Who's who in Sudan's new ruling council

Military-civilian body will guide country towards elections after 39 months

Members of Sudan's sovereign council at the swearing in on August 21, 2019. EPA

General Mohamed Dagalo

General Mohamed Dagalo. AFP

Gen Dagalo is in his early 40s, a relatively young age for a general in the Sudanese army. Gen Dagalo left school early to take up cross-border cattle trading and has never attended military academy. He makes up for that with vast combat expertise commanding a tribal militia that fought rebels in the 2000s in the western Darfur region. Gen Dagalo served as deputy to the Transitional Military Council chairman, Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan.

Lt Gen Shamseldin Al Kabashi

Lt Gen Shamseldin Al Kabashi. AFP

Lt Gen Al Kabashi, was named Joint Chief of Staff in February and was the face of the TMC from April 11, the day former president Omar Al Bashir was removed, until this week when the council became defunct. He led the TMC’s political committee and was directly involved in months of often difficult negotiations that produced the power-sharing agreement with civilians.

Lt Gen Yasser Al Atta

Lt Gen Yasser Al Atta. AFP

Lt Gen Al Atta was one of the 10 officers who made up the original TMC immediately after the removal of Mr Al Bashir. The number of officers on the council was later reduced to six. From a military family, he is the great nephew of an officer executed in the 1970s for his part in a foiled communist-backed coup against the late dictator Jaafar Al Numeiri. He served as military attache in Djibouti.

Maj Gen Ibrahim Kareem

Maj Gen Kareem is a career navy officer who was the commander of Sudan’s naval forces. He also has an engineering degree. He led the TMC’s economic committee, a position that required him to keep country’s economy afloat at a time when most trade, industrial and government activity was at standstill.

Aisha Moussa

Aisha Al Saeed. AFP

Born in the western Kordofan province, Ms Moussa has had a career in education, a field in which she earned a master’s degree from the University of Manchester and a diploma from Leeds University. She is a veteran activist in the field of women’s and girls’ education. She is the widow of Sudanese poet and comparative literature professor Mohammed Abdel Hay.

Hassan Idris

Mr Idris is a legal consultant who once worked for Sudan’s Justice Ministry and served as legislator and housing minister in the 1980s. He hails from eastern Sudan, which he represented in an opposition coalition called The Call of Sudan, which groups political parties and rebel groups in western and southern Sudan.

Sadeek Tawer

A native of the turbulent Nuba Mountains in western Sudan, Mr Tawer is an academic who taught physics at several Sudanese universities. A one-time member of the Baathist party, he has been active in rights issues and efforts to end the war in his native region.

Mohamed Alfaki

Mohamed Alfaki. AFP

A journalist and a political activist, Mr Alfaki, 40, is the youngest member of the council. A political scientist by education, he has worked in several publications in the Gulf region, and written two novels and a political book titled Challenges of Building the State of Sudan.

Mohammed Al Taishi 

A native of Darfur, Mr Al Taishi was a one-time youth leader in the Umma Party of former prime minister Sadeq Al Mahdi. He is a pharmacist by training who has lived in exile in Britain in recent years to escape persecution under Mr Al Bashir’s rule.

Raja Abdel Masseh

Raja Nicola Abdel-Maseeh. AFP

A Coptic Christian, Ms Abdel Masseh was jointly selected by the generals and the pro-democracy movement. She has had a career at the Sudanese Justice Ministry since the early 1980s and was until her appointment a senior legal adviser there.