Sudan’s Umma Party Risks Split After Leader Fires Top Deputies

Fadalla Burma Nasir (Asharq Alawsat photo)

August 9, 2025 (KHARTOUM) – The acting leader of Sudan’s National Umma Party has fired several top deputies, a move that threatens to formally split the country’s largest political party as it struggles with deep internal divisions over the nation’s ongoing war.

In a decree dated August 7, acting leader Fadlallah Burma Nasser dismissed three deputies—Ibrahim al-Amin, Mohamed Abdallah al-Doma, and Siddiq Mohamed Ismail—along with a senior assistant and two advisors.

Nasser said the decision was aimed at “restoring the party’s prestige and establishing a new phase of effectiveness and discipline,” and would prevent leadership roles from being used as “personal platforms,” according to the decree.

The dismissals bring to a head a long-simmering power struggle fueled by differing loyalties in Sudan’s 16-month-long war. Nasser is seen as sympathetic to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), while the officials he fired are known to back the Sudanese army.

Tensions flared in February after the party’s presidential body tried to oust Nasser for signing a charter with the RSF to form a parallel administration. A party council later reversed the decision, but his latest move has shattered a fragile truce agreed upon during reconciliation talks in Abu Dhabi in March.

The National Umma Party, a major force in Sudanese politics for decades, has faced growing instability since the 2021 death of its veteran leader, Sadiq al-Mahdi.