By Alexander Ekemenah, Chief Analyst, NEXTMONEY
Introduction
The ink being spilled on commenting on the Guinean coup of September 5, 2021 has hardly dried up when another coup took place at the other end of Africa but this time unsuccessful. This time around it was in Sudan where elements allegedly loyal to the dethroned Omar Hassan al-Bashir staged a coup to overthrow the Sovereign Council of Sudan headed by Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok on September 21, 2021.
According to media reports, at least 40 officers were arrested at dawn on Tuesday 21 September 2021. A government spokesman said they included ‘remnants of the defunct regime’, referring to former officials of President Omar al-Bashir’s government and members of the country’s armoured corps.1
The Sudanese PM Abdallah Hamdok during a speech revealed that the coup attempt was largely organized by loyalists of the ousted leader Omar al-Bashir. He added that the perpetrators involved in the failed coup were not only from the military but also outside the military as well. According to some Sudanese officials, soldiers attempted to take over a state media building in Omdurman, but they were subsequently prevented and apprehended. Security forces reportedly shut down the main bridge connecting the capital Khartoum to Omdurman.2
Dozens of troops who participated in the attempted coup d’état were apprehended. They were all believed to be loyalists of al-Bashir, according to Sudan’s information minister Hamza Balul.3 A witness said that military units loyal to the council had used tanks to close a bridge connecting Khartoum with Omdurman early on Tuesday morning.4 [The coup] was not the first challenge to the transitional authorities, who say they have foiled or detected previous coup attempts linked to factions loyal to Bashir, who was deposed by the army after months of protests against his rule [on April 11, 2019].5 In 2020, Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok survived an assassination attempt targeting his convoy as he headed to work in Khartoum.6
Sudan has gradually been welcomed into the international fold since the overthrow of Bashir, who ruled Sudan for almost 30 years and is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over alleged atrocities committed in Darfur in the early 2000s.7 Bashir is presently in prison in Khartoum, where he faces several trials.8 The ICC’s chief prosecutor held talks with Sudanese officials last month [August 2021] on accelerating steps to hand over those wanted over Darfur.9
Sudan’s economy has been in deep crisis since before Bashir’s removal and the transitional government has undergone a reform program monitored by the International Monetary Fund.10 Underlining Western support for the transitional authorities, the Paris Club of official creditors agreed in July to cancel $14 billion of Sudan’s debt and to restructure the rest of the more than $23 billion it owed to the club’s members.11 But the economy is still struggling with rapid inflation and shortages of goods and services.12
The coup attempt is not the first to target the transitional government formed after the April 2019 ouster of Omar al-Bashir, who was overthrown after 30 years of undivided rule.13
Sudan has seen several coups in the 20th century, the most recent of which — a military coup with Islamist support — brought Bashir to power in [June] 1989. Bashir has been imprisoned in Khartoum since his removal from office and is currently on trial for his participation in the coup. He is also being tried by the International Criminal Court for “genocide” and crimes against humanity during the conflict in Darfur (west).14 The Troika (United States, Great Britain and Norway), which is in charge of the Sudanese file, condemned the coup attempt, while the UN mission in Sudan said it refused “any call to replace the transitional power with a military power”.15
On Tuesday, the powerful paramilitary leader and member of the Sovereignty Council, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, a former member of the Bashir regime nicknamed “Hemedti”, declared in a speech to his fighters: “We will not allow a coup”. “We want a real democratic transition with free and fair elections,” he added, according to the official Suna agency.16
In place for more than two years, the civilian-military cabinet, born of an agreement with the movements that led the popular mobilization against Mr. Bashir, was supposed to take Sudan to a fully civilian power in three years. But his mandate was extended when a historic peace agreement was signed in October 2020 with a coalition of rebel groups, giving him until 2023 to complete his mission.17
The coup attempt (…) clearly underlines the importance of introducing reforms in the army and the security apparatus,” the Prime Minister said on Tuesday. The Hamdok government also wants to put an end to the economic crisis, undertaking a series of difficult reforms in order to benefit from a debt relief program of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These measures, which include cutting subsidies and introducing a controlled floating of the local currency, have been seen as too harsh by many Sudanese. Sporadic demonstrations have recently taken place against these reforms and the rising cost of living.18
According to a report by Mohammed Amin in late July 2019 in reference to the coup that took place just about three months after Omar al-Bashir was overthrown on April 11, 2019: Sudanese Islamists are under intense pressure, as the ruling Transitional Military Council (TMC) wages an ongoing arrest campaign against them following the Wednesday announcement an alleged coup was foiled.19
Sources have told Middle East Eye that, under instructions from the TMC, forces have been hunting down Islamists under the accusation that they have been destabilising the country and attempting to topple the military leaders that took power following the removal of President Omar al-Bashir.20
Sources within the army and analysts believe that the confrontation between the Islamists and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia, headed by TMC deputy head Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly known as Hemeti, is expected to escalate in the coming period. The TMC is currently working on an agreement with Sudanese protest and opposition groups that would see its influence entrenched as the country moves out of the Bashir era.21
A senior officer in the Sudanese army told MEE that at least 140 senior and junior officers have been arrested in the campaign so far. Those seized come from various units, in and outside the capital Khartoum. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity over security concerns, said the arrest campaign is the largest ever within the national army. “I expect more will be arrested,” the source said.22
Bashir’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) was dominated by Islamists, and on Wednesday the Sudanese military said members of the NCP and Islamic Movement were involved in the alleged coup plot. The plot aimed “to return the former National Congress regime to power” and scupper the ongoing negotiations the TMC is holding with the opposition, the military said in a statement. “At the top of the participants is General Hashim Abdel Mottalib, the head of joint chiefs of staff, and a number of officers from the National Intelligence and Security Service [NISS],” it said.23
According to the army officer, Hemeti has ordered Sudan’s security organs to be restructured – particularly the operations unit of the NISS. “The entire operations unit, which contains more than 10,000 soldiers working under the command of NISS, has been given only two options: whether to restructure and join the RSF, or be demobilized and disarmed,” the source said. The source added that the army, backed by the RSF, has arrested dozens of Islamists and leaders of the old regime, including former Vice President Bakri Hassan Salih and Secretary-General of the Sudanese Islamic Movement al-Zubair Mohamed al-Hassan, among others. “So far at least 40 Islamist figures have been arrested, in addition to the 23 people already in detention, including President Omar al-Bashir,” he said.24
MEE has not been able to independently verify whether a coup attempt was indeed thwarted, or when it was supposed to have taken place. Last month the military made a similar claim it had averted a putsch. Security sources told MEE at the time that the army exaggerated its claim to strengthen its position in power-sharing talks with the civilian opposition.25
For its part, the Sudanese Islamic Movement has dismissed the allegation, stressing that its members and supporters aren’t involved in any such activities. “The Sudanese Islamic Movement is very keen on the stability and prosperity of Sudan, so it has kept monitoring the situation and the current developments in Sudan closely. This is why it has left everything to the TMC to manage. But it has noticed that it has been blamed for anything wrong that has happened in the country over the last period,” it said in a statement. “Our leaders weren’t involved in any coup attempt and have nothing to do with military coups, so we call on the TMC to bring forward proof and evidence of these accusations.”26
However, the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) opposition alliance said it welcomed the TMC’s efforts in controlling and saving the country in the face of an attempted counter-revolution. Satia al-Haj, a leading FFC member, told MEE that the counter-revolution, represented by the Islamic Movement and NCP, continuously attempts to derail the revolution and obstruct the establishment of civilian rule and democracy. “We can’t confirm if they really committed this coup attempt or not. But we can definitely say that they are attempting by all means to sabotage the revolution, and the national army is now responsible for stopping that and protecting the country from the destabilisation,” he said.27
However, the leader of Bashir’s defence team, Mohamed al-Hassan al-Amin, noted that anyone who has been arrested is supposed to be presented in court or released. Amin, who was a prominent NCP leader, said the TMC should follow the proper legal procedures with all citizens. “As long as we are talking about democratic transformation and reformation in the coming period, we are supposed to follow the right legal steps when we accuse anyone of committing anything. So we urge the TMC to bring anyone that is suspected of any crime to court, not put him in jail,” he argued.28
Sudanese military expert Abdul Aziz Khalid believes that allegations of military coups will continue as competition over influence in the army grows. He said the arrests were “preventative measures” by the TMC in an attempt to stop any potential moves to remove the council from power. “The two powers of the TMC and the pro-Islamists are apparently working against each other within the regular forces, including the army, security and even the police, so it’s very probable that they may go for further confrontation,” he said.29
Political analyst Salah al-Doma said that Hemeti’s wide restructuring and the arrests showed the factions of the old regime in and out of the TMC had failed to coexist following Bashir’s removal. He said that despite them once belonging to the same regime, previous regional armed conflicts in the country’s west and south and a conflict of interests had put them on a collision course. “The regional effect as well as the political and economic interests, in addition to the pressure of escalation in the streets, all accelerated the potential of clashes between the old guard Islamists and the commanders of the TMC backed by the RSF,” the professor at Omdurman Islamic University told MEE.30
The latest coup in Sudan, just barely two weeks after that of Guinea, has once again raised the spectre of military rule gradually stealing its way back into the governance space in Africa. The coup in Sudan is the second unsuccessful one this year alone. The first was that of Niger which took place on March 31, 2021. The coup underscored the political fragility or instability that has become the lot of Sudan over the decades within the context of transitional arrangements and regimes that are simply “transitional”.
The coup also took place amidst crisis generated by an unsettled past. Sudan, even after South Sudan split away in May 2011, is still facing many unanswerable questions about its past particularly the atrocities it willfully inflicted upon itself by an authoritarian regime which earned Sudan a pariah status from the international community for more than two decades. It is precisely when Sudan is seen to be struggling with its past and trying to chart a new path forward that this coup attempt came like a thunderbolt from the deep and black cloud overhead or spanner thrown into a revved-up engine to stop the machine from working or slow it down.
Sudanese society is still badly fractured. And it was Omar al-Bashirian regime that deepened the fractures. Even when the country is seen to be predominantly Muslim, there are still many tribal and social divisions. The new Transitional Council is seen to be trying to heal the wounds of the past caused by the divisions. The Darfur question is still unresolved. The latest coup could not have been meant to resolve all these festering problems, including economic crisis, but to restore the Old Guards which could have only cause further spikes in the tribal and social divisions still prevalent in Sudan.
Sudan has been a playground for competing forces and warlords jockeying for State hegemony with interventions from international community at various points in time but without achieving the much-needed peace and stability for the country to develop economically and socially. Sudan has also turned itself into a playbook for both state and non-state actors trying out their ideological hogwash in form of hybrid theories that has never solve any social problem. Sudan was where military Junkers easily transformed or metamorphosed into civilian dictators, becoming albatross unto the soul of the country. Omar Hassan al-Bashir was the longest serving of such dictators having spent three decades in power without anything to show for it in terms of economic dividends, ethnic harmony or political stability – except economic crisis, ethnic bigotries, social conflicts, civil wars and genocides.
The core of the Sudanese crisis was that democracy has never been allowed to take root as the dominant political system of governance. Authoritarian civilian and/or military leadership has been the rule of the political game in Sudan over the decades – not the exception. Authoritarianism has ruined the social fabrics, distorted the political normative values and created an intolerant worldview from religious (Islamic) standpoint. This is the tragedy of modern Sudan, if modernity can ever be ascribed to the country. Sudan is one of the poorest countries in the world today, poverty inflicted on itself by authoritarian leaders such as Omar al-Bashir despite the availability of abundant natural resources that could help transform it into a genuine modern economy and state.
Sudan presents a complex case study in failed modern state. Before the advent of al-Bashir in mid-1989 and after he was overthrown in 2019, Sudan has always been a State in transition with transitional regimes managing the affairs of the State. Democratically-elected leadership which creates at least a modicum of stability and legitimacy has always been a rare commodity in Sudan. In other words, the transitional character of the Sudanese State has always been a feature of Sudanese society since the independence years with the exception of the period of Omar al-Bashir and his venal authoritarianism. However, this transitional character of the Sudanese State can only be fully understood within the broad context and circumstances of VUCA-ed environment which Sudan willfully plunged itself over the years. Sudan has made itself volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous because of the fundamental weakness or fragility of the State itself, the unsavoury character of its ruling clique and its willingness to accommodate all manners of rubbish. This VUCA-ed environment was fed upon extensively by external forces, exploiting it to their own advantages. Sudan has itself to blame and nobody else. As the African proverb says: if there is no crack in the wall lizards and other reptiles cannot penetrate the wall! Sudan because of its peculiar and specific type of volatile politics has allowed its wall to be cracked open. The political landscape has been fracked over a long time to the extent of becoming almost hopelessly impossible to cement the debris together.
Sudanese VUCA-ed environment is also part of a larger regional VUCA-ed environment of East Africa and/or the Horn of Africa – similar to what exist in West Africa and the Maghreb. East Africa/Horn of Africa has also been a largely unstable region for many decades past. No country is spared its own share of instability which fed upon that of other countries in the region. Sudan is partly a victim of a larger unstable region even though it is regarded as the linchpin of the regional instability because of its degree of venality of an evil regime under Omar al-Bashir authoritarian and iron-fisted rule for three decades. It is an inexplicable conundrum as each country compounds the internal problems of one another.
The coup speaks directly to the very character of the Sudanese State: its inherent weakness, fragility or instability which makes it extremely difficult to impose its hegemony on the society in view of the centripetal forces pulling at it from time to time. This is worsened by the fact that Sudan has to operate and maneuver for elbow room within a very troubled region too. But worst of all is the proclivities for anarchy and violence escalated by the various factions or power blocs jockeying to capture the State manifesting in rejection of democratic process but preference for the use of brutal kinetic force of arms. This was the dominant situation throughout the era of Omar al-Bashir, the assimilation of the fundamentalist teachings of Dr. Hassan al-Turabi and the willingness to accommodate Al Qaeda from 1991 to 1996.
The Sudanese crisis is deep-rooted in the Sudanese political and social structures inherited as colonial legacy. The structural crisis of the Sudanese society has not been resolved till date not even with military intervention and rule for many decades since independence. Further research would without doubt yield unexpected wealthy results in terms of details although these details would most probably not alter the fundamental nature of the phenomenon of military intervention in Africa and the role it has played in the modern Sudanese crisis. Sudan provides such a basket-full case of military coups and counter-coups with such amazing details of how a phenomenally unstable and highly fractious country can lend itself to this phenomenon of military interventions. But the absurdity of it all is that these coups and counter-coups only deepen and widen the scope of this instability and fractiousness to the critical juncture or tipping point that had since split the country into two independent sovereign countries: (North) Sudan and South Sudan in 2011.
The tipping point and the split are indeed very profound. They have their historical root in time even before independence of Sudan in 1956. The understanding of this historical perspective is necessary for the present time in which Sudan is still struggling or grappling with its statehood and sovereign identity.
Background
Martin Meredith helps us to capture this historical perspective in his book. Since 1899 Sudan has been run nominally as a condominium, with control shared jointly by Britain and Egypt. In practice it had been ruled by Britain alone. For much of the nineteenth century it had been part of their own empire, conquered by Mohammed Ali’s forces in 1819. Its capital, Khartoum, lying at the confluence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile, had originally been founded as an Egyptian army outpost.31
On 12 February 1953 Sudan was set on the road to independence, scheduled for 1956 after a three-year transitional period. The timing was determined not by any notion of Sudan’s ‘readiness’ for independence but by the exigencies of Britain’s Middle East policy.32
There were inherent dangers in such a pace of change. Sudan was a country of two halves, governed for most of the colonial era by two set of British administrations, one which dealt with the relatively advanced north, the other with the remote and backward provinces of the south. The two halves were different in every way: the north was hot, dry, partly desert, inhabited largely by Arabic-speaking Muslims and containing three-quarters of the country’s population; the south was green, fertile, with high rainfall, populated by diverse black tribes, speaking a multitude of languages, adhering mostly to traditional religions but including a small Christian minority which had graduated from mission schools.33
What links of history were between the north and the south provided a source of friction. In the nineteenth century northern traders had plundered the south in search of slaves and ivory. Tales of the slave trade, passed from one generation to the next in the south sustained a legacy of bitterness and hatred towards northerners which still endured. Northerners, meanwhile, tended to treat southerners as contemptuously as they had done in the past, referring to them as abid – slaves.34
Only in 1946, when ample time seemed to be available, did the British begin the process of integration, hoping that the north and the south would eventually form an equal partnership. From the outset, however, southern politicians expressed fears that northerners, because of their great experience and sophistication, would soon dominate and exploit the south. The south was ill-prepared for self-government. There were no organized political parties there until 1953, nor any sense of national consciousness uniting its disparate tribes. When negotiations over independence for Sudan were conducted in 1953, southerners were neither consulted nor represented. While Sudan’s march towards independence in 1956 was greeted with jubilation by northerners, among southerners it precipitated alarm and apprehension.35
From the above, it is very obvious that Sudan has never really known enough peace in its political life and evolution as a modern state. Indeed, it is difficult to call Sudan a modern state because of the depth and scope of instability that has formed a heavy burden on its soul for many years now. Sudan has rotated between civilian contraptions and authoritarian military regimes, lurching from one crisis to another. The “northern” Sudanese hegemonic posturing against the “southern” Sudanese and insufferable arrogance could only fetch Sudan more trouble than it could manage. The historical hegemony only ended up splitting the country into two in 2011 and the arrogance fetching it more political instability, economic retardation and ethnic rivalries than it hoped for.
