Army boss calls to arm Sudanese raises concern

The call by the general commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) to arm civilians in a popular campaign, or the “Sudanese Popular Resistance,” to fight the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has sparked controversy and concern over involving civilians into war.

Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, addressing soldiers at the Jabait military base in eastern Sudan on Friday, said, “We will arm the popular resistance with any weapon we have, and we will not prevent the Sudanese resistance from bringing any weapons.”Al-Burhan’s statements evoked varied responses from politicians and popular entities regarding the controversial issue of arming civilians to fight alongside the army.

 The RSF slammed the call as an indication of the army’s “inability to defend Sudan,” adding that arming civilians would “harm” them and increase the risk of a comprehensive war in the country. “Any person who gets armed and stands with the armed forces will be considered a legitimate target for the RSF,” Haroun Mahmoud Medikhair, a senior RSF advisor, said in a statement on Saturday. However, Husham Al-Shawani, a Sudanese politician, believed that popular resistance “is a right, a duty, and an inevitable necessity.”

“The popular resistance is a necessary movement to defend the homeland ... and it is a popular revolution that will lead to building the state and the local government in the future,” Al-Shawani said in a statement posted on his X account on Saturday.