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KHARTOUM — Sudan took further steps in its transition towards civilian rule Wednesday with the swearing in of a new sovereign council, to be followed by the appointment of a prime minister.

The body replaces the Transitional Military Council (TMC) that took charge after months of deadly street protests brought down longtime ruler Omar Al Bashir in April.

As a result of Wednesday's move, it was the first time that Sudan was not under full military rule since Bashir's coup d'etat in 1989.

The first steps of the transition after the mass celebrations that marked the August 17 adoption of a transitional constitution proved difficult however.

The names of the joint civilian-military sovereign council's 11 members were eventually announced late Tuesday after differences within the opposition camp held up the process for two days.

General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, who already headed the TMC, was sworn in as the chairman of the new sovereign council in the morning.

Wearing his usual green beret and camouflage uniform, Burhan took the oath in a short ceremony, one hand on the Koran and the other holding a military baton under his arm.

He will be Sudan's head of state for the first 21 months of the 39-month transition period, until a civilian takes over for the remainder.

The council's 10 other members were sworn in shortly afterwards and Abdalla Hamdok, who was chosen by the opposition last week to be prime minister, was due to be sworn in later Wednesday.

The sovereign council includes two women, including a member of Sudan's Christian minority, and it will oversee the formation of a government and of a legislative body.

The inauguration of the civilian-dominated ruling council, which held its first meeting in the afternoon, was widely welcomed but some Khartoum residents warned they would keep their new rulers in check.

"If this council does not meet our aspirations and cannot serve our interests, we will never hesitate to have another revolution," said Ramzi Al Taqi, a fruit pedlar.

“We would topple the council just like we did the former regime,” he said.

The transition’s key documents were signed on Saturday at a ceremony attended by a host of foreign dignitaries, signalling that Sudan could be on its way to shedding its pariah status.

Sudan’s new rulers are expected to push for the lifting of the suspension from the African Union that followed a deadly crackdown on a sit-in in June.

The ruling council will also seek to have the country removed from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for his role in massacres in the Darfur region, where a rebellion broke out in 2003.

He appeared in court on Monday — but only on charges of corruption for the opening of a trial in which an investigator said the deposed leader admitted to receiving millions in cash from Saudi Arabia.

Pictures of the 75-year-old autocrat sitting in a cage during the hearing instantly became a symbol of his Islamist military regime’s downfall.

The sight of their former tormentor in the dock was overwhelmingly welcomed by the Sudanese but many warned the graft trial should not distract from the more serious indictments he faces before the ICC.

“The evidence he committed genocide should come forward... Many civilians inside and outside Sudan have died because of him and he should face justice,” one resident, Alhaj Adam, told AFP.

Sudan’s transitional authorities would need to ratify the ICC’s Rome statute to allow for the transfer of the former military ruler to The Hague.

Amidst the euphoria celebrating the promise of civilian rule, unease was palpable within the protest camp that brought about one of the most significant moments in Sudan’s modern history.

One reason is the omnipresence in the transition of Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, a member of the sovereign council and a paramilitary commander whose forces are blamed for the deadly repression of the protests.

His Rapid Support Forces sprang out of the Janjaweed militia notorious for alleged crimes in Darfur.

Pacifying a country still plagued by deadly unrest in the regions of Darfur, Kordofan and Blue Nile will be one of the most urgent tasks of Sudan’s transitional institutions.

The other daunting challenge that awaits the fragile civilian-military alliance is the rescue of an economy that has all but collapsed in recent years.

It was the sudden tripling of bread prices in December 2018 that sparked the wave of protests fatal to Bashir’s regime.

Premier-designate Hamdok was flying in from Addis Ababa, where he served as a senior economist with the United Nations.

MAARET AL NOMAN, Syria — Extremists withdrew from a key area of northwestern Syria Tuesday, a war monitor said, as President Bashar Assad's forces pressed an offensive against the extremist-run Idlib region.

Turkey warned Damascus "not to play with fire" after the advance saw government fighters almost encircle a patch of countryside including an important Turkish monitoring post.

After eight years of civil war, the Idlib region on the border with Turkey is the last major stronghold of opposition to Assad's Russia-backed government.

Since January, it has been administered by the Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) alliance, which is led by extremists from Syria’s former Al Qaeda affiliate.

The region of some three million people was supposed to be protected by a buffer zone deal signed last September by Moscow and rebel backer Ankara, but government and Russian forces have subjected it to heavy bombardment since late April, killing almost 880 civilians.