This coup attempt can only be understood in the context of historical background or perspective of the long-drawn ethnic divisions, political instability and economic crisis that have been the lot of Sudan since independence. A desultory analysis by taking the coup exclusively as one-off event will not yield any good harvest. The coup must be taken or viewed in the context of historical chain of cause and effect of interweaving factors and forces fighting over control of the soul of Sudan itself. Such a contextual analysis lies at the heart of complexity science needed to fully understand the chain of events that have led to the latest coup attempt.
Military coups and counter-coups have been a pervasive feature of Sudanese political life since independence. But it is also clear that Sudan is divided between those who want to forge ahead with democratic rule and those who want to revert back to military rule. This is the modern dilemma faced by Sudan. Caught in between the crossfires are the innocent citizens who would rather prefer to live in peace and even in their poverties. Whether North or South, Sudanese soil has been tragically watered by bloodletting, with souls of innocent citizens crying to the heavens for justice. Whether these atrocities were carried out in the names of Islam, Christianity or animism nothing justify these killings and destructions that have collectively set the two countries back several years.
The deteriorating relations have put the fragile transition to democratic civilian rule in its most precarious position in the two years since the removal of former President Omar al-Bashir.36
The long uncertain military and civilian partners in Sudan’s transition have traded barbs following the coup attempt on Tuesday by soldiers loyal to Bashir. Generals have accused politicians of alienating the armed forces and failing to govern properly. Civilian officials have accused the military of agitating for a takeover of power.37 In a statement late on Sunday civilian Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok said the dispute “is not between the military and civilians, but between those who believe in the civilian democratic transition either military or civilian, and those who want to block the path from both sides.”38
On Sunday, members of the Committee to Dismantle the June 30, 1989 Regime and Retrieve Public Funds said that they were told in the morning that the military had withdrawn its protection from the committee’s headquarters and 22 of its assets. The soldiers were replaced by police officers, they said.39 The committee, whose purpose is to dismantle the political and financial apparatus of the ousted government, has been criticised by the military generals participating in the transition, who served under Bashir. Mohamed Al-Faki Suleiman, committee leader and member of the joint military-civilian Sovereign Council, Sudan’s highest authority, said his official protection had also been withdrawn.40 Speaking to a large crowd who were chanting pro-revolution and anti-military rule slogans at the committee’s headquarters, Suleiman asked people to be prepared to return to street protests if necessary. “We will defend our government, our people, and the democratic transition to the last drop of blood, and if there is any threat to the democratic transition we will fill the streets and be at the forefront as is our responsibility,” he said.41
In a statement, the Sudanese Professionals Association, the body that helped lead the 2018-2019 uprising that led to Bashir’s removal, called for the end of the partnership with the military. Earlier in the day, sovereign council head General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said in a speech that the military would not stage a coup against the transition, but remained critical of civilian politicians.42
According to Peter Fabricius of the Institute of Security Studies, in reference to the coup that deposed the Sudanese military strongman, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, “Sudan offers a laboratory for students of the coup. It has had 15 attempts, five of them successful – more than any other country on a continent that has itself seen more coups than any other region of the world. And on 21 July, Sudan made history again by putting its deposed president Omar al-Bashir on trial for leading the 1989 military coup that brought him to power.43
It was a unique moment. This was the first time an African leader was being prosecuted for conducting a coup – or at least a successful one – as far as one can establish.44 There was more than a touch of irony in the event too since al-Bashir himself had been deposed by a coup in April 2019. It was a very different kind of coup, however, from the one that brought him to power.45 Al-Bashir toppled the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi. It had all the trappings of a classic military coup. The army arrested Sudan’s leaders, suspended Parliament, closed the airport and seized the national radio to announce it was in power.46
On the streets of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, people are breathing a heady mix of fear and hope. Since April 11th, when a cabal of army officers pushed out the 75-year-old Omar al-Bashir, the country’s president for the past 30 years, Sudan has had two more of its bloodied leaders step down. On April 12th, just a day after taking control, Awad Ibn Auf, the defence minister and head of the self-appointed “transitional military council”, resigned. The next day, so did Salah Abdallah Gosh, the head of the much-feared National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS). On April 13th the latest military leader, Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan, announced his intention to “uproot” the military government, prosecute those guilty of killing protesters and reform the NISS. He has promised to hand power over to civilians within two years. The protesters camped outside the defence ministry over the past week have succeeded in changing their country.47
There is one big factor largely overlooked in the analysis of the unfolding event in Sudan. It is the diarchic arrangement or constellation of power currently in Sudan i.e. cohabitation between the civilian and military wings in the highest echelon of power. In reality this may be accepted as valid as a reflection of the critical balance of forces and power-sharing arrangement currently in Sudan. But it is a recipe for instability as both wings jockey for supremacy. The head or chair of the Sovereign Council is General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Prime Minister is Abdallah Hamdok who is seen as a professional and/or technocrat. There is always overt or covert mutual suspicion even when joint decisions are taken together from time to time in management of state affairs. But it is not known how these decisions are taken, who actually calls the shots within the ruling council.
It is apposite to note that certain elements appointed to the Committee to Dismantle the June 30, 1989 Regime and Retrieve Public Funds have been reported to be wholly unhappy with the exercise. The Committee is actually meant to dismantle the shameful legacy of Omar al-Bashirian authoritarian rule and particularly the corrupt proceeds the regime has stacked up for three decades.
The history of Sudan has largely been that of blood-letting. Over the last ten years, it has been a continuous blood-shedding with thousands of people losing their lives alongside their properties. They were caught as victims in the crossfires between various factions and actors whose interests cannot be defined in terms of national interests but only within the narrow confines of their selfish interests in their Manichean quest to have access to State and the resources it offer. Ultimately, it is a ferocious and internecine struggle to capture the State machine and its pillars of power.
[For instance, t]he Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), and other groups established the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) in opposition to the Sudanese government [headed by Omar Hassan al-Bashir] on November 12, 2011. Some 35 government soldiers were killed by rebels in North Darfur on November 23, 2011. Government troops clashed with SPLM-N rebels in Warni in South Kordofan on December 10, 2011, resulting in the deaths of 19 individuals. Government police clashed with protesters in Khartoum on December 22-30, 2011. Khalil Ibrahim, leader of the JEM, was killed by government troops in North Kordofan on December 25, 2011. Government troops clashed with SPLM-N rebels in the state of Blue Nile beginning on January 20, 2012, resulting in the deaths of seven rebels and 26 government soldiers. SLM rebels killed some 12 government soldiers in the state of North Darfur on February 22, 2012. SRF rebels claimed to have killed up to 130 government soldiers near Lake Obyad in South Kordofan on February 26, 2012. One UNAMID peacekeeping soldier was killed during an ambush in South Darfur on February 29, 2012. On March 1, 2012, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Defense Minister Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein for crimes against humanity and war crimes. One UNAMID personnel from Togo was killed during an attack on April 20, 2012. On April 24, 2012, the UN Security Council condemned the attack on the UNAMID.48
JEM rebels attacked a government military camp in northeastern Darfur on June 2, 2012, resulting in the deaths of several government soldiers and 25 rebels. The government released from detention two members of the opposition Popular Congress Party (PCP), Ibrahim al-Sanousi and Ali Shamar, on June 11, 2012. Government police clashed with protesters in Khartoum, Omdurman, and other cities on June 16-29, 2012. Government troops clashed with SPLM-N rebels in South Kordofan on June 21, 2012. Government police clashed with protesters in Khartoum and Omdurman on July 11-16, 2012. Government troops clashed with JEM rebels on July 24, 2012, resulting in the deaths of more than 50 rebels. Government troops clashed with SPLM-N rebels in South Kordofan on July 25, 2012, resulting in the deaths of 46 government soldiers and five rebels. Government police clashed with protesters in Nyala in South Darfur on July 31, 2012, resulting in the deaths of at least six protesters. Ibrahim Gambari completed his duties as Joint AU-UN Mediator for Dafur on July 31, 2012. On July 31, 2012, government police and protesters clashed in Nyala in the state of South Darfur, resulting in the deaths of six protesters. Aïchatou Mindaoudou Souleymane of Niger served as the interim Joint AU-UN Mediator from August 1, 2012 to March 31, 2013.49
SRF rebels ambushed government troops in South Kordofan on August 21, 2012, resulting in the deaths of eleven government soldiers. Government troops clashed with SPLM-N rebels in South Kordofan on August 22, 2012, resulting in the deaths of 17 government soldiers and one rebel. On UNAMID personnel was killed during an attack on a UNAMID police station on August 15, 2012. On August 15, 2012, the UN Security Council condemned the attack. Government troops clashed with SPLM-N rebels in South Kordofan on September 6, 2012, resulting in the deaths of 45 rebels and 21 civilians. Government troops clashed with JEM rebels in North Darfur on September 6, 2012, resulting in the deaths of several government soldiers and 32 rebels. Four UNAMID peacekeeping personnel from Nigeria were killed in an ambush near the town of Geneina in Darfur on October 3, 2012.50
On October 3, 2012, the UN Security Council condemned the killing of UNAMID peacekeeping personnel. Rebels shelled the city of Kadugli in South Kordofan on October 8, 2012, resulting in the deaths of five individuals. Government troops clashed with SRF rebels in South Kordofan on October 14, 2012, resulting in the deaths of 21 government soldiers and seven pro-government militiamen. One UNAMID military personnel from South Africa was killed in an attack on a UNAMID patrol in North Darfur on October 17, 2012. On October 17, 2012, the UN Security Council condemned the attack on UNAMID. SPLM-N rebels killed six government soldiers in South Kordofan on October 22, 2012. SPLM-N rebels killed 30 government soldiers in South Kordofan on October 31, 2012. Government troops clashed with SPLM-N rebels in South Kordofan on November 2, 2012, resulting in the deaths of 70 government soldiers and six rebels. JEM and SLM rebels attacked a military convoy in North Darfur on November 10, 2012. Government police clashed with student protesters at Gezira University in Darfur on December 5, 2012, resulting in the deaths of four students. Government police clashed with student protesters in Khartoum and Omdurman on December 8-11, 2012. SLM rebels attacked a military convoy in North Darfur on December 17, 2012, resulting in the deaths of 18 government soldiers.51
SLM rebels attacked a military base in Jebel Moon in West Darfur on December 18, 2012, resulting in the deaths of more than 20 government soldiers and two rebels. Mohamed ibn Chambas of Ghana was appointed as Head of UNAMID and Joint AU-UN Mediator for Darfur on December 20, 2012. Four UNAMID military personnel were killed in Mukjar in West Darfur on December 21, 2012. Some 30,000 individuals were displaced as a result of violence in the Jebel Marra region of Darfur in late December 2012 and early January 2013. The government claimed to have repelled a SPLM-N attack near al-Hamra in South Kordofan on January 11, 2013, resulting in the deaths of some 50 rebels. Government troops clashed with SPLM-N rebels in South Kordofan on January 13, 2013, resulting in the deaths of 43 government soldiers and eight rebels. Government troops clashes with SPLM-N rebels in South Kordofan on January 19, 2013, resulting in the deaths of four government soldiers and two rebels. Government troops clashed with SLM rebels in Central Darfur on February 6, 2013, resulting in the deaths of 52 government soldiers and 5 rebels. More than 500 individuals were killed in clashes between rival Arab tribes over control of a gold mine near Kabkabiya in North Darfur beginning on January 5, 2013.52
Government troops clashed with SPLM-N rebels in the state of Blue Nile on March 12, 2013, resulting in the deaths of 16 government soldiers and 40 rebels. SLM rebels claimed to have killed some 260 government soldiers during an ambush of government troops near Nyala in South Darfur on March 16, 2013. On March 31, 2013, the military component of UNAMID consisted of 15,213 military personnel (including 14,902 troops and 311 military observers) from 36 countries commanded by Major-General Luther Agwai of Nigeria. The civilian police component of UNAMID consisted of 4,858 civilian police personnel from 34 countries commanded by Police Commissioner Michael Fryer of South Africa. UNAMID included 1,081 international civilian staff personnel. SLM rebels attacked three government military camps in North Darfur on April 9, 2013, resulting in the deaths of 64 government soldiers. SLM rebels captured a government military base in South Darfur on April 14, 2013, resulting in the deaths of 40 government soldiers. Government soldiers clashed with SLM rebels in South Darfur on April 18, 2013, resulting in the deaths of 17 government soldiers. One UNAMID peacekeeping soldiers was killed near Muhajeria in East Darfur on April 19, 2013. On April 23, 2013, representatives of the government and SPLM-N met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for negotiations mediated by former President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, representing the AU.53
Government police clashed with protesters near Khartoum on April 26, 2013. Government troops clashed with JEM rebels in North Kordofan on May 25, 2013, resulting in the deaths of several individuals. Rival Arab tribes clashed over agricultural land in Katila in South Darfur on May 28-29, 2013, resulting in the deaths of 64 individuals. Government troops clashed with SLM rebels in South Darfur on June 4, 2013, resulting in the deaths of 46 government soldiers. The National Consensus Forces (NCF), a coalition of opposition groups, called for mass protests against the government on June 8, 2013. Government troops clashed with SLM rebels in Central Darfur on June 10, 2013, resulting in the deaths of 29 government soldiers. Rival Arab tribes clashed over control of a gold mine near El Sireaf in North Darfur on June 26, 2013, resulting in the deaths of at least 40 individuals. Seven UNAMID peacekeeping soldiers, mostly from Tanzania, were killed in South Darfur on July 13, 2013. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the killing of UNAMID peacekeeping soldiers. JEM rebels attacked a government military base near the town of Jebel al-Dayer on July 24, 2013. Rival Arab tribes clashed in Um Dukhun in South Darfur on July 29, 2013, resulting in the deaths of 134 individuals. President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir announced a cut in fuel subsidies on September 22, 2013.54
Government police clashed with protesters in Khartoum and Omdurman from September 23 to October 11, 2013, resulting in the deaths of more than 200 individuals. First Vice-President Ali Osman Taha was replaced by Lt. General Bakri Hassan Saleh on December 7, 2013. Two UNAMID peacekeeping soldiers were killed near Greida in South Darfur on December 29, 2013. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the killing of UNAMID peacekeeping soldiers. One student was killed during a demonstration at Khartoum University on March 11, 2014. On March 12, 2014, the U.S. government condemned the Sudanese government for recent violence in the Darfur region. Th Sudanese government sentenced two leaders of the SPLM-N, Malik Agar and Yasir Arman, to death in absentia on March 13, 2014. Government police clashed with student protesters in Khartoum on May 5, 2014. Government police arrested former Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi, leader of the Umma Party (UP), on May 17, 2014. On UNAMID peacekeeping soldier was killed in the village of Kabkabiya in North Darfur on May 24, 2014. One individual was killed during clashes between government police and protesters in Khartoum on June 8, 2014. Government police arrested Ibrahim al-Sheikh, leader of the opposition Sudanese Congress Party (SCP), on June 8, 2014. On June 12, 2014, the U.S. government condemned the Sudanese government for recent attacks against civilians in the state of South Kordofan and Blue Nile. Ibrahim al-Sheikh, leader of the opposition Sudanese Congress Party (SCP), was released from detention by the government on September 15, 2014. An assailant killed two government soldiers guarding a gate at the presidential palace in Khartoum on November 8, 2014.55
The assailant was killed by government soldiers. The seventh round of AU-mediated negotiations between representatives of the government and Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) concerning conflict in the states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on November 12-17, 2014. Peace negotiations mediated by AU mediator, former President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, resumed in Addis Ababa on November 23, 2014. Some 133 individuals were killed during clashes between the Awlad Omran and Al-Ziyoud groups of the Mesiria tribe in the state of West Kordofan on November 26-27, 2014. Government troops clashed with SRF rebels in South Kordofan on December 2, 2014, resulting in the deaths of 50 rebels. Several anti-government opposition groups, including the Umma Party (UP) and the National Consensus Forces (NCF), signed a “unity agreement” on December 3, 2014. Government security forces arrested Farouk Abu Issa, leader of the NCF, and Amin Mekki, human rights lawyer, on December 6, 2014. AU-mediated peace negotiations held in Addis Ababa ended without an agreement on December 9, 2014. Fatou Bensouda, Chief Prosecutor for the ICC, announced that she had decided to suspend the case against President Omar al-Bashir on December 12, 2014. Legislative elections were held on April 13-16, 2015, and the National Congress (NC) won 323 out of 426 seats in the National Assembly. President Omar al-Bashir was re-elected with 94 percent of the vote on April 16, 2015. Several opposition political parties boycotted the presidential and legislative elections. The AU sent 20 short-term observers from 14 countries led by former President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria to monitor the presidential and legislative elections from April 10 to April 17, 2015. The presidential and legislative elections were also monitored by the LAS, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), IGAD, and Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). On June 17, 2016, President Omar al-Bashir declared a comprehensive four-month ceasefire with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) in the states of Blue Nile and South Kordofan, as well as an end to offensive military actions in Darfur.56
On January 16, 2017, President Omar al-Bashir extended the unilateral ceasefire in the states of Blue Nile, South Kordofan, and Darfur by six months. On March 8, 2017, President Omar al-Bashir pardoned 259 rebels who had been captured in fighting with government forces. Members of two Arab tribes in the state of East Darfur clashed in East Darfur on July 22-23, 2017, resulting in the deaths of up to ten individuals. The U.S. government lifted economic sanctions (trade embargo) against the Sudanese government on October 6, 2017. UNAMID consisted of 13,178 troops, 160 military observers, 3,047 civilian police personnel, and 747 international civilian staff personnel on June 30, 2017. UNAMID fatalities included 164 military personnel (163 troops and one military observer), 50 civilian police personnel, and six international civilian staff personnel as of June 30, 2017. Government troops clashed with Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) rebels in Baw District in the state of Blue Nile on December 6, 2017, resulting in the deaths of seven government soldiers. On December 28, 2017, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) faction led by Malik Agar declared a unilateral six-month ceasefire in the state of Blue Nile. On March 28, 2018, President Omar al-Bashir extended the unilateral ceasefire in the states of Blue Nile, South Kordofan, and Darfur for an additional three months.57
The above served as part of the background to the final overthrow of Omar al-Bashir, thus ending his reign of terror of thirty years in April 2019. By the time his reign came to the inglorious end, Sudan has become a lake of blood or put differently its Nile River has become a river of blood. Instead of serving the purpose of rejuvenating life, it became a poison to all who dared to drink from it. Al-Bashir would go to his grave for betraying his people for his vainglorious and megalomaniacal tendencies. He drove his people into the arms of wolves and hyenas, lions and crocodiles. He turned them into pawns in the game of thrones. He made them sacrificial lambs to appease the gods of war fueled by competition for supremacy by various factions within the civilian political class and the military establishment.
