Sudan’s former prime minister Abdalla Hamdok has rejected the military’s recent political moves and battlefield gains as hollow, arguing that the war tearing Sudan apart cannot be solved through force.
Speaking to the Associated Press in a rare interview during the Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s governance forum in Morocco, Hamdok said the military’s push to form a new government and its March seizure of Khartoum are distractions from the urgent need for a negotiated peace.
“Whether Khartoum is captured or not captured, it’s irrelevant,” he said. “There is no military solution to this. No side will be able to have outright victory.”
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Sudan has been gripped by civil war since April 2023, when tensions between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted into open conflict. Nearly 24,000 people have been killed, though the real toll may be far higher, and about 13 million displaced, including 4 million forced to flee to neighboring countries.
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Both sides have been accused of war crimes. The RSF, descended from Darfur’s Janjaweed militia, is alleged to have committed acts of genocide. The army, meanwhile, stands accused of launching chemical attacks and deliberately targeting civilians.
Despite the army’s retaking of Khartoum and surrounding areas earlier this year, the RSF has regrouped in Darfur and pushed forward in regions like Kordofan. Still, army chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan has framed the Khartoum operation as a decisive shift in the war and, last month, appointed Kamil al-Taib Idris as prime minister, the first such move since the war began.
Hamdok, who led Sudan’s post-Bashir civilian government from 2019 until his resignation in 2022 after being ousted and briefly reinstated, called the move illegitimate and misleading.
“Any attempt at creating a government in Sudan today is fake. It is irrelevant,” he said.
He stressed that lasting peace depends on deep structural reform, not military appointments. “The idea that reconstruction can begin in Khartoum while fighting rages elsewhere is absolutely ridiculous,” he added.
Now leading the pro-democracy Somoud coalition in exile, Hamdok insists that meaningful progress must address long-standing inequalities, regional disparities, ethnic and identity divisions, and the role of religion in governance.
“Trusting the soldiers to bring democracy is a false pretense,” he said.
The conflict’s complexity has been compounded by foreign interference. Regional and global powers have been accused of supplying arms to both factions. While Hamdok’s coalition has condemned atrocities committed by both the RSF and the army, he avoided directly criticizing the UAE, which is under scrutiny by a UN panel for allegedly arming the RSF.
Asked about the Gulf state’s involvement, Hamdok pushed back. “What we would like to see is anybody who is supplying arms to any side to stop,” he said, adding that singling out the UAE while ignoring others, such as Iran, which has been linked to the army, is “pushing a narrative.”
Hamdok dismissed any notion that the war is nearing resolution. “The idea that the conflict is drawing down is total nonsense,” he said.
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