization, sent a statement of condolences for Al-Fadl.
’OUR IDENTITY AND OUR RELIGION’
“We are fighting and supporting the army to protect our country from external intervention and keep our identity and our religion,” said one Islamist fighting alongside the army.
Bashir’s former ruling National Congress Party said in a statement it had no ties to the fighting and only backed the army politically.
The army accused the RSF of promoting Islamists and former regime loyalists in their top ranks, a charge the RSF denied. Army chief Abdel Fattah Burhan, who analysts see as a non-ideological army man, has publicly dismissed claims that Islamists are helping his forces. “Where are they?” he cried out to cheering troops in a video posted in May.
The military, which under Bashir had many Islamist officers, has been a dominant force in Sudan for decades, staging coups, fighting internal wars and amassing economic holdings.
But following the overthrow of Bashir, Burhan developed good ties with states that have worked against Islamists in the region, notably the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The Gulf states provided Khartoum with significant aid.
Nowadays, former NISS officers also help the military by collecting intelligence on its enemies in the latest conflict. The NISS was replaced by the General Intelligence Service (GIS) after Bashir was toppled, and stripped of its armed “operations” unit, according to a constitutional agreement.
Most of the men from that unit have sided with the army, but some former operations unit members and Islamists who served under Bashir entered the RSF, one army source and one intelligence source said.
“We are working in a very hard situation on the ground to back up the army, especially with information about RSF troops and their deployment,” said a GIS official.
BASHIR-ERA VETERANS
The army outnumbers the RSF nationally, but analysts say it has little capacity for street fighting because it outsourced previous wars in remote regions to militias. Those militias include the “Janjaweed” that helped crush an insurgency in Darfur and later developed into the RSF.
Nimble RSF units have occupied large areas of Khartoum and this week took control of the main base of the Central Reserve Police, a force that the army had deployed in ground combat in the capital. They seized large amounts of weaponry.
But the army, which has depended mainly on air strikes and heavy artillery, could benefit from GIS intelligence gathering skills honed over decades as it tries to root out the RSF.
On June 7, fire engulfed the intelligence headquarters in a disputed area in central Khartoum. Both sides accused the other of attacking the building.
After Burhan and RSF leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, carried out a coup in 2021 which derailed a transition to democracy, Hemedti said the move was a mistake and warned it would encourage Islamists to seek power.
Regional heavyweights Saudi Arabia and the UAE had seen Sudan’s transition toward democracy as a way to counter Islamist influence in the region, which they consider a threat.
Publicly, the army has asserted its loyalty to the uprising that ousted Bashir in 2019.
But after the military staged a coup in 2021 that provoked a resurgence of mass street protests, it leaned on Bashir-era veterans to keep the country running. A taskforce that had been working to dismantle the former ruling system was disbanded.
Before the outbreak of violence, Bashir supporters had been lobbying against a plan for a transition to elections under a civilian government. Disputes over the chain of command and the structure of the military under the plan triggered the fighting.
About a week after fighting broke out in April, a video on social media showed about a dozen former intelligence officials in army uniforms announcing themselves as reserve forces.
The footage could not be independently verified by Reuters.
Several senior Bashir loyalists walked free from prison in Bahri, across the Nile from central Khartoum, during a wider prison break amid fighting in late April. The circumstances of their release remain unclear. Bashir is in a military hospital.
Islamists wield hidden hand in Sudan conflict, military sources say
https://arab.news/b63yv
Islamists wield hidden hand in Sudan conflict, military sources say
- Ex-intelligence agents fighting alongside army-sources
- Army has leant on Bashir-era veterans since 2021 coup
- Conflict pits army general against ex-militia leader
US has hit more than 100 targets in Yemen since mid-March
American forces have hammered the Houthis with near-daily air strikes since March 15 in a bid to end the threat they pose to civilian shipping and military vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
“The US has hit more than 100 targets in Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen,” the defense official said in response to a question on the number of American strikes since mid-March.
“We have destroyed command and control facilities, weapons manufacturing facilities, and advanced weapons storage locations,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Despite the strikes, the Houthis — who control large swathes of Yemen and have been at war with the internationally recognized government since 2015 — have continued to claim attacks against both US vessels and Israel.
The militants began targeting shipping in late 2023, claiming solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which has been devastated by a military campaign launched by Israel after a shock Hamas attack in October of that year.
Houthi attacks have prevented ships from passing through the Suez Canal — a vital route that normally carries about 12 percent of world shipping traffic — forcing many companies into a costly detour around the tip of southern Africa.