By the time his reign came to an end, Sudan has reached a tipping point or critical juncture from which there was no return; keeled over and split into two. (Northern) Sudan which he was presiding over before he was overthrown was lying prostrate on the ground, battered and torn to pieces by his authoritarian claws. Sudan was again at the tip of complete collapse before it was rescued by the whiskers from his deadly authoritarianism and historic incompetence at managing the political economy. Life has collapsed into Hobbesian state of nature with its nastiness, brutishness, shortness and hopelessness. It has become a killing field exemplified by the heinous activities of Janjaweed and other mercenary hirelings and thugs in Darfur. It was in Darfur that Sudan lost its soul and conscience on account of a Luciferian leader that was Omar al Bashir. The world was horrified but helpless at the spectacle of death in Darfur. Hunger, drought, and disease stalked the land. Aids were not enough to mitigate the human and ecological disaster that became a sort of penalty for cruelty and poor governance to boot. Darfur is the price paid for authoritarianism that was left unchecked for three decades.
The 2019 Sudanese coup d’état took place on the late afternoon of 11 April 2019, when Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir was overthrown by the Sudanese army after popular protests demanded his departure. At that time the army, led by Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf, toppled the government and National Legislature and declared a state of emergency in the country for a period of 3 months, followed by a transitional period of two years before an agreement was reached later.58
Protests have been ongoing in Sudan since 19 December 2018 when a series of demonstrations broke out in several cities due to dramatically rising costs of living and the deterioration of the country’s economy. In January 2019, the protests shifted attention from economic matters to calls of resignation for the long time President of Sudan Omar al-Bashir.59 By February 2019, Bashir had declared the first state of national emergency in twenty years amidst increasing unrest.60
On 11 April, the Sudanese military removed Omar al-Bashir from his position as President of Sudan, dissolved the cabinet and the National Legislature, and announced a three-month state of emergency, to be followed by a two-year transition period. Lt. Gen. Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf, who was both the defense minister of Sudan and the Vice President of Sudan, declared himself the de facto Head of State, announced the suspension of the country’s constitution, and imposed a curfew from 10 pm to 4 am, effectively ordering the dissolution of the ongoing protests. Along with the National Legislature and national government, state governments and legislative councils in Sudan were dissolved as well.61
State media reported that all political prisoners, including anti-Bashir protest leaders, were being released from jail. Al-Bashir’s National Congress Party responded by announcing that they would hold a rally supporting the ousted president. Soldiers also raided the offices of the Islamic Movement, the main ideological wing of the National Congress, in Khartoum.62
On 12 April, the ruling military government agreed to shorten the length of its rule to “as early as a month” and transfer control to a civilian government if negotiations could result in a new government being formed. That evening, Auf stepped down as head of the military council and made Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan, who serves as general inspector of the armed forces, his successor. This came following protests over his decision not to extradite Bashir to the International Criminal Court. The resignation was regarded as a “triumph” by the protestors, who were overjoyed. Burhan is considered to have a cleaner record than the rest of al-Bashir’s generals and is not wanted or implicated for war crimes by any international court. He was one of the generals who had reached out to protesters during their week-long encampment near the military headquarters, meeting with them face to face and listening to their views.63
Despite the imposed curfew, protesters remained on the streets. On 13 April, Burhan announced in his first televised address that the curfew which had been imposed by Auf was now lifted and that an order was issued to complete the release of all prisoners jailed under emergency laws ordered by Bashir. Hours beforehand, members of the ruling military council released a statement to Sudanese television which stated that Burhan had accepted the resignation of intelligence and Security Chief Salah Gosh. Gosh had overseen the crackdown of protestors who opposed al-Bashir. Following these announcements, talks between the protestors and the military to transition to a civilian government officially started.64
In a statement, several Sudanese activists, including those of the Sudanese Professionals Association and the Sudanese Communist Party, denounced the Transitional Military Council as a government of “the same faces and entities that our great people have revolted against”. The activists demanded that power be handed over to a civilian government. On 12 April, Col. General Omar Zein al-Abideen, a member of the Transitional Military Council, announced that the transfer of Sudanese government to civilian rule would take place in “as early as a month if a government is formed” and offered to start talks with protestors to start this transition. On 14 April 2019, it was announced that council had agreed to have the protestors nominate a civilian Prime Minister and have civilians run every Government ministry outside the Defense and Interior Ministries. The same day, military council spokesman Shams El Din Kabbashi Shinto announced that Auf had been removed as Defense Minister and Lt. General Abu Bakr Mustafa was named to succeed Gosh as chief of Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS).65
On 15 April 2019, Shams al-Din Kabbashi announced that “The former ruling National Congress Party (NCP) will not participate in any transitional government”. Despite being barred from the transitional government, the NCP has not been barred from taking part in future elections. Prominent activist Mohammed Naji al-Asam announced that trust was also growing between the military and the protestors following more talks and the release of more political prisoners, despite a poorly organized attempt by the army to disperse the sit-in. It was also announced that the military council was restructuring, which began with the appointments of Colonel General Hashem Abdel Muttalib Ahmed Babakr as army chief of staff and Colonel General Mohamed Othman al-Hussein as deputy chief of staff.66
On 15 April, the African Union gave Sudan 15 days to install a civilian government. If the ruling military council does not comply, Sudan will be suspended as a member of the AU. On 16 April, the military council announced that Burhan had again cooperated with the demands of the protestors and sacked the nation’s three top prosecutors, including chief prosecutor Omar Ahmed Mohamed Abdelsalam, public prosecutor Amer Ibrahim Majid, and deputy public prosecutor Hesham Othman Ibrahim Saleh. The same day, two sources with direct knowledge told CNN that Bashir, his former interior minister Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein, and Ahmed Haroun, the former head of the ruling party, will be charged with corruption and the death of protesters. On 23 April, the AU agreed to extend the transition deadline from 15 days to three months.67
On 24 April, three members of the Transitional Military Council submitted their resignations. Those who resigned included political committee chair Lieutenant-General Omar Zain al-Abideen, Lieutenant-General Jalal al-Deen al-Sheikh and Lieutenant-General Al-Tayeb Babakr Ali Fadeel. On 27 April, an agreement was reached to form a transitional council made up jointly of civilians and military, though the exact details of the power-sharing arrangement were not yet agreed upon, as both sides wanted to have a majority. The military also announced the resignation of the three military council generals.68
Dozens of women were raped on 3 June 2019 by Sudanese security forces and at least 87 people were killed by Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and other troops tore apart a sit-in camp Khartoum.69
Joseph Tucker gives insights into what might possibly be the motives behind the latest coup attempt.
[T]he Bashir regime [had] installed and nurtured officials across all levels of government and security organs, including at state and local levels. These elements of the previous regime were sidelined and seemingly removed from power by the revolution — but some of these cadres likely remain, despite more senior officials being imprisoned and awaiting trial.70
It is possible that coup plotters that were part of, or sympathetic to, the previous regime want to show continued relevance in the country’s political and military circles. They may also want to engineer a pathway to renewed power. Such sentiments have likely increased due to the historic power shifts ushered in by the transition, and the government will continue to grapple with such dynamics for the rest of the transition and possibly beyond.71
Regardless of who engineered the coup attempt, it reveals Sudan’s competing, disjointed centers of political and security authority and the contested nature of the transition. Sudan’s leaders, both civilian and military, face the unenviable task of trying to reconcile, outmaneuver and/or override these centers while not upending the transition.72
There is recognition that the civilians in Sudan’s transitional government face enormous economic, social and security challenges after decades of conflict and authoritarian rule. Gains have been made to forge peace with some armed groups in war-affected areas, usher in economic reforms and bring Sudan back into international financial folds. Sudanese citizens and international observers acknowledge consistently that the unique civilian-military arrangement resulting from the revolution was perhaps the only solution to preserve citizens’ hard-won gains and provide space for progress.73
Weakening a new civilian political dispensation could have been another motive for the plotters, but if the government’s efforts to bolster civilian political unity and better prioritize the needs of Sudanese citizens proceed, it can show the transformational power of a civilian government as envisioned by the revolution.74
During his remarks after the coup attempt, Prime Minister Hamdok went beyond condemnation to highlight the absence of key transitional institutions, including the long-delayed legislative council, the constitutional court and judicial organs. These bodies will be critical to institutionalizing governance reforms already begun and giving the country a real chance at providing justice to citizens subjected to decades of war and misrule. In the case of the legislative council, its creation is needed to give popular legitimacy and political direction to the transitional government’s decisions and provide space for other political and civic stakeholders to participate. Simply put, the transition will not be complete without these institutions and their absence leaves it vulnerable to events like the attempted coup.75
The central plank of Hamdok’s new political initiative is that reform of Sudan’s security sector and introduction of civilian oversight is key to the transition’s political success. This is recognition of the military’s outsized role in Sudanese politics, conflicts and economics since independence. Such reform, including consensus around a policy that shifts the military’s role from one of regime protection to citizen protection, is the best guarantee that Sudan’s citizen-led revolution will have succeeded in fundamentally changing the nature of the Sudanese state.76
The current Transitional Council was cobbled together in early February 2021 after negotiations with diverse power blocs brokered interestingly by South Sudan. Joseph Tucker further gave insights into the transitional arrangement and what it portends for political stability in Sudan as it move gradually towards democratic rule which is expected to be berthed around 2024.
The announcement on February 8 of a new Cabinet in Khartoum—the product of a peace accord signed by Sudan’s transitional government with several armed groups in October 2020 through a deal brokered by South Sudan—offers hope that the broader inclusion of political leaders can help address Sudan’s pressing challenges and create peace dividends. Unfortunately, the lengthy process of selecting new Cabinet members revealed additional fractures among both signatories to the peace deal and civilian political elements that seemingly offer competing visions for the transition and beyond.77
Twenty-five ministers were announced. All but five ministers were replaced. Only four of the ministers are women. The ministers of defense and interior hail from the security sector as previously agreed between the government’s civilian and military factions. Some posts have gone to high-profile political leaders—for example, Gibril Ibrahim from Darfur’s Justice and Equality Movement has been appointed finance minister and Mariam Sadiq al-Mahdi from the Umma Party is the new foreign minister.78
In addition to representatives of groups from Sudan’s peripheries, such as Darfur, South Kordofan, Blue Nile, the east and other areas, the refashioned Cabinet introduces new leaders from the broad yet fragile Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) alliance. The FFC brought together political and civic groups around the 2019 revolution that led to the ouster of former dictator Omar al-Bashir and reached a deal with Sudan’s military to govern the transition. FFC’s members run the political spectrum from leftist politicians and civic and labor leaders to conservative sectarian parties. While this diversity is impressive, it has sometimes resulted in difficulties forming decision-making mechanisms and reaching consensus among alliance members.79
For those ministers representing armed movements, it will be important to build trust with citizens that may view them as closer to Sudan’s security elements than the nonviolent street revolutionaries who ended Bashir’s nearly 30-year grip on power. A way to achieve this is for the Cabinet to begin implementing the complex October 2020 peace deal and ensure that the public understands the agreement’s national impact. Simultaneously implementing the agreement, running a government and continuing to reform the ministries that new ministers will oversee is a tall order. However, effective coordination across ministries—perhaps via a more proactive Ministry of Cabinet Affairs—and transparent decision-making can help.80
It is also important for the Cabinet to have the strong backing of Hamdok and key officials in his office to take unpopular decisions when needed. Some key issues are: unifying exchange rates and continuing to reform subsidies; engaging with military leaders to begin security sector reform that prioritizes citizens’ security; reenergizing negotiations for a more comprehensive peace that includes important armed movements from South Kordofan and Darfur; navigating legitimate demands for transitional justice and accountability; and outlining a foreign policy that defuses regional tensions—especially with Ethiopia and also due to the ongoing Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam negotiations—and reappraises Sudan’s relationship with Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and other Gulf states.81
During Bashir’s National Congress Party era, political and armed actors appointed to Cabinets were often viewed as collaborators with neither independence nor authority. Now, the opposite appears true; current ministers represent several sources of power and some can mobilize constituencies in support of, or against, decisions. It will be imperative for such ministers to indicate that they collectively represent the diverse landscape of Sudanese political, geographic, and social groups. More importantly, they must show through action, not just rhetoric, that such diversity can be harnessed to address the root causes of Sudan’s conflicts.82
Sudan is going through a once-in-a-generation transition that touches every facet of life, from the role of marginalized communities in political decisions to economic choices that will shape the country for decades. Sudanese are creating space to debate issues central to the idea of Sudan as a nation, such as the relationship between religion and the state. Recent months have seen the reentry of Sudan into the community of nations through growing international support for reforms and early efforts to address the country’s staggering debt burden in the wake of the December 2020 removal of Sudan’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States.83
Sudan faces continued conflict in Darfur, growing political unease in the east and the specter of regional war with Ethiopia. While the armed movements that have signed on to the peace accord have some constituencies, other movements that have yet to reach agreement with the government have significant support in areas like the Nuba Mountains.84
Throughout Sudan’s post-independence history, political parties and armed movements have often been accused of not necessarily representing the interests of communities for which they purport to speak. If the Cabinet can agree on an agenda that prioritizes citizens’ needs, this can build faith in such groups while tempering potentially negative aspects of politics in government. Importantly, the Constitutional Declaration—the transition’s foundational agreement—states that ministers are prohibited from running in the elections planned at the end of the transition.85
A united Cabinet can show that astute political leadership matched with continued reform of government institutions can produce a winning combination for managing diversity and preventing conflict in fragile states like Sudan. The Cabinet’s coherence and its ability to define roles among ministries and publicly articulate an agenda for the transition will be important for the overall functioning of the transitional government. This can also set a foundation for strong engagement with the international community on possible support and mutually accountable partnerships.86
A well-functioning Cabinet can demonstrate to Sudanese that politicians are capable of governing and reduce the perennial unleashing of military coups that have plagued Sudan’s prior civilian governments. However, if leaders carry political conflicts and ideological rivalries with them into the Cabinet, this could decisively imperil an already tenuous transition and restart the cycle of conflict that Sudan and the region can ill afford.87
From the insights provided by Tucker above, it is without doubt evident that Sudan faces the enormous task of restructuring the State machine first to depart from its sordid past history of crimes against the very people it claimed to represent and move towards being responsive and accountable to the people in a symbiotic relationship of mutual trust and to fast-track socio-economic development of Sudan deploying its resources for this purpose.
