Major moments in Sudan's history of coups, wars and instability
A Sudanese national flag is attached to a machine gun of Paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) soldiers as they wait for the arrival of Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, deputy head of the military council and head of RSF, before a meeting in Aprag village 60, kilometers away from Khartoum, Sudan on June 22, 2019.
Sudan, which has been in the grip of a two-year-old war between the army and a paramilitary group, has a history of civil wars, military takeovers and rebellions.
The Sudanese army said on Friday it had gained full control of the Presidential Palace in Khartoum, in one of the most symbolic gains in its fight with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
A mask-clad man holds a picture of a Abdulsalam Kisha, a Sudanese protester who was killed in a raid on an anti-government sit-in in 2019. Sudan's army said on May 15, 2021 that it had handed prosecutors the results of a probe into the 2019 killing of protesters in Khartoum.
Here are some major episodes of political turmoil and conflict in the country of 50 million people.
* 1985. President Jaafar Nimeiri, who seized power in a coup in 1969, is ousted after a popular uprising. Another military commander takes charge, promising elections in a year. The vote held in 1986 heralds a three-year period of civilian rule.
* 1989. Omar al-Bashir, an army general, stages a coup and starts three decades in power with support from Islamist army officers and initially with the backing of influential politician Hassan al-Turabi, seen as the spiritual leader of Sudan's Islamists. Turabi later breaks ranks with Bashir.
* 1996. Under pressure from the United States, the Sudanese government tells Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, to leave Sudan in May 1998 after he had spent five years in the country as an official guest.
A file photo taken in 1988 shows Osama bin Laden in a cave in the Jalalabad region of Afghanistan. According to a handwritten will released on Wednesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had millions of dollars stashed in Sudan and wanted most of it to be used to fund jihad. PHOTO | FILES | HO
* 1998. The United States fires missiles at El Shifa medicine factory in Khartoum. U.S. officials say it was producing chemical weapons ingredients and was partly owned by Bin Laden. Sudan says it was only making pharmaceutical drugs.
* 2003. A conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region flares, pitting rebels against government forces backed by a militia known as "Janjaweed", which roughly means "devils on horseback". Some 300,000 people are killed and millions are displaced. Violence persists even after a peace deal is reached in 2020.
Former Sudan President Omar al- Bashir.
Bashir is charged by the International Criminal Court with orchestrating genocide and other atrocities in Darfur.
* 2005. Sudan's northern-based government and rebels in the south of Sudan sign a peace deal after two decades of fighting in Africa's longest-running civil war that led to the deaths of 2 million people. The deal provides for a referendum on southern secession. South Sudan declares independence in 2011.
* 2019. Bashir is toppled after a popular uprising. This is followed by a period of rising tension between the army and civilian politicians over the transition to democratic rule.
* 2023. After protests against the military, fighting erupts on April 15 between the army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of Sudan's ruling council, and the RSF paramilitary, led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, who is Burhan's deputy in the council.
Sudan's army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country's de facto leader since the 2019 ouster of autocrat Omar al-Bashir.
* 2024. The conflict in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led to a severe humanitarian crisis, with famine spreading to five areas and the risk of expansion to 10 more.