Civilian groups issue conditions for dialogue with Sudan junta

Sudan’s main civilian lobby for democracy on Friday issued five conditions to resume talks with the ruling junta, sticking out its perennial demand for the military to stay out of government.

After Thursday’s meeting with representatives of the Sudan Sovereignty Council—the military body in charge of the government—the civilian group Forces for Freedom and Change, which is the Central Committee, said it needs assurance that the military will leave governing to civilians.

Sudan has been in chaos since the junta seized power on October 25 last year, toppling the transitional government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. But the Committee demands a return to the arrangement before the coup, a handover of power back to civilians, unification and reform of the military and its removal from political life, and the end of the current course of the tripartite mechanism of dialogue consisting of the United Nations, African Union and Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

The Committee includes a coalition of civilian groups that helped topple Omar al-Bashir through protests in 2019 before a transitional government was formed. The junta, under Lt-Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, dissolved the government arguing it had fallen into wrangles. This delayed the transitional project which was originally meant to last 30 months from August 2019.

But the civilian groups argue that only civilians should run the government and any talks at re-establishing the transitional administration must be based on this arrangement.

The meeting came at the request of Molly Phee, the US Assistant Secretary of State, who has been holding talks since June 5 in Khartoum to resolve the country's deepening crisis that has gone on for more than seven months.