Reforms of the State machine and its functions form part of the bridge towards bringing different people together towards unity for the purpose of achieving the overall goals of democratic rule and rapid economic development. A key reform I the separation of State and religion, a very difficult task in an Islamic society and more in a country like Sudan where it has unfortunately been the norm but a norm that has proven its deficit beyond all reasonable doubts.
It is also imperative to unite the diverse landscape of Sudanese political, geographic, and social groups into a framework clearly defining national interests that all the diverse groups can key into as a form of social contract. Assurance must be evident that government represents all interests of the diverse groups even if not all the representatives of the groups can be accommodated within a “unity government”.
Above all, the most fundamental task of all is the reform that will lead to loosening the hold of the military on the levers or vectors of power. The much expected reform of the military must have the ultimate aim of subordinating the military to civilian authority. The military has been in power for most of the Sudan’s post-independence life and has clearly bungled the chance of writing its name in gold as the savior of Sudan from its epochal crisis. On the contrary, the military is exclusively responsible for escalating the crisis of Sudanese state and society. It has lost its moral legitimacy to lay claim to power.
Omar al-Bashir, the Authoritarian Grandmaster
The history of “modern” Sudan cannot be written without critical interrogation of the central role played in it by Omar al-Bashir. No other leader than Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, (born January 7, 1944, Hosh Wad Banaqa, Sudan) personify a classic case study of authoritarianism in the modern political life of Sudan. Al-Bashir straddled and bestrode Sudanese political life like a colossus affecting Sudan like no other Sudanese leader. He became Sudanese leader in time of crisis and left it in time of crisis, never achieving peace or progress that could have given Sudan breathing space and take it into the metropolitan centres of comity of nations. It was indeed during his reign that Sudan reached the final tipping point of having to split into two in 2011 when the South Sudan finally broke away. Throughout his reign, Sudan remained on the periphery of metropolitan world both in Africa and the rest of the world.
Conveniently forgetting his humble roots and beginning, al-Bashir grew to become not just a military Junker and a tyrant but a monstrous one for that matter. He became a Medusa to whom human sacrifices are made to appease his blood-mongering authoritarian proclivities and political intransigence. He cuddled terrorists and facilitated global terrorism by harboring well-known terrorism ideologues and jihadists.
Even when oil was later discovered in Sudan, he squandered the oil wealth that came streaming into the national coffer. Sudanese economy was as parlous in its state when he became the Sudanese strongman and when he was finally yanked off power. The available oil wealth was been used to finance the various wars and terrorist escapades and acts of genocides, leaving nothing to improve the oil sector and the economy as a whole. Civil conflicts and wars were promoted and sustained as a way of siphoning oil revenues into private pockets. The net result was increasing poverty, diseases and poor standards of living for the masses of the Sudanese.
Even with his removal, Sudanese economy has not fundamentally improved because he could not manage a modern oil-driven economy. His political obtuseness or intransigence finally led to the splitting of the country in which the breakaway South Sudan took away two-third of the oil wells of Sudan. But it was not just a split on the basis of economic advantage but also on irreconcilable fundamental ethnic, cultural, social and political disagreements between the North and South Sudan as has been aptly described by Martin Meredith already quoted above.88 It was a civilizational clash and parting of ways between two different ideological worlds and worldviews, between Islamism and Christendom. South Sudan was the inevitable that was bound to happen. It was inescapable outcome of the irreconcilable differences between the predominantly Muslim Northern part of Sudan and the largely animist and Christian Southern part of Sudan.
Al-Bashir never blinks his eyes against the fact he was a sworn enemy of Christianity. This is said with all objectivity and without prejudice. He grew up seeing Christianity and the Western world as his twin-enemy. He studied at a military college in Cairo and fought in 1973 with the Egyptian army against Israel and after returning to Sudan and after achieving rapid promotion in the army he took the leading role in the Sudanese army’s campaign against the rebels of the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). After the South Sudan broke away, Al-Bashir shifted his blood-letting focus to Darfur where he finally met his comeuppance through his orchestrated acts of genocide that finally forced the entire world to cry out against him, seeing him for what he truly is and stands for – an evil man – and finally earning him indictments from the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, genocide, etc.
Under the terms of the 2005 agreement with the southern rebels, a referendum for southern Sudanese citizens was held in January 2011 to determine whether the south would remain part of Sudan or secede. The results overwhelmingly indicated a preference to secede, which occurred on July 9, 2011. The economic fallout from the loss of the south’s oil fields and the ongoing conflict with Sudan’s new neighbour, South Sudan, as well as with rebel groups within Sudan, dominated Bashir’s presidency. Opposition groups and the general public increasingly expressed their dissatisfaction with the NCP’s inability to improve economic conditions, find a peaceful solution to end the rebel activity, or institute constitutional reforms. Bashir’s regime used harsh tactics in an attempt to quell public displays of dissent and to curb the media.89
His chief ideologue was Dr. Hassan al-Turabi, the well-known Muslim extremist and leader of the National Islamic Front (NIF) and advocate of global jihadism against Western world. Al-Turabi was a teacher to Osama bin Laden and together with al-Bashir formed and forged the modern unholy alliance against the Western world particular the United States. Together they began to Islamize the country, and in March 1991 Islamic legal jurisprudence (Sharīʿah) was introduced and imposed helping to widen the division between the Islamic north and the mainly animist and Christian South.
Al-Bashir was not just an authoritarian military Junker but he was equally a thoroughbred modern Machiavellian and Clausewitz to boot. He was able to maneuver and tighten his grip on Sudanese political life for three decades, similar to quite a large number of other African dictators and/or despots. He had been described as a “Spider at the heart of Sudanese web”.90
Born into a farming family in a dusty village 100 miles north of Khartoum, the capital, Mr. al-Bashir served as a paratroop commander in the army. In 1989, he headed an Islamist junta that ousted Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi in a bloodless coup, Sudan’s fourth military takeover since independence in 1956. For the first decade of his rule, though, Mr. al-Bashir, was seen as a front-man for a more powerful force — the cleric Hassan al-Turabi, a smooth-talking, Sorbonne-educated ideologue with sweeping ideas about embedding Shariah law deep in Sudan’s diverse society and institutions.91
International jihadists flocked to Sudan in that period, among them Osama bin Laden, who bought a house in an upmarket Khartoum district and invested in agriculture and construction. In 1993, the United States blacklisted the Bashir government as an international sponsor of terrorism, and it imposed sanctions four years later. In 1999, after a falling-out, Mr. al-Bashir outmaneuvered Mr. al-Turabi and cast him into prison. He turned back to the army to underwrite his authority, forging relationships that spanned the military, the security forces and the country’s tribal leadership.92
Mr. al-Bashir assiduously attended the funerals and weddings of military officers, often sending presents of sugar, tea or dried goods to their families. He held an open house once a week where commissioned officers could drop in and meet with him, said Alex de Waal, a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and an expert on Sudan. “He’s like the spider at the center of the web — he could pick up on the smallest tremor, [and] then deftly use his personalized political retail skills to manage the politics of the army,” he said.93
Mr. al-Bashir used a similar approach to manage provincial leaders and tribal chiefs, Mr. de Waal added. “Most of them became militarized and enmeshed in one of the popular defense forces. He has that extraordinary network, and it’s all in his head.”94
That style of personalist autocracy was put to use in battling the insurgency in southern Sudan, where rebels from different ethnic groups with Christian or animist beliefs were fighting for independence. During the 21-year war, the Sudanese air force dropped crude barrel bombs over remote villages in the south and sided with vicious local militias recruited by Mr. al-Bashir and his officers.95
At the same time, Sudan discovered oil. After the first barrels were pumped in 1999, living standards gradually rose in one of Africa’s most desperately poor countries. New roads appeared, remote villages gained water and electricity, and shiny buildings rose in Khartoum. “Those were the fat years,” said Magdi el-Gizouli, a fellow at the Rift Valley Institute.96
In 2005, under international pressure, Mr. al-Bashir signed a peace deal with the southern rebels, overcoming opposition from his hard-liners who wanted to keep fighting. But by then another uprising had erupted in western Darfur that would define his legacy. There, a pro-government militia known as the Janjaweed cut a bloody swath through remote villages, quelling an insurgency led by rebels. At least 300,000 people are estimated to have died.97
The unholy alliance struck with Al-Turabi and Osama bin Laden was more poignant and cannot be left out in any analysis of the current impasse in which Sudan today find itself. This unholy alliance still cast its dark pall down to the present time.This unholy alliance was briefly captured by Rohan Gunaratna in his insightful book into the arcane world of Al Qaeda98
Sudan was Al Qaeda’s home from December 1991 to May 1996, a base from which it could seek to extend its influence throughout Africa. Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir and the nation’s spiritual leader, Dr. Hassan al-Turabi steadfastly supported Al Qaeda for many years before they were forced by international pressures, especially sanctions, to expel the group. Although Osama and his cohorts left on a chartered C-130 from Khartoum to Afghanistan on May 18, 1996, the links between the Sudanese regime and Osama continued and the disposition of the Sudanese government to Al Qaeda and Islamists remained unchanged. But in early 2001 the relationship between General Omar al-Bashir and Dr. Hassan al-Turabi deteriorated; al-Bashir got wind of al-Turabi’s plans to oust him and placed him under house arrest. Al-Bashir also secretly approached the Clinton administration with the offer to extradite Osama to the US, but his suggestion was spurned (after 9/11 Clinton admitted that the refusal to accept the offer was his biggest mistake). Seeing the writing on the wall, al-Bashir decided to cooperate fully with the Americans after the 9/11 attacks. Beginning in October 2001 he provided invaluable information to the CIA and European intelligence agencies on Al Qaeda. However, the threat posed by Islamists has not diminished in the Sudan and is likely to resurface from time to time. Parallels are often drawn between Osama and his Sudanese precursor, the Mahdi, who fought a jihad against the British in the late nineteenth century.99
In addition to establishing state-of-the-art training infrastructure, official patronage enabled Al Qaeda to conduct CBRN [chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear] weapons research and runs a weapons shipping network in Sudan. Al Qaeda used the Hilat Koko military facility to test a container of uranium from South Africa purchased for $1.5 million in 1994. This was obtained, via high-ranking Sudanese official intermediaries, by Jamal Fadl, for which he received a $10,000 reward.100
Al Qaeda enjoyed the patronage of the Sudanese state until the rift between the Islamists (led by al-Turabi) and al-Bashir’s military widened in the mid-1990s. It is very likely that elements in the military envisaged the disaster Osama would bring upon Sudan. Senior members of the regime, such as General Abdullah Hassan al-Hadi, head of internal security, and Lieutenant General Bakri Hassan Salih, an aide to the President, were particularly mistrustful of Osama. But there were others in the military, some still serving, who furnished Al Qaeda with documents, supervised transfer of weapons to it, maintained the link to Iran and held advisory meetings with Al Qaeda members regarding tactics used against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The late Brigadier Ali Mukhtar Kamal, deputy head of military intelligence and later head of Islamic Relief in Jeddah, was a key Al Qaeda contact.101
The funding the Islamist regime in Khartoum received from the Middle East, ranging from Saudi Arabia to Iran, was used to influence the socio-religious, cultural and political spheres not only in Sudan but also in the rest of Africa. Under the banner of Islam, Khartoum assisted Islamists in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia and Ethiopia. By early 1995, Iranian funding enabled the National Islamic Front and Al Qaeda to establish twenty-three training camps throughout Sudan. Although most were dismantled after Osama’s departure to Afghanistan in May 1996, Sudanese Islamists maintained a dozen facilities for ideological and practical instruction. They included two camps for Arabs in Merkhiyat; one camp for Eritrean, Ethiopian, Ugandan, Somali and occasionally Palestinian Islamists in Al-Qutanynah; one camp for training Palestinian, Libyan, Iranian, Iraqi, Yemeni, Chinese and Filipino Islamists in Jabel al-Awliya; one for training Egyptians, Algerians and Tunisians in Shendi, near Port Sudan; one for treating casualties in Soba; while one in Sejara near Omardurman controlled training throughout Sudan. There is evidence to indicate Sudanese government military facilities and instructors trained foreign Islamists even after Osama’s departure. However, with the arrest of al-Turabi in 2001, all the camps were shut down.102
Al-Turabi’s greatest contribution to Islamism was to bring together forty Islamist political parties and terrorist groups under the banner of Popular Arab and Islamic Conference. During the day delegates gathered openly in the conference venue, talking politics and religion, while at night small groups got together privately to discuss how to wage war against the US, Israel and their allies. Osama attended some of the annual meetings of the PAIC, which were partially funded by Al Qaeda, and on one occasion he was photographed with other delegates by a Western intelligence agency.103
Like all dictators, al-Bashir’s political career came to a clangorous end on April 11, 2019 when he was finally dethroned, arrested and cast into detention to await trial at the International Criminal Court for his alleged genocides and crimes against humanity. It was a dénouement for a tyrant!
Dining with the Devil
There were three closely interrelated events in Sudan that clearly opened up a new vista for a better future: the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir, the formation of the Transitional Military Council which later metamorphosed into the Transitional Legislative Council and the taking of Sudan off the US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism.
The overthrow of al-Bashir on April 11, 2019, ushered in a new era for Sudan. The three decades-era of despotism and reign of terror of al-Bashir has finally come to an end.
Consequent upon this momentous event, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf, who was both the Defense Minister and Vice President under Omar al-Bashir declared himself the de facto Head of State and announced a three-month state of emergency, announced the suspension of country’s constitution, to be followed by a two-year transition period. However, the following day Auf was forced to step down as head of the military council for reasons beyond his control and Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan, who had been serving as general inspector of the armed forces emerged as his successor.
On 24 April, three members of the Transitional Military Council submitted their resignations. Those who resigned included political committee chair Lieutenant-General Omar Zain al-Abideen, Lieutenant-General Jalal al-Deen al-Sheikh and Lieutenant-General Al-Tayeb Babakr Ali Fadeel. On 27 April, an agreement was reached to form a transitional council made up jointly of civilians and military. It was through this new Transitional Legislative Council that Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok emerged thus giving a new face-lift to Sudan.
The situation was very fluid signaling the precarious balance of power among the various power blocs in Khartoum. The new Transitional Council has been working assiduously to strengthen the Sudanese State in its capacity to rule and steer the country towards democratic rule along the timetable already being worked out. The attempted coup was meant to upset the applecart of this transitional regime and derail the transitional process.