The United States first began conducting strikes against the Houthis under the Biden administration, and President Donald Trump vowed last week that military action against the rebels would continue until they are no longer a threat to shipping.
“The choice for the Houthis is clear: Stop shooting at US ships, and we will stop shooting at you. Otherwise, we have only just begun, and the real pain is yet to come, for both the Houthis and their sponsors in Iran,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
France could recognize Palestinian state ‘in June’: Macron
- “We must move toward recognition, and we will do so in the coming months,” Macron said
- Formal recognition by Paris of a Palestinian state would mark a major policy switch and risk antagonizing Israel
PARIS: France plans to recognize a Palestinian state within months and could make the move at a UN conference in New York in June on settling the Israel-Palestinian conflict, President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday.
“We must move toward recognition, and we will do so in the coming months,” Macron, who this week visited Egypt, told France 5 television.
“Our aim is to chair this conference with Saudi Arabia in June, where we could finalize this movement of mutual recognition (of a Palestinian state) by several parties,” he added.
“I will do it (...) because I believe that at some point it will be right and because I also want to participate in a collective dynamic, which must also allow all those who defend Palestine to recognize Israel in turn, which many of them do not do,” he added.
Such recognition would allow France “to be clear in our fight against those who deny Israel’s right to exist — which is the case with Iran — and to commit ourselves to collective security in the region,” he added.
France has long championed a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including after the October 7, 2023 attack by Palestinian militants Hamas on Israel.
But formal recognition by Paris of a Palestinian state would mark a major policy switch and risk antagonizing Israel which insists such moves by foreign states are premature.
In Egypt, Macron held summit talks with President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
Israel’s Netanyahu meets new CIA chief in Jerusalem
- “Netanyahu met Wednesday evening with the head of the American Central Intelligence Agency John Ratcliffe, along with the head of the Mossad,” the statement said
JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met on Wednesday with CIA chief John Ratcliffe in Jerusalem, a statement from the premier’s office said.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Wednesday evening with the head of the American Central Intelligence Agency John Ratcliffe, along with the head of the Mossad, Dadi (David) Barnea,” the statement said, days before the US is due to hold nuclear talks with Iran and amid continued attempts to revive a Gaza ceasefire.
Netanyahu returned from Washington on Wednesday morning following a meeting in the White House where President Donald Trump made a shock announcement that the US was starting direct, high-level talks with Iran over its nuclear program this coming Saturday.
Following the announcement, however, Netanyahu said that “the military option” would become “inevitable” if talks between Washington and Tehran dragged on.
“We agree that Iran will not have nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said in a video statement ahead of his return to Israel.
“This can be done in an agreement, but only if... they go in, blow up (Iran’s) facilities, dismantle all the equipment, under American supervision,” he said, adding that if talks drag on, “then the military option becomes inevitable.”
Also during their meeting, the two leaders said that new negotiations were in the works aimed at getting more hostages released from captivity in Gaza.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt brokered a fragile ceasefire whose first phase took effect on January 19.
The ceasefire lasted until March 18, with Israel resuming intense air strikes on Gaza.
The truce had allowed the return of 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom were dead, in exchange for the release of some 1,800 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
Palestinian survivor recounts Israeli attack in Gaza that killed 15 aid workers
- The incident has sparked international condemnation and renewed scrutiny over the risks facing aid workers in Gaza
RAFAH, Palestinian Territories: Gaza medic Mundhir Abed feared for his life as Israeli forces opened fire on a convoy of rescuers near Rafah last month, killing 15 of his colleagues in a brazen assault.
Abed, 45, was the only survivor of the attack on March 23, in which medics from the Palestine Red Crescent Society and Gaza’s civil defense agency were gunned down as they responded to urgent calls for help following an Israeli air strike.
“I was terrified they would kill me,” Abed, a medic from the Palestine Red Crescent Society, told AFP.
He had been in the first ambulance sent to the area after distress calls came in from residents. What followed, he said, was a sudden and violent ambush.
Still visibly shaken, Abed recalled being with driver Mustafa Al-Khawaja and paramedic Ezzedine Shaat — both now dead — as their ambulance, sirens blaring and lights flashing, drove toward the strike site.
“As soon as we reached the area, sudden and heavy gunfire from Israeli soldiers directly hit the vehicle,” he said.
“I dropped to the floor in the back of the vehicle to shield myself. Then I heard no more sounds from my colleagues — only the rattle of death.”
Abed said he panicked as the gunfire continued and was unable to use his phone. Then, he said, he heard voices speaking Hebrew.
