There will be no "ceasefire or reconciliation" in Sudan until the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces surrender, army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan has said.
Speaking at a ceremony south of the capital Khartoum on Monday night, he also sought to dismiss accusations that he has formed an alliance with Islamists loyal to former dictator Omar Al Bashir to help in the fight against the RSF. The conflict between the army and the paramilitary group has raged since 2023.
"We don't recognise the Muslim Brotherhood, the National Congress [Al Bashir's party] or the communists, " Gen Al Burhan said. "We only know the Sudanese people with whom we will live and die."
The US State Department announced last week that it had designated the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, the umbrella group of the country's Islamists, as a terrorist organisation.
Also last week, the US senior adviser for Arab and African Affairs, Massad Boulos, said Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps trained and supported fighters linked to Sudan's Muslim Brotherhood, which has been fighting on the side of the army against the RSF. His comments followed threats from an Islamist figure fighting alongside the army that men would be sent to Iran if the US and Israel launched a ground offensive.
The role of Iran in Sudan’s civil war has long been under scrutiny, but Mr Boulos’s direct confirmation draws a clearer link between Tehran and a conflict that has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions and created the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with about 25 million facing hunger.
"The battle of dignity is moving forward towards its objectives of uprooting the mutiny and cleansing the nation from its defilement," Gen Al Burhan said on Monday night. "There will be no truce, ceasefire or reconciliation with them before they surrender."
Western officials and analysts have warned that Islamist factions aligned with the Sudanese army have been among the strongest opponents of international initiatives aimed at ending the conflict. They believe the Islamists want the war to end only when they are in a position to take back the power they lost when Al Bashir was removed him from power in 2019 amid a popular uprising.
Gen Al Burhan had a pressing need for soldiers, who Islamists could provide, but he has faced criticism given their track record of abusing and killing civilians during the civil wars in South Sudan, from 1983 to 2005, and Darfur, in the 2000s. They also participated in the suppression of pro-democracy protesters during Al Bashir's 29-year rule.
In a recent video circulating online, Lt Gen Yasser Al Atta, who serves as the assistant commander-in-chief of the Sudanese army, said the Muslim Brotherhood had “six or seven battalions fighting alongside us”. Enlisting Islamists to fight for the army enables the RSF to suggest it is fighting to rid the country of a group responsible for the darkest chapters in the country's post-independence years.
After nearly three years of fighting, Sudan's army controls the capital and northern, central, and eastern regions. The RSF has control over the western region of Darfur and parts of neighbouring Kordofan, where the fighting shifted after the army lost its last foothold in Darfur last year.
The army and the RSF have been accused by the UN and the US of war crimes.