The third event was the removal of Sudan from the US list of State Sponsors of Global Terrorism.
Countries determined by the Secretary of State to have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism are designated pursuant to three laws: section1754(c) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019, section 40 of the Arms Export Control Act, and section 620A of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961). Taken together, the four main categories of sanctions resulting from designation under these authorities include restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance; a ban on defense exports and sales; certain controls over exports of dual use items; and miscellaneous financial and other restrictions.104
Designation under the above-referenced authorities also implicates other sanctions laws that penalize persons and countries engaging in certain trade with state sponsors. Currently there are four countries designated under these authorities: Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), Iran, and Syria. Syria was designated as a state sponsor of terrorism on December 29, 1979 followed by Iran on January 19, 1984 while Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Cuba were added on November 20, 2017 and January 12, 2021, respectively.105
Sudan was designated as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1993, in part for its support of militant Palestinian organizations such as Hamas, as well as for harboring al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.106 Sudan was also implicated in the twin bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and then in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.
But on December 14, 2020, over a year after the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir, and after 27 years as a global pariah, the United States Government formally rescinded Sudan’s status as a state sponsor of terrorism thus removing the biggest barrier to the country’s access to international lending institutions and economic development.
Part of the deal was normalization of relationship between Sudan and Israel, a relationship that has largely been strained for many years because of stiff-neck opposition of Omar al-Bashir to the existence of the State of Israel.
According to Max Bearak and Naba Mohieddin, the “move comes after a flurry of negotiations between Khartoum and the Trump administration that bore all the hallmarks of transactional diplomacy. In return for its removal from the terrorism list, the unelected, transitional Sudanese government in place since Bashir’s downfall pledged to normalize relations with Israel — part of the Trump administration’s last-minute push to improve relations between Israel and Arab nations under the “Abraham Accords.” Sudan’s government also agreed to pay $335 million to settle claims by victims of the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen’s coast in 2000.107
Yet this milestone is not uncomplicated for many Sudanese. First, Sudan’s economy is on the ropes, and leaders trying to guide the country through a fragile transition are coping with soaring inflation and massive debt. Delisting is positive economic news in that it removes significant barriers to critical banking relationships, eases investors’ concerns about reputational risk, and allows the United States to support debt relief for Sudan at the international financial institutions. But for Sudanese people suffering immediate economic hardship and food insecurity, the fact that Sudan has agreed to pay $335 million to compensate victims of the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole in exchange for delisting can be a bitter pill. Sudan’s people had little voice in the decisions of its abusive and authoritarian government during the long tenure of President Omar al-Bashir. The pain of families affected by acts of terrorism cannot be ignored, and it is not hard to understand their demands for justice and accountability. At the same time, one can understand how paying for the sins of a government that Sudanese citizens shed blood to remove can feel like misplaced punishment. The Trump Administration’s linkage of SST delisting with its desire to see Sudan normalize its relationship with Israel has only added to the discomfort of some who feel their hand has been forced on a contentious and unrelated issue.108
Of course, all actors have to confront the realities of the delisting process. But those who would dismiss domestic Sudanese complications as unimportant are missing an important point. For decades the United States worked to encourage change in the nature of Sudan’s government, applying pressures like the SST designation to a brutally violent authoritarian state. Today, the United States should want popular sentiment to matter to Sudan’s leaders, and it should be heartened by the fact that they have to balance popular opinion with foreign policy imperatives. As civilians try to wrest control of Sudan’s future away from securocrats, opening up the possibility of a democratic Sudan that can play an important bridging role in the broader Red Sea area, U.S. policymakers should keep their eye on the ball and proceed with sensitivity and meaningful support. Sudan’s future, and how its population feels about its leaders and their relationship to the United States, matter to our own long-term interests.109
[Sudanese Prime Minister Abdallah] Hamdok said taking Sudan from that list is a real game changer that will create a different a new atmosphere in Sudan.110
Former chief of staff of the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan, Cameron Hudson, says Sudan’s removal from the U.S. terror list presents a new era for the two countries. “The announcement of Sudan being removed from the States Sponsor of Terrorism List presents a new chapter in the relations between Sudan and the United States. It opens the door for new investments for new political dialogue and for much deeper relations going forward. It will remove some of the restrictions that have been in place for the past thirty years and really just begins a new chapter,” said Hudson.111
James Copnall, former BBC Sudan correspondent, said “the Sudanese authorities had been trying to get off the list for many years.112 In private, and occasionally in public, US officials admitted the designation was a political tool, a point of leverage, rather than a fair assessment of whether Sudan was still supporting terror groups abroad. The US would never have removed Sudan from the list as long as Bashir was in power; this has been made possible as a civilian cabinet is now in place.113
The designation has been hugely damaging for Sudan. The country was cut off from the global financial system. Now it can hope to re-engage with international financial institutions, obtain loans and get debt relief.114
That sort of help is desperately needed, as the economy is in freefall, but it will probably be months or years before any impact is felt. But the significance of getting off the list should not be downplayed. Sudan is no longer a pariah for the US and many others, and it should make a major difference to the economy in the years to come.115
Sudan was put the list on August 12, 1993, about four years after Omar al-Bashir came to power and about two years after Osama bin Laden came to settle in Sudan. This was eight years before the 9/11 attack on the United States by Al Qaeda. Naturally the US would not have put Sudan on the exclusive list of club of state sponsors of global terrorism if it did not have strong intelligence evidences and/or estimates beyond all reasonable doubts that Sudan has crossed the conventional boundary from criminal insanity into the world of terrorism. However, the US has been micro-managing Sudan with the high hope of persuading it to depart from the sponsorship of global terrorism through its support for sundry global terrorist groups and harboring known terrorists such as Osama bin Laden. At this period of time, Sudan or rather Omar al-Bashir rather foolishly thought sponsorship of terrorism is a profitable venture. By the time he had a rethink after falling out with Dr. Hassan al-Turabi, the Islamic fundamentalist ideologue and offering to help extradite Osama bin Laden to the US to answer criminal charges, it was already too late. Even though Clinton administration admitted its greatest mistake for rebuffing the offer from Omar al-Bashir to extradite Osama bin Laden to the US this rebuff was predicated on the strong belief then that Al Qaeda is incapable of launching attacks on the US on the scale of 9/11 even despite threats to attack the US in one form or the other. The US could not have also foreseen that South Sudan would or could break away in 2011.
Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden brought more troubles to Sudan and Omar al-Bashir that they could possibly manage. The residency of bin Laden in Sudan was particularly touchy and had brought hostility and opprobrium from the US that was already asking for his on a Herodian platter. Why Clinton Administration rejected the secret offer from Omar al-Bashir to have bin Laden extradited to the US for trial remained a mystery till date. But the decision to expel bin Laden from Sudan was courageously taken by Omar al-Bashir in May 1996. Osama bin Laden and some of his key aides were finally eliminated by a US naval commando unit (Navy Seal Team 6) on May 2, 2011 in his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by Obama administration.
There can be no dispute with the fact that the US had a firm global overview of the problematique represented and presented by Sudan under Omar al-Bashir especially in connection with the menace of sponsorship of terrorism and actual acts (at least by aiding and abetting) of terrorism carried out by Sudan and the period of thirty years.
Yet the United States failed to act decisively to help bring down the dreaded regime headed by Omar al-Bashir. It is evident that listing Sudan as a state sponsor of global terrorism and the corollary sanctions that accompanied such listing were definitely not sufficient enough to bring down the regime. At any rate, this twin-action did not and never alter the fundamental character of Sudan as a rogue state. It was only the widespread and overwhelming civil unrest in Sudan and Khartoum in particular amidst ferocious attacks from the regime that finally succeeded in breaking the camel’s back of Omar al-Bashir regime which led to his overthrow on April 11, 2019.
Thus from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump nothing decisive was seen to have been done to resolve the festering crisis in Sudan even with the final split of the country in 2011. Tragically and painfully too, nothing was done under Barack Obama even with Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of State. Hillary Clinton’s focus was more on the Maghreb and the Arab Spring revolution rather than on West or East Africa. Thus the United States failed to be on the side of history viewed from positive standpoint of its foreign policy towards Africa. It was a missed opportunity. From Bill Clinton to Donald Trump, Africans were left, in a bizarre manner, to slaughter themselves as much as they please. All the victims of these various massacres and acts of genocides cannot be said to have gained anything from the ideal of freedom, democratic rule, rule of law, right to life and human dignity (etc) that America claims to represent. They were victims of America turning blind eyes to their sufferings and attacks from venal African despots. It was a tragedy of the century.
On May 15, 1997, the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs, Committee on Foreign Relations, held a hearing on Sudan and Terrorism. The entire proceedings were an eye-opener to what the US Congress was already thinking and doing as regard the subject matter of international terrorism as allegedly sponsored by some designated states.116
The hearing started with video presentations on speeches by Hassan Turabi, the leader of the National Islamic Front Party in Sudan and one of the most infamous supporters of international terrorism in the world; Osama bin Laden’s call for a jihad against the U.S., and particularly against U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia; and some footage from the World Trade Center bombing of 1993 which left six people dead and over one thousand dead, the most poignant reminder of the war international terrorists are committed to waging against the United States.
Interestingly the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations membership included Joseph R. Biden Jr of Delaware, who is now the President of the United States.
Senator John Ashcroft, the chairman of the subcommittee on African Affairs, delivered a scathing introductory speech:
In the post-cold war world the United States no longer faces the threat of bipolar cataclysm that defined U.S.-Soviet relations. The collapse of the Soviet Union ended the greatest menace to freedom in the 20th century, but in this dawn of a new era in international relations, however, the horizon is dotted with new national security threats that will demand our constant vigilance.117
One of the most serious of these new national security threats is the rise of international terrorism. We are holding this hearing today in the Subcommittee on African Affairs to address the menace of terrorism as sponsored by the Government of Sudan. Since first being designated a State sponsor of terrorism in 1993, Sudan has risen quickly in the ranks of infamy to join Iran as the worst of State sponsors of terrorism.118
Sudan harbors elements of the most violent terrorist organizations in the world: Jihad, the armed Islamic group, Hamas, Abu Nidal, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hizbollah, and the Islamic Group are all present in terrorist training camps in Sudan. These terrorist groups are responsible for hundreds of terrorist attacks around the world that have taken thousands of lives.119
Abu Nidal alone has been responsible for 90 terrorist attacks in 20 countries which have killed or injured almost 900 people. Jihad is responsible for the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Jihad’s leader, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, was the ideological ringleader of the terrorists that attacked the World Trade Center and plotted to bomb the United Nations in New York.120
Another terrorist organization, the Islamic Group, attacks westerners in Egypt, and claimed responsibility for the failed assassination attempt on President Hosni Mubarak during his visit to Ethiopia in 1995.121
In addition to harboring terrorist organizations, Sudan has given refuge to several of the most notorious individual terrorists, including Imad Moughniyeh and Osama Bin Laden. Moughniyeh is believed to be responsible for the 1983 bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut which killed 241 U.S. troops. Bin Laden is the most infamous financier of terrorists in the world, and has recently stated that U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia, as you saw in the video, will be the principal target of his terrorist attacks.122
Sudan is not simply a favorite vacation spot for terrorists. The Sudanese Government is an active supporter of these terrorist activities. Sudan reportedly provided weapons and travel documentation for the assassins who attacked President Mubarak. Two Sudanese diplomats at the United Nations in New York conspired to help Jihad terrorists gain access to the U.N. complex to bomb the building.123
The plot to bomb the U.N. was just one in a series of plots to bomb numerous locations around New York, including the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, the George Washington Bridge, and U.S. military installations. Five of the original 12 defendants convicted in the series of terrorist plots were Sudanese nationals.124
Thankfully, this series of plots was thwarted by U.S. authorities, but one of the earlier terrorist attacks, the World Trade Center bombing, killed six individuals, injured over 1,000 more, and caused $600 million in damages. The terrorists responsible for the World Trade Center bombing expressed regret that the twin towers were not toppled, a catastrophe that would have taken the lives of tens of thousands of people.125
In addition to supporting international terrorism, Sudan supports insurgencies against secular governments in northern Africa, and wages a war of domestic terror against its own people. Sudan supports extremist rebels and terrorist groups in Algeria, Uganda, Tunisia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Eritrea.126
The military regime of Omar al-Bashir has used genocide, mass starvation, and slavery to pillage southern Sudan. Mere children are drafted into Sudan’s army to feed the flames of the Government’s hatred. Southern rebel leaders are guilty of human rights atrocities as well, and the civil war has taken the lives of 1.5 million people and displaced over 2 million more in the last decade.127
The malevolent character of Sudan’s government makes it patently clear why the U.S. has designated some nations as State sponsors of terrorism and has imposed upon them the most severe penalties and sanctions provided by U.S. law.128
While it may seem obvious to all of us here today that Sudan is deserving of our harshest censure, the Clinton administration has had to be pushed and pulled into adopting an aggressive stance against the terrorist State of Sudan. Only under congressional pressure did President Clinton add Sudan to the terrorist list in 1993, and now the Clinton administration is failing to enforce U.S. antiterrorism law against this terrorist State.129
The Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, passed by Congress and signed into law by the President last April, contained a provision, section 321, prohibiting financial transactions with State sponsors of terrorism. The Clinton administration was given the opportunity to issue regulations for section 321, and President Clinton blatantly disregarded the clear language of the legislation and permitted almost all financial transactions with some terrorist States to proceed.130
I do not understand this inconsistency in the President’s antiterrorism policy. In a speech at George Washington University on August 5, 1996, just days before the regulations for section 321 were issued, the President stated, and I quote:
“The United States cannot and will not refuse to do what we believe is right. That is why we have maintained or strengthened sanctions against States that sponsor terrorism, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Sudan. You cannot do business with countries that practice commerce with you by day while funding or protecting the terrorists who kill you and your innocent civilians by night. That is wrong.”131
The Congress of the United States has worked extensively in a bipartisan manner to provide the American people with the antiterrorism tools they need to defend themselves and isolate these rogue regimes, and I am amazed that we are having to revisit this antiterrorism legislation to force the President to cut off financial transactions with State sponsors of terrorism.132
International terrorism is one of our greatest national security threats, and yet another example of a national security threat that the administration is failing to address.133
There is no doubt that we are missing something very fundamental in the analysis of the US position towards Sudan and Omar al-Bashir. While the US Congress may be seen to have accurately captured the menace presented by Sudan as far back as this time in 1997, the White House was evidently reluctant to go all the way to help remove that menace. From Bill Clinton (two terms) to George W. Bush (two terms) to Barack Obama (two terms) to Donald Trump (one term) and now Joe Biden, the White House refused or failed to do anything to support the suffering Sudanese who were victims of the murderous regime led by Omar al-Bashir.
Certain questions no doubt remain unanswered on the part of the United State Government. What really were at stake that the public was not privy to? What intelligence information was at the disposal of the White House different from that of the Congress? Why did the US leave Omar al-Bashir to become a Frankenstein monster for thirty years? Why was Sudan allowed to fall into a cesspool of epochal crisis from which it is yet to emerge? Was it that the US could not get him out of the way or he was not considered enough strategic threat to be removed – even despite been designated a sponsor of global terrorism? Or was Omar al-Bashir playing a secret strategic role not known to the public except the intelligence community in the US? Or was it because of latter-day cooperation to work and funnel intelligence information to the US and European intelligence agencies? Was al-Bashir let off the hook because he was not a pro-communist ideologue?
Even though the US did not directly launch kinetic attack on Sudan as it did Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, US applied the stick policy to put Sudan on the fry pan. The listing was seen a veritable political tool to arm-twist Sudan and cowed it to submission. But it is also apparent that this was not sufficient enough at all. It is also probably evident that the US underestimated the resistance or intransigence of al-Bashir which preclude solution to the gridlock that has come to characterize the bilateral relationship between the two countries for many years. Till date, nobody can say precisely what were the roles of the US in overthrowing Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. It is not out of possibility that the US might have been involved in his removal if we are to go by the history of the US’s involvement in other countries in this type of grisly affairs (Patrice Lumumba in Zaire in 1961, Saddam Hussein of Iraq on December 30, 2006, Muammar Ghaddafi of Libya on October 20, 2011, to mention a few).