“The vehicle door was opened, and there were armed Israeli special forces in full military gear. They pulled me out of the vehicle,” Abed said.
“They forced me to the ground, face down, stripped me completely, interrogated me, and beat me with their weapons on my back, chest and feet.”
He said he caught a glimpse of fellow paramedic Asaad Al-Mansoura.
“He was stripped of his clothes, kneeling, blindfolded,” Abed said. “After that I didn’t see him again and I don’t know his fate.”
Mansoura remains missing.
International condemnation
The incident has sparked international condemnation and renewed scrutiny over the risks facing aid workers in Gaza, where war has raged since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered an Israeli military campaign.
A military official told journalists that troops were firing at “terrorists.”
Two hours after the initial attack, the Israeli military said its forces received a report about a convoy “moving in the dark in a suspicious way toward them” without headlights, prompting further fire from a distance.
“They thought they had an encounter with terrorists,” the official said.
But the Red Crescent released mobile phone footage recovered from one of the slain medics that appeared to contradict the army’s initial account. The video shows ambulances moving with headlights and emergency lights clearly switched on.
Abed said that when a second team from Gaza’s civil defense arrived to assist after the initial strike, they too came under fire.
After collecting his personal information, he said Israeli soldiers ordered him to assist them.
I saw Israeli tanks surrounding the area, and quadcopter drones flying overhead. The bombing was terrifying
Mundhir Abed, Palestinian medic
“One of them untied my hands, gave me a vest and a pair of pants, and ordered me to help them,” he recounted.
He was taken to a group of displaced civilians nearby.
“I saw Israeli tanks surrounding the area, and quadcopter drones flying overhead. The bombing was terrifying,” he said.
Soldiers ordered him to calm the civilians and separate them — men on one side, women and children on the other.
Muhammad Al-Mughayyir, head of logistics at the Gaza civil defense agency, said his team had rushed to the scene after receiving a distress call from Red Crescent staff whose vehicle had been struck.
Within 15 minutes, the civil defense agency lost contact with its own team.
It wasn’t until March 27 that the first body, of Anwar Al-Attar who led the civil defense unit, was found.
Search crews recovered the remaining bodies three days later. Some had been handcuffed and buried in the sand, according to the Red Crescent.
Israel’s army chief, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, has ordered an internal inquiry, the military said.
Whatever the outcome, Abed says he will never forget what he lived through.
“It’s a day I’ll never forget because of the torment I witnessed and lived through,” he said.
UN, US warn of increasing Daesh activity in Syria
- Terror group could try to free fighters from prison camps: Experts
- American troop numbers in the country have increased
LONDON: The UN and US have warned that Daesh is increasing its activities in Syria, raising fears that it could try to free thousands of fighters currently held in prison camps run by Syrian-Kurdish forces.
The US has sent troops to Syria in a bid to help stabilize the situation, nearly doubling the size of its presence in the country.
Up to 10,000 Daesh fighters, as well as 40,000 of their relatives, are incarcerated in the camps in northeast Syria.
“The crown jewel for the Islamic State (Daesh) is still the prisons and camps,” Colin Clarke, head of research for the Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security firm, told the New York Times.
“That’s where the experienced, battle-hardened fighters are,” he said. “In addition to whatever muscle they add to the group, if those prisons are open, the pure propaganda value” would serve Daesh’s recruitment efforts for months, Clarke added.
It is thought that the recent upheaval caused by the collapse of the Assad regime has provided Daesh with an opportunity to expand its operations in Syria.
US intelligence experts fear that the group could now use this as a springboard to sow instability across the Middle East.
President Donald Trump, however, has voiced doubts about America’s need for a permanent military presence in Syria.
It was hoped that the successor government to the Assad regime would provide a dependable partner to the US, but the outbreak of sectarian violence in parts of Syria last month has raised concerns about how much control it has over the country.
Despite its defeat by 2020, Daesh, which at one point controlled a vast swathe of territory across Syria and Iraq, has continued to spread its propaganda, having shot to prominence for its violence and repression, as well as a series of terror attacks in Europe.
Last year, the group orchestrated high-profile attacks in Iran, Pakistan and Russia. A US Defense Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the NYT that Daesh claimed 294 attacks in 2024, up from 121 the year before.
The committee established by the UN to monitor Daesh said it believed around 400 attacks were committed by the group last year.
Prison breaks are not unprecedented. In 2022, nearly 400 people escaped after Daesh attacked a facility in Hasaka, which required US intervention to repel.
A recent UN report revealed that Daesh fighters had escaped from Syria’s largest prison camp, Al-Hol, during the fall of the Assad regime.
