SUDAN NEWS ALERT: Foreign Policy – Sudanese General Blew Off Final U.S. Effort to Avert Power Grab
Foreign Policy’s coverage of the military coup provides quotes from Jeffrey Feltman, the US special envoy for the Horn of Africa, who met with Sudan’s military leaders – army commander-in-chief Abdulfattah al-Burhan and Rapid Support Forces commander-in-chief Himedti – hours before the coup.
The military leaders reportedly told Feltman that they wanted Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok to dissolve the cabinet and appoint new ministers, citing a litany of failings by Sudan’s civilian leadership.
Feltman reported warned them that US “assistance and normalised relations [shorthand for things like sanctions lifting] derived from forward momentum on the [democratic] transition. If the transition is interrupted or the constitutional documents violated, that would call into serious question our commitments”.
According to USIP’s Joseph Tucker, military leadership may have believed there was an opening for the coup amid the factionalisation of civilian actors, lack of consensus within the military and armed movements getting close to the military.