Fighting a Proxy Warfare over Oil Wealth
In the cauldron of the Sudanese crisis is oil war by various proxies and privies not only with the South Sudan but even within the current Sudan itself. The oil war, largely mooted in public analysis, is over the control of the oil wells and spigots among the various power blocs in the country in order to create opportunity and have access to dip their snouts into the trough of oil revenues accrued from royalties, exports, etc.
The oil business is considered as the primary importance of the Sudanese economy, estimating for half of Khartoum’s revenue and approximately 98 percent of the southern government’s revenue. The exploration of petroleum in Sudan started in the 1950s before acquiring its independence from Britain and separation from Egypt in 1956.134
It had formed when the Italian company AGIP took a concession area on the Sudanese Red Sea coast in 1959. The extensive exploration works of AGIP finished in no important commercial discovery of oil. Then in the late 1970s, the oil discovery in this country became a controversial finding. It has additionally intensified the political and economic stability in Sudan. The oil discoveries have played a crucial role in igniting the second civil war in 1983. It has turned the chances for peace between the south and north as it became the fighting parties’ primary purpose.135
The oil crisis in the 1970s has led several oil companies to target the Sudanese Red Sea coast. Following Agip into the Red Sea came France’s Total, Texas Eastern, Union Texas, Oceanic Oil Company, and Chevron. All of these companies discovered nothing for the next fifteen years. The only successful outcomes were accomplished by Chevron in 1974, 120 km southeast of Port Sudan, where dry gas and gas condensate were located at Basha’ir-1 and Suakin-1 wells. It assessed the possible production of 50m cubic feet of dry gas and one thousand gas condensate barrels per day. Since 1991, the Red Sea concession’s primary holder has been the International Petroleum Corporation, now part of the Swedish Lundin group.136
In southern and southwestern Sudan, exploration for oil began in 1975 when Sudan’s government granted Chevron a concession area of 516,000 km2 in blocks in Muglad and Melut. Chevron started geological and geophysical surveys in 1976 and drilled its first well in 1977. And in 1979, Chevron made its first oil discovery in Abu Jabra #1, where an 8 million barrels reserve and 1,000 barrels per day production rate were estimated.137 In 1997, the Sudanese Government invested another concession known as Lundin’s time in Block 5A, a Swedish company with partners Petronas, Austrian oil and gas company, and Sudanpet. In 2001 the same consortium conferred a concession over block 5B, and in 2003, Lundin sold its interest in block 5A to Petronas, and OMV sold its interests in Blocks 5A and 5B to the Indian company Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited.138
Sudan has a proven oil reserve of 6.4 thousand million barrels, according to BP statistical review of world energy 2006. Oil exploration has been restricted to the central and south-central regions. It is estimated that the country owns large potential reserves in the east, north-west, and south of the country.139 In 2016, it ranked 23rd globally and accounted for about 0.3% of the world’s total oil reserves of 1,650,585,140,000 barrels. Sudan has established reserves equivalent to 97.8 times its yearly consumption. It proposes that, without Net Exports, there would be about 98 years of oil left at the present consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves.140
Oil development has been the centre-piece of Sudan’s economy for the past decades. It spurred an average real GDP growth of close to 7.9 percent between 2004 and 2008, and stimulated a notable industrial and service sector expansion. This compared to an average growth rate of 2.9 percent between 1980 and 1998, before the first oil exports were shipped out. The oil sector has grown thanks to billions of dollars in investment from a grouping of national oil companies from China, Malaysia, and India, and continued to make headway despite the exit of several Western oil companies in 2003. American unilateral sanctions since 1997 and subsequent divestment campaigns from Western activist groups have dulled growth, but the Asian oil bloc, along with long-running economic ties with the Middle East, have kept Sudan’s economy afloat. Oil has represented on average roughly 90 percent of Sudan’s total exports from 2004 to 2008. Since 2002, China has taken in 56 percent of the total value of exports, with Japan accounting for nearly 15 percent. Sudan also draws upon Asia for over a third of its imports, mainly in capital goods. Nonetheless, while oil has fueled high levels of economic growth, the boom cannot conceal a severely weak economy.141
The ruling NCP has done little to offset the economic expressions of the resource curse in Sudan. It has earned record levels of revenue from oil development but has not controlled an enduring fiscal crisis. Oil windfalls have doubled total government revenue, averaging over US$4.9 billion annually from exports and sales to local refineries from 2004 to 2008. However, government expenditures have outpaced revenues by close to $450 million per year in the same period. Much of the growth in government spending is on account of transfers to the government of Southern Sudan (GOSS), oil-producing states, and Northern Sudan state governments, which increased from 8 percent of total expenditures in 2004 to 47 percent in 2008. The government of Sudan had amassed a total debt of $33.7 billion by 2008. Such a poor financial position cannot be solely attributed, however, to revenue sharing with the South. Despite the growth of oil exports, the NCP has run an average current account deficit of nearly $4.2 billion from 2004 to 2008. Along with servicing its burgeoning debt, its dependency on machinery and vehicle imports as well as foreign services has resulted in twin deficits (budget and current account). Oil has not saved Sudan’s downtrodden economy, but rather fueled existing government deficiencies in its management.142
Oil wealth in Sudan has not been utilized efficiently to develop other sectors of the economy. Rather, as in many other oil-producing countries, non-oil growth has been lackluster. In a process often termed as the ‘Dutch Disease’, significant inflows of foreign currency from oil exports have appreciated the value of the Sudanese Pound, dampening the competitiveness of other tradable and manufactured products. Sudan’s non-oil exports, mainly composed of sesame and livestock, have dropped from $677,000 million in 2004 to $545,000 million in 2008. The competitiveness of agricultural exports has been further weakened since Sudan lost its monopoly on exports of gum arabic under competition mainly from Chad and Nigeria. With two-thirds of the workforce employed in agriculture, the majority of Sudanese have seen little benefit from oil development. While Khartoum has received a facelift in the form of new office buildings, residential areas, and hotels, the World Bank and UNDP estimate that 60–75 percent of the population in the North and 90 percent in the South live below the poverty line. This crowding out of development in agriculture and other industries has been accompanied by government dependency on natural resource exports, making budgets often prone to volatile shifts in international commodity prices.143
The economic mismanagement and political divisions mounting around oil at the national level have been a danger to the relative peace established between the NCP and SPLM since 2005. Looking towards the end of the CPA, the poor transparency record of Khartoum indicates it may be unwilling to relinquish oil revenues without a fight after the planned 2011 referendum. On the other hand, the SPLM remains keen to defend oil territory it sees as rightfully in the South in order to capitalize on potential independence. Nonetheless, only an oil-for-infrastructure trade-off in the short to medium term will allow revenues to keep flowing to elites on both sides of the border. It is rather political divisions within the South and growing grievances among local communities in oil-bearing regions that acutely threaten peace and stability in Sudan.144
Even with post-CPA oil revenue-sharing agreement between Northern and Southern political elites, grievances at regional and local levels will continue to represent sources of armed conflict. At the regional level, following Khartoum’s example, the GOSS has done little to stem the tide of social instability and corruption brought on by the oil sector. Under the SPLM’s rule, the economic and political afflictions of the resource curse have taken root and expanded to further compromise an already shaky foundation of governance in the South. At the same time, the lack of a peace dividend and environmental degradation from oil continue to spawn armed resistance at the local level. Low-intensity yet protracted conflict remains a likely condition for areas in and around Sudan’s oil fields. From the current political centre in Khartoum to new sources of power in Juba and local social tensions in oil-bearing areas, the resource curse has been allowed to extend its hold at a critical juncture for Sudan’s political future approaches.145
The oil story in Sudan is one of controversy, a messy tale of money, conflict and power enmeshed in the country’s decades-long conflict.146 This evolving factional struggle for control of the oil wells and spigots might not be unconnected with the latest coup. First, Sudan has lost out to South Sudan with about 75 per cent of the oil fields, wells and spigots going to South Sudan since 2011. Second is the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir in 2019. Third are the ongoing reforms of the State and society by the Transitional Council. Fourth these reforms have attracted the support of multilateral financial institutions and development agencies including Western Governments that were hitherto hostile to Sudan and Omar al-Bashir but are now all eager to make a comeback to Sudan for investment opportunities – and on the part of Western Governments also for geostrategic security reasons. All these four factors have gone all the way to erode the grip of remnants of al-Bashir loyalists in the corridor of power. Hence, it is not a plausible deniability that the coup may have been an attempt to regain control by al-Bashir loyalists over State power and roll back the little gains that have been made so far under the Transitional Council.
In Sudan, the economic shock of the secession has had a significant effect on the economy, which has been hurt by economic mismanagement, corruption, and unsustainably high levels of spending on the military. The partial lifting of U.S. sanctions on Sudan in October 2017 has allowed for increased foreign investment, but Sudan has made little progress toward developing the upstream sector. In August 2019, Sudan’s military and civilian leaders signed a power-sharing deal that paved the way for a transitional government led by Abdallah Hamdok, an economist, to take power in the hope this government would address the country’s problems. However, Sudan remains on the U.S. government’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, which prevents the country from receiving debt relief through the World Bank-International Monetary Fund’s Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC).147
One of the key reforms was for the Sudanese Transitional Council to remove subsidies on petrol and diesel to bring fuel prices in line with import costs and targeted at saving government several billions of dollars per year is part of a painful 12-month IMF programme that ended in June 2021 with a decision by the Fund to provide comprehensive debt relief to Sudan.148
At a Paris summit in May, Sudan cleared the final hurdle to securing much-needed relief through the IMF-World Bank Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, as IMF member countries pledged $1.4bn bridge loans to clear Khartoum’s arrears to the fund.149 Sudan’s military-civilian coalition government is attempting to turn the economy around after decades of isolation from global markets. The country’s removal from the US state sponsors of terrorism list in December set in motion the country’s reintegration into the global economy after the ousting of long-time strongman Omar al Bashir in a 2019 popular uprising. But the country is still contending with $60bn in foreign debt.150
Duncan Clarke captured this struggle over the oil wealth between governments, multinational oil corporations and power blocs in his book published in 2008 after which new developments have taken place to amend the previous dynamics such as the declaration of independence by South Sudan which took away about 75 per cent of the oil fields, the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir in April 2019 which loosened his hold on the oil wealth among others.151
According to Clarke, the Sudanese situation is perhaps more complex than most analysts would want to admit. It is indeed a complex web and “there remained unanswered questions about the political future in the south, concerns over Darfur, issues in conflicts with Chad, fighting around Abeyi on the north-south border in May 2008 and the bogey of sanctions applied by the West. It’s a brew that would not be ideal in the building of an oil state, yet despite these adverse circumstances this is what Sudan has done.152
The oil stakes are high. With 550,000 BOPD in production expected by start 2009, gross annual oil revenues around $20 billion a year and production set to rise, Khartoum and Juba (the southern capital) can already tap a proverbial black gold mine but could do even better in the longer term. Oil reserves proven are at 4.5BBLS or more, and the government claims that they could be around 7-8 BBLS. They could perhaps reach even higher levels under fuller and open exploration. Some Sudanese geoscientists even consider potential at 10 BBLS; this is not impossible on a life-cycle basis.153
Sudan has emerged as a world-class play onshore, with Red Sea potential. It has attracted a range of global players, Asian state companies notably, and the non-western independents, especially companies that could bypass US sanctions still in force. Its reserves, production, oil exports and exploration investments rose even while the civil war raged in the south and amid heightened concerns in Darfur, and with sanctions enforced. In the south, as elsewhere, more oil companies appear to be on the brink of entry, Here the scramble for oil has cut US players and some (such as Canada’s Talisman) that fell foul of western pressures from diverse quarters (fundamentalist Christian churches, capital markets, politicians), forcing them to execute withdrawals.154
Sudan’s scramble has become largely an Asian affair. Petronas, ONGC, CNPC and like-minded interests (from Pakistan, the Middle East, even PetroSA from South Africa) have entered, taken charge, done exploration and taken command of the key upstream assets. As southern Sudan reached a peace accord with Khartoum, so foreign private players cut deals with rebels in the south and sought to acquire acreage and assets held in force majeure by companies such as Total. This has led to corporate conflict over positions and the future, determined by a messy political process in the capital (inside and outside the newly established National Petroleum Commission, under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement or CPA) and acrimonious and continuing squabbling among various claimants.155
The long civil war in the south was not just about oil. It was bred from highly complex political, ethnic-linguistic, regional and religious concerns. Oil fueled these fires of social discontent. That the oilfields, personnel and facilities in the south and around the north/south divide had been declared “legitimate” targets for SLPA and Nuer militia is undisputed.156
The war did not spare civilians and “collateral damage” was substantial. The government cleared oil areas of people on several occasions, for instance around Bentiu, to deny enemy “water in which the fish can swim”. NGOs claimed that this has been accompanied by ethnic cleansing, extermination practices and scorched-earth policies. To this the OAU (now the African Union or AU) turned a blind eye.157
The past, however, was deeply problematic and the Sudanese rise to oil prominence occurred in the context of a bloody war that led to 2 million deaths, massive displacement of communities (around 4 million people), the emasculation of southern Sudan and subsequently a brutal genocide in Darfur. At many times during its 27-year duration, Sudan’s conflict in the south looked like a “war without end” since war has been a feature in Sudan for 40 years of its 50 years of independence. The Darfur conflict and massacres over the past five or so years in some sense carries on this grisly tradition.158
In the two and half decades since Chevron’s Unity and Heglig discoveries in 1982 (it withdrew as conflict started in 1984), the war appeared as much as an oil war as anything else, yet it was brewed by a heady mix of deep-seated domestic issues and antagonists: northern Arab and Muslim dominance exercised from Khartoum over southern ethnic groups (Dinka, Nuer and others), animists and Christians, with sharia law imposition amid local slavery. The drama engaged fundamentalist Christians from the West, with rebel conflict largely generated by the SPLA, led for most of the time by an ex-military strongman, John Garang.159
The enduring character of the war and the vested interests it spawned, prosecuted by different governments, coalitions and shifting rebel alliances, made domestic accommodation difficult, and the war became almost self-sustaining: a “perfect war”, as one scribe put it. Yet it did end, though slippage has at times taken place and, as events in 2008 suggested, it could reignite.160
According to Human Rights Watch report for 2003, the first export of crude oil from Sudan in August 1999 marked a turning point in the country’s complex civil war, now in its twentieth year: oil became the main objective and a principal cause of the war. Oil now figures as an important remaining obstacle to a lasting peace and oil revenues have been used by the government to obtain weapons and ammunition that have enabled it to intensify the war and expand oil development. Expansion of oil development has continued to be accompanied by the violent displacement of the agro-pastoral southern Nuer and Dinka people from their traditional lands atop the oilfields. Members of such communities continue to be killed or maimed, their homes and crops burned, and their grains and cattle looted.161
The large-scale exploitation of oil by foreign companies operating in the theatre of war in southern Sudan has increased human rights abuses there and has exacerbated the long-running conflict in Sudan, a conflict marked already by gross human rights abuses—two million dead, four million displaced since 1983—and recurring famine and epidemics.162
Forced displacement of the civilian population, and the death and destruction that have accompanied it, are the central human rights issues relating to oil development in Sudan. The government is directly responsible for this forced displacement, which it has undertaken to provide security to the operations of its partners, the international and mostly foreign state-owned oil companies. In the government’s eyes, the centuries-long residents of the oilfields, the Nuer, Dinka, and other southern Sudanese, pose a security threat to the oilfields because control and ownership of the south’s natural resources are contested by southern rebels and government officials perceive the pastoral peoples as sympathetic to the rebels. But the Sudanese government itself has helped to create the threat by forging ahead with oil development in southern territory under circumstances in which its residents have no right to participate in their own governance or share the benefits of oil development. Brute force has been a key component of the government’s oil development strategy.163
The oil in the ground and flowing through the pipeline to the Red Sea supertanker port has driven expulsions from Western Upper Nile/Unity State, the area of the main oil production today. In earlier campaigns in the 1980s government troops and horse-backed militia of the Baggara, Arabized cattle nomads of Darfur and Kordofan, invaded from the northwest, destroying communities and expelling much of the population from the initial exploration areas, in Blocks 1, 2, and 4, dangerously situated on the north-south border of Sudan.164
In the 1990s the government embarked upon a more sophisticated displacement campaign, through the use of divide-and-conquer tactics: it bought off rebel factions and exacerbated south-south ethnic differences with arms supplies. Mostly Nuer factions with political and other grievances against the Dinka-officered rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A, referred to as SPLA when discussing the military wing), emerged and a bloody south-south war ensued, concentrated in the oilfield areas. Campaigns of killing, pillage, and burning, enabled by government troops and air support for their southern allies who served as front troops, cleared the way for Western and Asian oil corporations to develop the basic infrastructure for oil extraction and transportation: rigs, roads, pumping stations, and pipelines.165
The relationship of the war and displacement campaign to oil development is evident: the oil areas targeted for population clearance are those where a concession has been granted and a pipeline is imminent and/or nearby. The availability of the means of transport of oil to the market makes the nearest undeveloped block economically viable. The agro-pastoralists living there then become the target of forced displacement. Since 1999, when the pipeline was nearing completion and Blocks 1, 2, and 4 came on line with 150,000, then 230,000 barrels of crude oil produced daily, the main military theatre has been in the adjacent Block 5A. Oil revenues enable the government to increase its military hardware: it tripled its fleet of attack helicopters in 2001 with the purchase abroad of twelve new helicopters—used to deadly effect in the killing of twenty-four civilians at a relief food distribution site in early 2002, to cite only one example.166
In a number of cases, international oil companies in Sudan have denied that any abuses were taking place in connection with oil exploration and production. Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, oil company executives have claimed that they were unaware of any uncompensated forced displacement as a result of oil operations. They have also claimed to have undertaken investigations establishing that abuses are minimal or nonexistent. As noted below, such efforts do not stand up to scrutiny. Increasingly, under pressure from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and some concerned governments, oil company representatives have claimed instead that they are playing a positive role in difficult circumstances to monitor and rein in abuses. As detailed below, such claims have consistently been self-serving. Human Rights Watch believes that oil companies in Sudan, seeking to make a profit in areas of the country wracked by civil war and often brutally cleared of indigenous peoples, have an obligation to see that rights abuses connected with oil production cease.167
In 2005, when South Sudan was first established as an autonomous region under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement with the Sudanese government in Khartoum, oil production was close to its peak. Following full independence in 2011, annual revenues were projected to be around $9 billion a year, dropping off by more than half over the next 20 years as existing fields were depleted (and in the absence of new investment). Development plans focused on using the period of foreseeable oil wealth to build infrastructure and expand the non-oil economy, as well as seek large-scale investors for new oil exploration and find alternatives to oil export through Sudan’s Red Sea ports.168
Since 2012, the potential of the oil industry to provide revenues has deteriorated very sharply. The government stopped all oil production for a 15-month period starting in January 2012 because of a dispute with Sudan over oil transit, debt, and border issues. Eventually a three-and-a-half-year agreement on access and fees for use of export pipelines was reached. But before production could recover, it was reduced again due to South Sudan’s ongoing internal conflict. The Unity oilfields are shut down and the other fields in Upper Nile are under threat. Some workers have been killed, oil facilities are reported damaged, and oil company staff evacuated. Furthermore, there has been no significant new oil exploration in South Sudan since the original oilfields were found due to political and security risks.169
Oil exploration and production in Sudan and by extension South Sudan is a Janus head in relation to escalation of insecurity in both countries. According to Laura James “Oil and security in Sudan and South Sudan are, in the words of one former oil minister, ‘two faces of the same coin’. At the international, regional, national, state, and community levels, it is possible to trace how oil exploration, extraction, and exploitation have contributed to insecurity, both directly and indirectly.”170
Some of the key conclusions in her working paper include the following:
- The oil–conflict nexus is widely acknowledged as a global phenomenon, yet in Sudan and South Sudan, it has been intensified by an accident of history and geography: the location of most of the oilfields along the volatile former colonial border between the two countries.