And in recent weeks, regime forces have inched forward at the southern edges of the bastion.

In the early hours of Tuesday, anti-Assad fighters pulled back from the town of Khan Sheikoun and the countryside to its south, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

The withdrawal means a key Turkish observation point in the nearby town of Morek, as well as a string of surrounding villages, are effectively surrounded by government forces, observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

All roads leading out of the area are either controlled by government forces or within range of their guns, he said.

Turkish soldiers 

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said his country had no intention to move the post from Morek.

“We will do whatever is necessary to ensure the security of our soldiers and observation posts,” he said.

An HTS spokesman, meanwhile, denied its forces had withdrawn from the countryside around Morek, adding they had regrouped in the south of Khan Sheikhoun after heavy bombardment.

Russia said that rebel attacks against a key Russian air base to the west of Idlib and on regime-held civilian areas had continued despite the presence of the Turkish posts.

“We have warned our Turkish colleagues that we would respond,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

Assad also hit out at Turkey in a statement, saying “the latest battles in Idlib uncovered... Ankara’s clear and unlimited support for terrorists.”

Khan Sheikhoun lies on the highway connecting Damascus to second city Aleppo, which has long been a key government objective.

On Monday, a Turkish military convoy crossed the border into Idlib and headed south along the highway, drawing condemnation from Damascus.

Ankara alleged an air strike had targeted its troops, while a Syrian pro-government newspaper said regime aircraft had targeted a rebel vehicle leading them.

On Tuesday, the convoy was at a standstill just north of Khan Sheikhoun, after government forces to the south cut the road into the town the previous day.

The war has killed more than 370,000 people since it started in 2011.

Successive rounds of UN-backed peace talks have failed to stem the bloodshed, and in recent years have been overshadowed by a parallel negotiations track led by Russia and Turkey, dubbed the Astana process.

Under the September deal, Turkish troops were to monitor a planned buffer zone around Idlib after extremists had withdrawn from it — but that pullout failed to materialise.

Syria expert Sam Heller said the government’s latest advance had shown Turkish monitoring points might complicate its recapture of territory, but could not prevent it.

“It’s not yet clear what Damascus and Moscow will do next,” he said.

It is unclear “if they will seize the opportunity to take more areas, or stop to consolidate their new positions and put some pressure on Ankara” to implement its side of the buffer zone deal, he told AFP.

Analyst Samuel Ramani said the government’s accusation of Turkish support for its opponents could provide a “pretext for further Syrian army incursions”.

But “for Russia, holding the Astana coalition together is a chief priority,” he said.

Aid organisations have warned any large-scale government offensive to retake Idlib would spark one of the worst humanitarian crises of the war.

ADEN — Yemeni separatists drove government troops out of two military camps in deadly clashes Tuesday, reinforcing their presence in the south after they seized the de facto capital Aden.

The fighting, in Abyan province, came after the pro-independence Southern Transitional Council (STC) partially withdrew from key sites it occupied in Aden earlier this month, and a Saudi-led military coalition — which backs the government — said it had "succeeded in calming the situation".

But on Tuesday fighters from the so-called Security Belt forces initially surrounded a special forces camp in Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan about 60 kilometres from Aden — and a nearby military camp at Al Kawd, Abyan governor Abu Bakr Hussein told AFP. 

He said the separatists then seized the Al-Kawd camp in fierce clashes, forcing out the 350 troops there, and that they remained positioned around the Zinjibar base following the exit of government forces in a deal mediated by local authorities.

At least four military personnel — two separatists and two government troops — were killed and 23 wounded in the fighting, said Hussein, adding that 1,100 troops had been stationed in Zinjibar.

The spike in tensions between the separatists and pro-government forces constrains their cooperation against a common foe — the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels — in a war that has pushed the country to the brink of famine. 

Mohammed Al Markhi, a commander in the Security Belt Forces — an outfit trained by the United Arab Emirates that is aligned with the STC — told AFP “we are controlling both camps now.” 

Residents in Zinjibar, meanwhile, said separatist troops were deployed in the capital’s streets.

Yemeni Information Minister Moammer Al Eryani said in an earlier tweet that the Zinjibar base had been besieged.

“The Security Belt Forces... are demanding the [government] troops surrender or they will storm the camp,” he said.

