Hemeti and RSF commanders have intensified their media campaigns arguing that the SAF high command is controlled by Islamists from the ousted National Islamic Front (NIF)/National Congress Party (NCP) regime of President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir...

He became commander of the RSF in 2013 and gained favour with then President Omer Hassan el Beshir...

This stirred memories of the state-orchestrated genocide under General Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir's National Congress Party (NCP aka National Islamic Front) regime that left over 300 000 dead two decades ago...

Then President Déby Itno was trying to keep open links with Sudan's President Omer Ahmed Hassan el Beshir who was using Arab fighters including the Janjaweed militia to attack dissident communities in Darfur...

The two – Prigozhin and Hemeti – betrayed the men who initially sponsored their forces President Vladimir Putin and General Omer Ahmed Hassan el Beshir respectively...

Yet both Putin and Burhan's ousted predecessor Gen Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir run a system of managed conflict with several competing armed entities under the auspices of the state...

They came to power as part of an umbrella of different groups that opposed Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir but few had any administrative expertise...

For months Gen Burhan allowed officers who had been associated with militias set up under President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir's regime to rebuild them across the country...

General Abdel Fattah al Burhan is relying on other military operators especially the successors to the Islamist Popular Defence Forces that had thrived under the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regimes of Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir until his ousting in April 2019...

The growing presence of ousted President Omer Ahmed Hassan el Beshir's supporters and sundry Islamists around the SAF leadership may cause concerns but Abu Dhabi may share Egypt's view that its ally Burhan has enough control in the military to rein in those figures seen as most dangerous...

A call for a fatwa and a threat by a supporter of ousted President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir to kill the UN envoy Volker Perthes further complicates the stalled negotiations on a return to civil rule and free elections...

This replays some of the strategy used by ousted President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir with the Sudan Shield Forces...

Burhan has promoted Musa Hilal who used to head the Janjaweed 20 years ago before he was replaced with his then number two Hemeti by ex-President Omer Hassan el Beshir (AC Vol 63 No 19 Junta's double-talk on transition)...

That would scupper plans by civilian politicians to probe grand corruption under Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir's regime let alone hold military officers to account for multiple atrocities and rights abuses across the country...