- Under recent peace agreements, the Sudanese and South Sudanese governments have to some extent harnessed the oil industry to promote security between the two countries, based on the common interest established by South Sudan’s possession of most of the oil and Sudan’s control of the export infrastructure. At a subnational level, however, oil, patronage, insecurity, and civil conflict remain closely bound together.
- The oilfields have been an important prize in the civil conflict that broke out in South Sudan in December 2013. While the rebels have not captured the oilfields, their activities have significantly diminished the government’s cash flow. The violence was initially exacerbated by oil-linked community discontent in Unity and Upper Nile states. The ongoing fighting has also further contributed to environmental degradation and poor community relations in the oil areas.
- Since late 2013, relations between Sudan and South Sudan have been unusually cooperative, based on a common interest in keeping the oil flowing. This rapprochement remains vulnerable, however, not only to potential economic pressures and new disputes when the oil agreement expires at the end of 2016, but also to cross-border aspects of ongoing civil strife in both countries, combined with local tensions.
- Sudan’s poor management of the oil sector has led to corruption, over-centralization, and environmental degradation, causing serious grievances among the local communities. This dynamic has to some extent been mirrored in the new state of South Sudan. While Sudan’s efforts at improvement remain largely nominal, South Sudan has managed to put in place strong legislation in line with international best practices. There has been no effective implementation, however, and the prospect of progress receded when the civil conflict began.171
The above short review of economic history of Sudan with emphasis on the oil economy reminds us of the calamitous failure of governance evincing the central role of military role in this failure since the military has been the most hegemonic faction of the ruling elite and has been in power for most of Sudan’s independence since 1960. It is interesting to note that Omar al-Bashir came to power not only when the world of communism in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union was beginning to unravel but at a time when oil revenue was already streaming into state coffer. The coup seemed more like coming into being in order to corner and capture the oil revenue that was already streaming into the state coffer. The military has been strutting about in the realm of power since then like a Goliath in charge of command and control of levers of power, issuing orders at will as it suits its interests – a situation epitomized by the iron-fisted rule of Omar al-Bashir for three decades. It was glorious era that was shortly to be squandered on the altar of venality and sponsorship of terrorism and violence.
This brings us directly into a head-on collision or confrontation with the central problem of military rule often characterized by authoritarianism and impunity. This problem must be properly framed otherwise the risk exist in missing the central nature. It is the heart of the monster called military rule.
Statement and Description of the Problem
Africa portrays sundry conditions. There is no doubt that the conditions existing in the concerned countries may be regarded as appalling and in dire need of urgent intervention in order to address them to prevent them from further deterioration or escalation. These conditions are willy-nilly created by the apparent incompetence in managing these conditions by the incumbent regimes. Military intervention is often the last resort which serves as the doctrine of necessity for the intervention.
However, military intervention often brings its own set of specific problems to the table.
The first of such problems is interestingly on the philosophical plane. It has to do with the doctrine of necessity upon which the military intervenes. Doctrine of necessity as applicable to military intervention is a complicated enterprise. It comes as a middle ground when a country runs into a political gridlock or cul-de-sac which often makes it impossible to go back or forward. It is often a forked road. Military intervention, as repugnant as it is seen or regarded as out of fashion often comes as such a middle ground. But a middle ground can also become a perilous ground because the military interventionists and their supporters often dig holes around themselves thus making it impossible for democratic rule to push through as quickly as possible. Middle ground creates legal conditions and frameworks mostly unknown to existing jurisprudence. Navigating through such legal minefield is not easy as it may seem. Primarily military leaderships more often not try to elevate themselves above the existing legal framework by creating new legal regime that makes it impossible to hold them accountable for their actions or inactions. Indeed, the whole existing Constitution is thrown overboard. Decrees are issued with ouster clauses that prevent anybody from calling the military leaders to question in law court. Such is the difficult terrain or topography of the middle ground.
What complicate this middle ground further was the radical change, both in consciousness and alignment of forces, wrought in the global environment after the collapse of Communism in Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the late 80s and early 90s, including the collapse of the Soviet Union itself as a country and the disintegration of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. These events brought about profound impacts on the international community. First, it brought about a new alignment of forces or balance of power in the world precisely in bringing the United States to the fore as the sole superpower while Russia and China diminished in their superpower statuses, at least for several years before their resurgence. Second, it brought about democracy and democratic rule as the new exclusive governance system upon the world in which Western civilization was seen as been finally triumphant and dwarfing all other civilizations. Consequent upon this, democratic rule is seen as a universal panacea to all existing political problems. Military rule was knocked out of fashion, taking away the middle ground with it. African continent that has hitherto been shackled by all manners of dictatorships caved in and gave way to pro-democracy or quasi-democratic rule on the crest wave of these global changes. The citadel of white supremacist rule (apartheid) also fell in South Africa. Democracy is the new “in-thing”. Out, through the window, are all sorts of hybrid dictatorships. Of course, there are die-hard cases that even still exist till date (e.g. Cameroon with Paul Biya still sitting on the neck of the people there). Each African country presented the different kaleidoscopic or mosaic picture of how it joined the bandwagon of pro-democratic rule.
But the story of the middle ground may not be complete without situating it within the historical background and perspective of hybrid dictatorships and military rule that served as the foundation of political hegemony upon independence from the former colonial masters. Upon independence, several nationalist leaders emerged as “messianic” dictators through the embryonic electoral system then: Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sedar Senghor of Senegal, Houphouet-Boigny of Ivory Coast, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea, Moddibo Keita of Mali, Sylvanus Olympio of Togo, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Hastings Banda of Central African Republic, Ahmoudu Ahidjo of Cameroon, etc. Later, military dictators like Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Mummar Ghadaffi of Libya, Yakubu Gowon of Nigeria, Siad Barre of Somalia and many more came to join the bandwagon and pantheon of dictators in Africa. So the latest wave of military coups can thus be seen as tragic return to the sordid past from which the concerned countries may not have learnt any useful historical lesson.
As a result of the above nebulous philosophical situation and contradictory objective reality, it more often than not turns out to be that the military may not have any solution at all at solving the existing problems other than the use of brute force to intervene contrary to the pretension of having the monopoly of knowledge for solving the existing problems or appeal to patriotic or nationalistic sentiments.
The second problem is that of legitimacy. Indeed, the question may be asked: what is the source of legitimacy of military intervention? Even though military intervention may be forced down the unwilling throat of the masses because there is hardly any alternative within the immediate period, military intervention is often rejected the very hour it occur primarily because of the very strong ideological reason that it is illegitimate as it is seen and viewed as usurpation of power outside the ballot box that is considered the sacred heart of democratic rule. Military intervention is also considered out of fashion, out of sync with the rhythm of modern political life after experiencing its futility in full over the years. Although military coups may be welcomed with jubilation in many countries such as evident in the case of Guinea recently it does not obviate the repugnance with which it is now viewed in most quarters as anachronistic relic of phenomenon of underdevelopment
Persuading the local populace by the military interventionist leaders to accept their coups as necessary and legitimate (sometimes through violent means of execution of any dissenting voice to instill fear in the populace) may be easy to achieve because essentially the local populace is more often than not the first and direct victim of the misrule of the previous regime and wish to see an end to it. But the larger environment on the other hand comprising the international community and the immediate regional body often turns out to be intractable, critical and difficult to manage. This is the very larger environment that the military leaders have no control over and are forced to navigate its turbulent waters through astute diplomacy.
It is the aggregate sum of the opinion of the international community/regional body whether favourable or negative that creates the delicate balance of power upon which the military leaders predicate their legitimacy and sustain their regimes. No country can afford anymore to live in isolation of its larger environment without dire consequences especially in the context of the globalized world and in which the larger environment can cripple any regime through heavy sanctions and all sorts of underhand tactics. Every regime wants acceptance and admission into the international community in order to legitimize its rule. Support of local populace may not be enough even though serving as the prima facie basis of its existence.
The third problem revolves exactly what the new military leaders are bringing to the table in terms of policy package to address the already existing problems they claimed to have come to solve. Indeed, nothing is new anymore anywhere. Is such policy package adequate at all or is it business-as-usual? Has it inputs from all stakeholders? Has it been debated enough within a specific time frame to determine its durability and sustainability at all? Indeed, in the case of the latest coup in Guinea the military leaders did not bring any such policy package to the table at all except the mouthful promissory notes of this and that. Too many questions to ask and begging to be answered.
However, from empirical standpoint, such policy packages are often victims of mutual suspicion from the very beginning essentially because it has not most probably received enough inputs from any quarter at all. Such policy packages can only be rammed down the unwilling throat of the very populace that the coup has come liberate from the insidious yoke of previous regime. Some of these policy packages may, therefore, be dead on arrival, and thus complicating the already existing problems.
This is why in the long run, military intervention is a grisly business and does more harm than anticipated. Or put differently, running a country, contrary to the fiat and/or diktats of the military Junkers, is not an easy task such as selling chocolates to children on the street corners. Stars on their shoulders and epaulets on their chests as a symbol of military professional achievements are not sufficient at all. Managing a country through a period of turbulence demands far more than one’s professional training and achievement as a soldier. It demands the higher ability to balance competing forces in society and complex variables emerging from the society.
The above holistic view serves as the foreground to further interrogation of the dynamics thrown up by military intervention and the reaction to it from the larger environment. However, an exegetical examination of the circumstantial and contextual conditions in which nations reached the tipping point that causes military intervention may be apposite here.
The Tipping Point
Critical for interrogation is the failure of the entire institutional edifice of the State first in checking and balancing the excesses of the leader and his authoritarian tendencies and second in failure to blaze the trail in pointing to new direction of economic progress, etc. Indeed, the institutions of the State become part of the whole problem in its dysfunctionality and incapacity to instill sanity, law and order. An example of this is the failure of the entire national security agencies in preventing the country from sliding down the slope of insecurity in the last twenty years and to the point where the fear is now palpable that the country may finally be on the road to disintegration or perdition on the basis if relentless attacks on the State by various “enemies of the State”. These institutions, indeed, become extractive and has become one of the causes of national failure as well captured by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson in their classic book: Why Nations Fail:
The Origin of Power, Prosperity and Poverty172.
Acemoglu and Robinson pointed to “critical junctures” in their book which may be applied to understand why military coups are a product of necessity. “During critical junctures, a major event or confluence of factors disrupts the existing balance of political or economic power in a nation. These can affect only a single country, such as the death of Chairman Mao Zedong in 1976, which first created a critical juncture only for the Communist China. Often, however, critical junctures affect a whole set of societies, in the way that, for example, colonization and decolonization affected most of the globe.
“Such critical junctures are important because there are formidable barriers against gradual improvements, resulting from the synergy between extractive political and economic institutions and the support they give each other. The persistence of this feedback loop creates a vicious circle. Those who benefit from the status quo are wealthy and well organized, and can effectively fight major changes that will take away their economic privileges and political power.
“Once a critical juncture happens, the small differences that matter are the initial institutional differences that put in motion very different responses. This is the reason why the relatively small institutional differences in England, France, and Spain led to fundamentally different development paths. The paths resulted from the critical juncture created by the economic opportunities presented to Europeans by Atlantic trade”173
“There should be no presumption that any critical juncture will lead to a successful political revolution or to change for the better. History is full of examples of revolutions and radical movements replacing one tyranny with another, in a pattern that the German sociologist Robert Michel dubbed the iron law of oligarchy, a particularly pernicious form of the vicious circle. The end of colonialism in the decades following the Second World War created critical junctures for many former colonies. However, in most cases in sub-Saharan Africa and many in Asia, the post-independence governments simply took a page out of Robert Michel’s book and repeated and intensified the abuses of their predecessors, often severely narrowing the distribution of political power, dismantling constraints, and undermining the already meager incentives that economic institutions provided for investment and economic progress. It was only in few cases, societies such as Botswana that critical junctures were used to launch a process of political and economic change that paved the way for economic progress.
