Flanked by two national flags and dressed in military uniform, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, leader of the military coup in Sudan last month, presided on Nov. 14 in Khartoum over the first session of the country’s new Sovereign Council, a contested body he had appointed three days earlier that acts as a disputed and temporary head of state.
Gathered around him were all the other members of the council, which notably excludes any representative of the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), the wide political alliance that had shared power with the military before the takeover. Among those who did return to the table, however, were commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, as well as El Hadi Idris, Malik Agar and Taher Hajar of the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF), an umbrella of former rebel groups.
