by Harley Lipmann
Sudan’s Al-Baraa Bin Malik Brigade, the armed wing of the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, has not received the scrutiny it deserves. OFAC sanctioned the group pursuant to E.O. 14098. It was later designated by the State Department as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under E.O. 13224, with an FTO designation under INA §219 effective March 16, 2026.
The U.S. Treasury sanctioned individuals as well as the group Al-Baraa Bin Malik Brigrade (BBMB) in September 2025, due to their “involvement in Sudan’s brutal civil war and their connections to Iran.” Iran has supplied the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) with combat drones, including the Qods Aviation Industries Mohajer-6. Furthermore, fighters from the Al-Baraa Bin Malik Brigade received direct training from the IRGC on how to operate these advanced drone and explosive maritime boat systems. However, this was after more than two years of fighting, where this radical Islamist group perpetrated a multitude of atrocities, from killing tens of demonstrators during the October 2021 protests to the use of chemical warfare. The international community must recognize that the Brigade is not a fringe militia, but a key Islamist component of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), with direct links to Omar al-Bashir’s dissolved National Congress Party.
Origins and Ideological Foundations of the Brigade
The Brigade derives its name from Al-Bara’ ibn Malik, one of the Sahaba – the companions of the Prophet Muhammad. Islamic sources depict ibn Malik as a heroic and zealous fighter, reputed to have slain a hundred adversaries in the early wars against recalcitrant tribes on the Arabian Peninsula. The Brigade’s organizational roots can be traced to the Popular Defense Forces established under Omar al-Bashir in 1989 as a paramilitary auxiliary to the army.
Drawing on the militant legacy of its namesake, the Brigade has allied with the SAF in Sudan’s civil war to fight against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary and other perceived enemies. Following the outbreak of the civil war in April 2023, the Sudanese army mobilized civilians into the Popular Resistance Brigades – around a dozen battalions in total – within which the Al Baraa bin Malik battalion has emerged, expanding rapidly in both size and brutality and evolving from a battalion into a brigade of approximately 35,000 fighters.
The Brigade draws heavily from Islamist networks tied to remnants of Omar al-Bashir’s regime and the Muslim Brotherhood. Muhammad al-Fadl, a prominent leader within the brigade pledged allegiance to ISIS before his battlefield death. Other Islamist leaders, such as Anas Omar, have called on the Brigade to prevent any transition to civilian rule, favouring instead SAF rule under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. What needs to be of particular concern is the extremist Islamist nature of the Brigade, which radicalizes the SAF, exacerbates the war’s bloodshed, and distances any chance for a peace agreement with the RSF.
Mobilization and Islamist Entanglements in Wartime Sudan
Unsurprisingly, the Brigade has committed grave human rights violations on behalf of the SAF, especially against those suspected to have collaborated with the RSF. Al-Jazeera, in a report on the SAF’s ethnic-based killings noted that the Brigade has “committed some of the worst abuses so far.” The Halfiya Massacre, one of the largest such incidents, saw 33 volunteers executed in the Halfiya area of northern Khartoum and exemplified a broader campaign of extrajudicial killings; in this crime, the Brigade participated in the summary execution of detainees without due process, prompting calls from UN human rights experts for independent investigations into such violations. At the end of 2025, the investigative journalism outlet Lighthouse documented atrocities in Sudan’s Gezira State. The report described how the SAF and allied Islamist militias – namely the Al-Bara’ Ibn Malik Brigade and the Sudan Shield Forces – perpetrated the slaughter of dozens of unarmed men, with reported abuses including beheadings and disembowelments.
The U.S. designation of the Brigade as a terrorist organization thus represents a significant, if overdue, acknowledgment of these abuses. Nevertheless, the group has remained openly defiant. In a speech, its commander, Misbah Abu Zaid Talha, referred to the Brigade’s fighters as mujahideen and “martyrdom projects;” he urged the continuation of fighting, while also denouncing the U.S. and accusing the international community of double standards.
Any attempt to resolve Sudan’s crisis must avoid treating the Brigade as a standalone entity distinct from the SAF. In practice, the group functions as an integrated component of the SAF, embedded in its financing channels, recruitment pipelines, and battlefield operations. The Brigade’s ties to the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood illustrate the depth of Islamic entanglement within Sudanese institutions. They also reflect substantial Islamist influence within the SAF, where Islamist-aligned networks reportedly stretch across a significant portion of its ranks.
The Limits of Sanctions Without Structural Reform
The U.S. sanctions against the Al-Baraa Bin Malik Brigade are a necessary first step, but they cannot be the last. If the SAF continues to treat this extremist militia as an indispensable partner on the battlefield, the line between Sudan’s official military and radicalized non-state actors will remain blurred. To truly address the crisis, the international community must pivot from sanctioning individual entities to holding the SAF leadership accountable for their reliance on these “martyrdom projects.” Without decoupling the national military from its Islamist paramilitaries – if at all possible – any diplomatic effort to achieve a ceasefire or a transition to civilian rule will be sabotaged by those who view total war as a religious necessity.
