Rhino: Agencies – Al-Rakoba newspaper website quoted a former senior officer in the Sudanese army as saying that the losses of the armed forces since the outbreak of the war with the RSF in mid-April 2023, with more than 5,000 officers and soldiers, killed in various areas of operations, in addition to about 3,000 who were captured, in addition to spending about 10 billion dollars in direct and indirect war effort.
The officer attributed the army’s huge material and human losses and its loss of about 70% of the country’s territory to three reasons, which he summarized as weak intelligence work, multiple decision centers within the army, and the attritional rapid support strategy.
According to the officer, the losses may be much higher due to the secrecy of the competent departments within the military institution on the data related to daily losses, pointing out that more than 50 officers of various ranks from the army and the groups fighting with it were killed during the past three days in Omdurman, Khartoum, Khartoum Bahri, El Fasher, and Sennar.
The officer confirmed the failure of the military strategy followed by the army since the start of the war, and its change three times from offense to defense, to sniping and surprise attacks. He pointed out that the failure of the air attack strategy supported by a neighboring country caused severe criticism of the army due to the large losses it caused among civilians and infrastructure, and its inability to inflict significant damage on the RSF, which used a strategy of attrition taking advantage of its superior ability to manage urban warfare and its tactical intelligence superiority that failed most air attacks and limited their direct impact on them.
The officer said: “When the war broke out, the only superior advantage the army had was the military aviation, but the speed of the RSF in neutralizing the Marawi base before the outbreak of the war, to which most aircraft and air equipment were transferred two months before the war, contributed to reducing the army’s air capabilities, despite the support it found from a neighboring country after the outbreak of the war.
He added: “The air attacks were only able to achieve less than 5% of their objectives directed at the RSF, but they led to the death of 80% of the civilian victims who fell during the war, estimated by the organization “genocide Watch” at more than 100,000, and caused losses in the country’s infrastructure estimated at tens of billions of dollars.
On Sunday, activists published new leaks of calls between army commanders containing field instructions, which showed clear intelligence failures and major issues in the management of field operations.
According to activists, these leaks revealed a major crisis related to the multiplicity of decision centers within the army and the control of the military wing of the Brotherhood led by Ali Karti and al-Baraa Brigades and their direct instructions to the command body located in Wadi Sidna military area, which is supervised by Yasser al-Atta, the assistant to army commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
These leaks indicated widespread cases of disobedience among officers, especially in the Omdurman and Shendi military regions, and their disregard for the orders of al-Burhan and the command in Port Sudan. The leaks confirmed that the Baraa Brigades had taken full control of the operations of the air strikes, which sparked widespread anger among professional officers affiliated with the army.
The leaks attributed the successive fall of cities and military areas since last October in Gezira, Darfur, Sennar and Blue Nile to the army leadership’s focus on protecting Omdurman and the River Nile state.