On August 10, the Security Belt Forces ousted loyalists of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi from what was the capital of the formerly independent south in clashes that left around 40 people dead. 

They agreed to a withdrawal under pressure by Saudi Arabia and the UAE — both key to the military coalition supporting the Yemeni government against the Houthis — but retain control of key military sites. 

Yemen’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Al Hadhrami said the latest flare-up will undermine peace talks. 

“What Abyan governorate is witnessing is an unjustified escalation by the STC,” the Yemeni foreign ministry quoted him as saying. 

“It is something that is rejected and unacceptable and will undermine mediation efforts by Saudi Arabia.”

“We reject the continued provision of financial and military support by the UAE to outlawed STC forces in Yemen,” he added. 

In an interview with pan-Arab daily Asharq Al Awsat, STC spokesman Nizar Haitham said the group was open to dialogue but ruled out any withdrawal from the military posts in Aden. 

“There will be no dialogue if we were to hand over all the positions... what will there be left to negotiate,” he said in remarks published on Tuesday. 

South Yemen was a separate state until it merged with the north in 1990. 

Four years later, an armed secession bid ended in occupation by northern forces, giving rise to resentments which persist to this day.

The Saudi-led military coalition sent a delegation to Aden — the Hadi government’s base since the Houthi rebels took over Yemen’s capital Sanaa in 2014 — on Thursday to discuss the new front in the country’s crisis.

The UAE is Saudi Arabia’s main partner in the coalition fighting the Houthis, but trained and equipped the separatists.

Analysts say the break between Hadi’s internationally recognised government and the separatists reflects a wider rift between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

The UN’s Yemen envoy Martin Griffiths said he held a “positive and engaging” meeting with Saudi’s deputy defence minister, Prince Khaled Bin Salman, on Monday to discuss the crisis.

“Tireless role under Khaled Bin Salman’s leadership to restore order and stability in south Yemen,” he tweeted on Tuesday. “We agreed on the need for continuous dialogue.” 

KHARTOUM — Sudan's transition towards civilian rule got off to a bumpy start as generals and protest leaders fell two days behind schedule Tuesday in unveiling a joint sovereign council.

The body will replace the transitional military council that took over from longtime ruler Omar Al Bashir when he was forced from power by relentless protests in April.

The Islamist general appeared in court sitting in a cage to face graft charges Monday, a sight that the two thirds of Sudan's 40 million inhabitants who were born under his rule could hardly have imagined.

The very first steps of the transition to civilian rule after 30 years of Bashir's regime were proving difficult, however, with disagreements within the protest camp holding up the formation of Sudan's new ruling body.

The line-up was due to have been announced on Sunday, in line with a deal reached between the Transitional Military Council (TMC) and the Forces for Freedom and Change opposition coalition.

The TMC said on Monday, however, that the deadline had been pushed back 48 hours "at the request of the Forces for Freedom and Change" after they came back on some of the five names they initially put forward.

The ruling sovereign council will be composed of 11 members including six civilians and five from the military.

It will be headed by a general for the first 21 months and by a civilian for the remaining 18 months.

The roadmap drawn up by the generals and protest leaders in recent weeks set Tuesday as the date of the official appointment of a transitional prime minister.

Abdalla Hamdok, a former UN economist based in Addis Ababa, has accepted the protest camp's nomination but awaits the announcement of the sovereign council and has yet to arrive in the country.

The transition's key documents were signed on Saturday at a ceremony attended by a host of foreign dignitaries, signalling that Sudan could be on its way to shedding the pariah status the bloody war in Darfur had conferred on it in recent years.

Amidst the euphoria celebrating the promise of civilian rule, unease was palpable however within the protest camp that brought about one of the most crucial changes in Sudan’s modern history.

One of its causes is the omnipresence in the transition of Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, a paramilitary commander and one of the signatories of the documents, whose forces are blamed for the deadly repression of the protests.

Sudanese women, who played a leading role in the protests, have also expressed their shock at female under-representation in the transition.

Bashir caged 

Every newspaper in Sudan made its headlines with Bashir’s landmark court appearance Tuesday. 

Some of them carried pictures of the ousted ruler in his courtroom cage, an image that instantly became another symbol of his Islamist military regime’s downfall.

Large amounts of cash were found at his residence after he was toppled and police investigator Ahmed Ali said the case brought before the court concerned some of that money.

“This money was not part of the state budget and I was the one who authorised its spending,” the investigator quoted Bashir as saying.

