• Sudan’s military seized power by dissolving the transitional government hours after troops arrested Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.

• The takeover comes more than two years after protesters forced the ouster of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir and just weeks before the military was supposed to hand the leadership of the council that runs the country over to civilians.

• Pro-democracy demonstrations continued in the country’s capital, Khartoum, after the army dissolved the transitional government and detained civilian PM Abdalla Hamdok, and his Cabinet. 

• The move drew condemnation from the United Nations, the United States and the European Union. US President Joe Biden’s administration announced the suspension of $700 million in emergency assistance to Sudan.

Situation in Sudan

• The takeover came after weeks of mounting tensions between military and civilian leaders over the course and the pace of Sudan’s transition to democracy. It threatened to derail that process, which has progressed in fits and starts since the overthrow of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in a popular uprising two years ago.

• Sudan has suffered coups since gaining its independence from Britain and Egypt in 1956. Al-Bashir came to power in 1989 in one such takeover, which removed the country’s last elected government.

• Since al-Bashir, who remains in prison, was forced from power in 2019, Sudan has worked to slowly rid itself the international pariah status it held under the autocrat. The country was removed from the United States’ state supporter of terror list in 2020, opening the door for badly needed foreign loans and investment. 

• But Sudan’s economy has struggled with the shock of a number of economic reforms called for by international lending institutions.

• In recent weeks, there have been concerns that the military might be planning a takeover, and in fact there was a failed coup attempt in September. Tensions only rose from there, as the country fractured along old lines, with more conservative Islamists who wanted a military government pitted against those who toppled al-Bashir in protests.

• Amid the standoff, the generals have called repeatedly for dissolving Hamdok’s transitional government.

What is the stand of the military chief?

• Sudan’s armed forces chief General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan defended the military’s seizure of power, saying he had ousted the government to avoid civil war.

• Burhan dissolved the Hamdok government and the Sovereign Council, a joint military and civilian body created soon after al-Bashir’s ouster to run the country. The council is the ultimate decision maker, though Hamdok’s government is tasked with running Sudan’s day-to-day affairs. 

• He now heads a military council that he said would rule Sudan until elections in July 2023. 

• The general declared a state of emergency and said the military will appoint a technocratic government to lead the country to elections.

• The armed forces will continue completing the democratic transition until the handover of the country’s leadership to a civilian, elected government, he said.

• The country and the world are now braced to see if more violence will unfold in the nation, which saw a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2019. 

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