On the streets of Khartoum, residents were not trying to hide their contentment at seeing their longtime tormentor in the dock.

“Bashir has done a lot against us in 30 years,” said Fatma Abdallah Hussein, a young medical student who took part in the protests earlier this year.

“Hunger, lack of education, what he did in Darfur and other issues, it is for these things we took to the streets, faced the teargas and the harassment,” she said.

Alhaj Adam, a Khartoum resident, argued that Bashir’s corruption trial should not distract from the need for the new administration to ratify the Rome Statute.

That would allow the former ruler’s transfer to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where he faces charges over the war in Darfur that erupted in 2003.

“The evidence he committed genocide should come forward... Many civilians inside and outside Sudan have died because of him and he should face justice,” Adam said.

SANJAQ SAADUN, Syria — In a schoolyard of rural northeastern Syria, boys and girls break out into giggles watching Charlie Chaplin’s pranks, a rare treat thanks to a mobile cinema roving through the countryside.

In Kurdish-held areas of the northeast, filmmaker Shero Hinde is screening films in remote villages using just a laptop, projector and a canvas screen.

“We’ve already shown films in towns but we wanted children in the villages to enjoy them too,” said the bespectacled 39-year-old with thick greying curly hair.

With some films dubbed into Kurdish and others subtitled, he and a team of volunteers want to spread their love of cinema across Rojava, the Kurdish name of the semi-autonomous northeast of war-torn Syria.

“Our goal is that in a year’s time, there won’t be a kid in Rojava who hasn’t been to the cinema,” the Kurdish filmmaker said.

Sitting on coloured plastic chairs in the village of Sanjaq Saadun just before dusk, the boys and girls watch wide-eyed as the first black-and-white images of “The Kid” appear on screen.

Lively piano music rings out across the school basketball court, as Chaplin plays a tramp who rescues an orphaned baby in the 1921 silent movie.

Laughter rises above the darkened playground as he tries to clean the baby’s nose or to feed him from a kettle strung from the ceiling.

‘Something beautiful’ 

Across the Kurdish-held region, old cinemas once showed American B movies and Bollywood fare, but they have lost their audiences and closed.

In local minds, cinema is also tied to tragedy, after a fire ripped through a theatre in the nearby town of Amuda in 1960, killing more than 280 children.

The mobile cinema, says Hinde, aims to introduce young children to the magic of the silver screen from the early days of moving pictures — something he missed out on as a schoolboy.

“When we were kids, the cinema was that dark place,” said the filmmaker, wearing black-rimmed glasses and a green t-shirt.

In primary school, he and others were taken to see films inappropriate for their age and in substandard conditions, he recalled.

It was only later that he discovered “the truth and beauty of cinema”.

To give today’s children a different experience, “we’re now trying to substitute that darkness for something beautiful and colourful”, he said.

Excited children 

The mobile cinema’s objective is also to screen “films linked to protecting the environment and personal freedoms”, Hinde said.

On another evening in the village of Shaghir Bazar, children rushed in before the film started to grab front-row seats.

On show that day was “Spirit”, an American animated adventure film about a wild stallion captured by humans who dreams of breaking free and returning to his herd.

Among the audience, Amal Ibrahim said her son Kaddar, seven, and daughter Ayleen, six, were brimming with excitement.

“They could hardly wait to come. They’ve never been to the cinema before,” she said in Kurdish.

Even some of the village’s older men had turned up to see the cartoon adventure, after not having been to the cinema in decades.

Standing to one side, they reminisced about the films of their youth.

Adnan Jawli, 56, came along with his two children.

“Today, I brought my kids to the cinema and all my memories are flooding back,” he said.

“Forty years ago, I would go to the cinema and watch the film from outside through the window,” said Jawli.

“It was such a great feeling when the lights dimmed and the film started.”

Hinde’s own credits include “Stories of Destroyed Cities”, a feature-length film about three towns in Syria and Iraq on the road to recovery after Kurdish forces expelled the Daesh group.

Apart from spearheading the defeat of the militants, Syria’s Kurds have largely stayed out of the country’s eight-year war, instead working towards autonomy after decades of marginalisation.

Though Kurdish-led fighters are still battling sleeper cells, Hinde and his team are already looking to the future. 

Beyond their roving cinema, they dream of opening a movie theatre at a fixed location.

“But that will depend on the war ending and stability returning to the country,” he said.