“Critical junctures can also result in major change toward rather than away from extractive institutions. Inclusive institutions, even though they have their feedback loop, the virtuous circle, can also reverse course and become gradually more extractive because of challenges during critical junctures – and whether this happens is, again, contingent. The Venetian Republic made major strides toward inclusive political and economic institutions in the medieval period. But while such institutions became gradually stronger in England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, in Venice they ultimately transformed themselves into extractive institutions under the control of a narrow elite that monopolized both economic opportunities and political power”174
“Africa was part of the world with the institutions least able to take advantage of the opportunities made available by the Industrial Revolution. For at least the last one thousand years, outside of small pockets and during limited periods of time, Africa has lagged behind the rest of the world in terms of technology, political development and prosperity. It is part of the world where centralized states formed very late and very tenuously. Where they did form, they were likely as highly absolutist as the Kongo and often short lived, usually collapsing. Africa shares this trajectory of lack of state centralization with countries such as Afghanistan, Haiti, Nepal, which have also failed to impose order over their territories and create anything resembling stability to achieve even a modicum of economic progress. Though located in very different parts of the world, Afghanistan, Haiti and Nepal have much in common institutionally with most nations in sub-Saharan Africa, and are thus some of the poorest countries in the world today.
“How African institutions evolved into their present-day extractive form again illustrates the process of institutional drift punctuated by critical junctures, but this time often with highly perverse outcomes, particularly during the expansion of the Atlantic slave trade. There were new economic opportunities for the Kingdom of Kongo when European traders arrived. The long-distance trade that transformed Europe also transformed the Kingdom of Kongo, but again, initial institutional differences mattered. Kongolese absolutism transmogrified from completely dominating society, with extractive economic institutions that merely captured all the agricultural output of its citizens, to enslaving people enmasse and selling them to the Portuguese in exchange for guns and luxury goods for the Kongolese elite”175
Every nation reaches these critical junctures or historic watershed in their political development or economic history when it may experience backlash of events that define or redefine and determine its next phase of development or even collapse or disintegrate. On the other hand, it may also be that such a nation has reached a critical turning point and needed to make a great leap forward for the next phase of development to start.
Hungary, to cite few examples here, reached this critical juncture in 1956 culminating in the invasion by Soviet Union for the same purpose of keeping it within the Soviet sphere of influence. Czechoslovakia also reached this critical juncture in 1968 which culminated in the military invasion by Soviet Union to keep Czechoslovakia within the Soviet orbit of influence. Poland reached the same point much later in 1980-82 and succeeded in breaking away from the Soviet sphere of influence. The ground was being finally prepared for the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union which was to come later in late 80s and early 90s.
Interestingly, the Hungarian critical juncture came with what has become known as the Hungarian Revolution, a popular uprising that occurred in August 1956 at the wake of denunciation of the legacy of Joseph Stalin by the then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in which he attacked the period of Joseph Stalin’s rule. Encouraged by this type of new freedom of debate and open criticism hitherto unknown during the stifling era of Joseph Stalin, a tidal wave of civil unrest and discontent broke loose and lashed at the political heart of Hungary ending in active fighting in October 1956. Dissidents who have been underground for some years came to the fore and won decisive victory against the ruling Communist regime. The rebellion brought Imre Nagy to the forefront and Prime Minister who then embarked on reforms of the Hungarian political system with particular reference to establishing a multiparty system. He went further to declare Hungary a neutral country in the rivalry between the two superpowers (United States and the Soviet Union) on November 1, 1956. He appealed to the United Nations for support, but Western powers were reluctant to risk a global confrontation with the Soviet Union that was rattling the nuclear sabre at the United States then. This was what most probably broke the camel’s back. On November 4 the Soviet Union rolled its tanks into Hungary to quell the audacious revolution that has come to challenge the hegemony of the Soviet Union in the Warsaw Pact countries. Imre Nagy, the hero of the revolution was charged with high treason and executed in 1958.
Czechoslovakia reached its own critical juncture in 1968 with the emergence of Alexander Dubcek as the Prime Minister who similarly embarked on series of reforms that went deep into the heart of Communist Party then. Alexander Dubcek was seen to have committed heresy against the world of communism by these reforms. What followed was an invasion of Czechoslovakia by four Warsaw Pact countries led by the Soviet Union in an operation codenamed Operation Danube on August 20-21, 1968. The reactionary invasion successfully crushed Dubček’s Prague Spring liberalization reforms and strengthened the authority of the authoritarian wing within the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). The invasion was made partially possible under the umbrella of Soviet foreign policy of the time popularly known as the Brezhnev Doctrine which rejected any challenge to the hegemony of the Soviet Union and any effort to break away from the orbit of its influence. Ironically, the invasion was joined by Hungary including Poland and Bulgaria. Approximately 500,000 Warsaw Pact troops attacked Czechoslovakia that night, with Romania and Albania refusing to participate. East German forces, except for a small number of specialists, did not participate in the invasion because they were ordered from Moscow not to cross the Czechoslovak border just hours before the invasion. 137 Czechoslovakian civilians were killed and 500 seriously wounded during the occupation.
The Soviet Union may not have known by this time that its own tipping point just lay about one and half decades ahead. Indeed, Poland was to break away from Warsaw Pact grip in 1980-82 when industrial unrest led to reforms and finally the toppling of the Communist party in that country under the jackboot of General Wojciech Jaruzelski and bringing up Lech Walesa as the President of that country. The turn of the Soviet Union was to come in 1989/90.
Iran reached this point in 1979 with its Islamic Revolution that abolished the monarchy headed by Shah Reva Pahlavi and the installation of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the supreme leader under clerical dictatorship but side-by-side with quasi-democratic rule.
It did not take long after independence that most African countries reached their tipping points and keeled over, individually, one after the other, creating crisis of seismic proportions – only for the next regime to emerge with its own particular set of problems. Gone with the tide of history were all those false assumptions or complete falsehoods that were hitherto peddled and believed that all the first set of African leaders with the corollary authoritarian or dictatorial and messianic zeal that emerged after independence from their former colonial masters are capable of solving all African problems at once and for ever. This (i.e. all the authoritarian/dictatorial leaders with their false assumptions and/or falsehoods cloaked under messianic zeal) was actually one of the reasons that set Africa on the path of epochal crisis that is still haunting the continent till date. Sociological speaking, no country, not even the most advanced country, is ever free of particular set of socioeconomic and political problems at one stage of its development or the other. And there has never been any seamless management of these problems in an uninterrupted manner. Otherwise the authoritarian leaders would have solved all the problems with their alleged magic wands during their reign.
Zaire reached the tipping point in 1961 with the assassination of the democratically-elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba on January 17 just within three months of been elected. Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) has not successfully cast off the shadows of the 1961 political crisis.
Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, a professor of African and Afro-American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History, called the assassination the “most important assassination of the 20th century”176 Nzongola-Ntalaja said “This heinous crime was a culmination of two inter-related assassination plots by American and Belgian governments, which used Congolese accomplices and a Belgian execution squad to carry out the deed,” a crime which “historical importance lies in a multitude of factors, the most pertinent being the global context in which it took place, its impact on Congolese politics since then and Lumumba’s overall legacy as a nationalist leader.”177
For 126 years, the US and Belgium have played key roles in shaping Congo’s destiny. In April 1884, seven months before the Berlin Congress, the US became the first country in the world to recognise the claims of King Leopold II of the Belgians to the territories of the Congo Basin.178 When the atrocities related to brutal economic exploitation in Leopold’s Congo Free State resulted in millions of fatalities, the US joined other world powers to force Belgium to take over the country as a regular colony. And it was during the colonial period that the US acquired a strategic stake in the enormous natural wealth of the Congo, following its use of the uranium from Congolese mines to manufacture the first atomic weapons, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.179
With the outbreak of the cold war, it was inevitable that the US and its western allies would not be prepared to let Africans have effective control over strategic raw materials, lest these fall in the hands of their enemies in the Soviet camp. It is in this regard that Patrice Lumumba’s determination to achieve genuine independence and to have full control over Congo’s resources in order to utilise them to improve the living conditions of our people was perceived as a threat to western interests. To fight him, the US and Belgium used all the tools and resources at their disposal, including the United Nations secretariat, under Dag Hammarskjöld and Ralph Bunche, to buy the support of Lumumba’s Congolese rivals , and hired killers.180
In Congo, Lumumba’s assassination is rightly viewed as the country’s original sin. Coming less than seven months after independence (on 30 June, 1960), it was a stumbling block to the ideals of national unity, economic independence and pan-African solidarity that Lumumba had championed, as well as a shattering blow to the hopes of millions of Congolese for freedom and material prosperity.181
The assassination took place at a time when the country had fallen under four separate governments: the central government in Kinshasa (then Léopoldville); a rival central government by Lumumba’s followers in Kisangani (then Stanleyville); and the secessionist regimes in the mineral-rich provinces of Katanga and South Kasai. Since Lumumba’s physical elimination had removed what the west saw as the major threat to their interests in the Congo, internationally-led efforts were undertaken to restore the authority of the moderate and pro-western regime in Kinshasa over the entire country. These resulted in ending the Lumumbist regime in Kisangani in August 1961, the secession of South Kasai in September 1962, and the Katanga secession in January 1963.182
The most positive aspect of this legacy was manifest in the selfless devotion of Pierre Mulele to radical change for purposes of meeting the deepest aspirations of the Congolese people for democracy and social progress. (Ibid) More importantly, the greatest legacy that Lumumba left for Congo is the ideal of national unity.183
Nigeria reached its own critical point in 1966-67 shortly after independence and fell into a civil war from 1967-70. It again reached the tipping point in 1993 with the political crisis generated over the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election result which gave victory to late Chief MKO Abiola. Nigeria is, once again, seen to be dangerously heading for another tipping point with what is currently unfolding in the country with particular reference to growing insecurity in the Northern part of the country where in Zamfara, Kaduna, Katsina, Niger and Borno states are seen as classic case studies of failed states in term of gross inability to provide security and welfare for their citizens which are the primary duties of the government that wants to lay claim to any form of moral legitimacy and not just winning electoral victory through the ballot box.
Sudan reached the tipping point in 2011 when it split into two independent sovereign entities. South Sudan broke away after protracted guerrilla war with Sudan under the authoritarian leadership of Omar al-Bashir. Indeed, Sudan itself would have crashed and failed as a State had Omar al-Bashir not been yanked off power in April 2019. Sudan was heading for another dangerous bend on the road or edge of a gully where it could have crashed with no hope of survival. The coup that removed al-Bashir was a saving grace, a coup d’grace to prevent Sudan from hurtling towards self-perdition. It may not be known for a long time to come what external forces supported the local coalition of forces that toppled Omar al-Bashir. Omar al-Bashir was the drunken (with aphrodisiac of power) driver driving the rickety Sudanese State vehicle at full speed and was about to reach the dangerous bend on the road. If he had not been stopped by being forcibly removed from the driver’s seat and/or steering wheel, there is no doubt that he would have crashed and damaged the vehicle beyond repair.
Somalia went the same route when Somaliland (Republic of Somaliland Jamhuuriyadda Soomaaliland (Somali) جمهورية أرض الصومال (Arabic) Jumhūrīyat Arḍ aṣ-Ṣūmāl) finally broke away on May 18, 1991 even though Somaliland is still battling for diplomatic recognitions from other sovereign countries that probably considered it an underdog.
Somaliland broke away from Somalia to keep from getting sucked down as Somalia disintegrated in to a failed state in the 1990’s. It lacked any central government from 1991 to 2006. Pirates took to terrorizing ships in its waterway. Islamist militants set up shop. Somalia is still one of the world’s most dangerous countries for international aid groups to work in.184
Bronwyn Bruton, the director of programs and studies at the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council, says the international community has been uninterested in recognizing Somaliland as a new nation for several reasons. Quite frankly, she says, the first is apathy. Somaliland doesn’t have oil or other resources to make other players on the international stage care about it. Second, she explains, is the belief that recognizing Somaliland would undermine international efforts to get a functioning government in Mogadishu, which Somaliland broke away from. “The international community led by the United States and Britain has put a lot of time and effort into trying to build a government in Mogadishu,” Bruton says. “And it’s perceived that if Somaliland were to be granted its separation it would reflect poorly on that nascent government.” Finally the African Union doesn’t want to encourage independence movements in other restive regions around the continent.185
Somaliland, she says, has created a relatively stable enclave in a turbulent part of the Horn of Africa. “Somaliland gets a ton of good press for being stable and kind of a peaceful island in a sea of violence that is Somalia,” Bruton says. “The reality is that unlike southern Somalia, where you have a lot of violence, Somaliland is essentially a single clan territory. And so what’s happening is it’s being run as a traditional clan democracy.” This has its drawbacks if you aren’t part of the dominant clan, she points out, but one of the upsides is stability. Bruton says: “Somaliland is effectively being held hostage to the chaos in southern Somalia, Which is grossly unfair.”186
Ethiopia also lost out to Eritrea on May 24,1991, just less than a week when Somaliland broke off from Somalia on May 18, 1991. It was a fateful period in the Horn of Africa.
Eritrea gains de facto independence from Ethiopia in 1991 under EPLF rule, and de jure independence after the referendum held in 1993 under UN auspices The Eritrean War of Independence was a conflict fought between successive Ethiopian governments and Eritrean independence fighters from 1 September 1961 to 24 May 1991.187
The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) became the main liberation group in 1977, expelling the ELF from Eritrea, then exploiting the Ogaden War to launch a war of attrition against Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government under the Workers Party of Ethiopia lost Soviet support at the end of the 1980s and was overwhelmed by Ethiopian anti-government groups, allowing the EPLF to defeat Ethiopian forces in Eritrea in May 1991. In April 1993, the Eritrean people voted almost unanimously in favour of independence in the Eritrean independence referendum, with formal international recognition of an independent, sovereign Eritrea in the same year.188
Within a few years of Eritrea’s independence, relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia, initially cordial, became strained over a border dispute. This resulted in another bloody conflict, the Eritrean-Ethiopian War. The border issue is still contentious, although that war has ended. The issue of access to the sea, one reason why Ethiopia had wanted to retain Eritrea in its territory, also remains contentious and could result in further regional instability. Ethiopians argue that lack of sea access has economic consequences hindering trade and commerce, the exporting and importing of goods.189
There are never any easy solutions to resolving conflicts between or within nations. However, if the two nations had spent the same energy and resources they used in a 30 year war on education and development instead, the people of both nations would be far better off. Sadly, another costly war broke out in 1998 between these two states, this time over border disputes. This ended in June 2000190
Of course, it is not in all cases that military intervention is a manifestation of critical junctures or tipping points but a reflection of ongoing instability and/or struggle for power and hegemonic supremacy among the various competing factions of the military. The several coups and counter-coups that are visibly not associated with any known major or cataclysmic crisis in the society are examples of such events not linked with any known critical junctures.
The military seen as a parasitic body, fed by the State with tax payers’ monies, trained and equipped with the same tax payers’ monies now turns out to be a predator that preys on the citizens through the application of kinetic force of weapons bought for them by the citizens through their taxes. It is an irony or paradox that the military that was designed to defend the citizens in time of war turns out to be a monster that gobbles up the same citizens in order to defend itself and maintain itself in power it has illegally usurped.
The military has always arrogated to itself not just the monopoly of violence but also the monopoly of knowledge of a corrective regime. The military often mischievously claim to have knowledge to solve every conceivable problem afflicting society. If this is really the case, then every problem of the country would have been solved long ago by the military and there would have been probably no need to advocate and institute democratic rule. But there have hardly been sufficient empirical evidences to back up these spurious claims. From the West to the East, from the South to the North, Africa has never had monumental achievements under military rule. Indeed, it can be claimed that African development has suffered immensely under military rule than civilian rule. Military rulers become tyrants and developmental pigmies to boot.
In not-so distant a past, military leaders often espouse “revolutionary” reasons as part of their justifications for their interventions in politics. But today, there is no more socialism/communism that has often served as the ideological basis for such military interventions. The former communist strongholds such as Russia and China, including Cuba, are no more interested in exporting revolutionary Marxism-Leninism worldwide. There is no more advocacy of world revolution as official policy of the State whether it is Russia, China, North Korea or Cuba. They are more interested in securing economic footholds wherever this is possible at all in African countries and other places.
Indeed, all those previous revolutionary military leaders ended up as petty tyrants and criminals.
On the other hands, rightwing dictators also emerged with the full support of Western powers that were all on the quest to quash Communism and other leftwing revolutionary leaderships. Examples of such rightwing anti-Communist dictators included Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Idi Amin of Uganda, etc. They did more harm to their countries than the overthrown or imaginary revolutionary leaders. Captain Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso was hardly in power before he was murdered by his childhood friend and deputy, Blaise Campaore who then hang on to power for decades without taking Burkina Faso an inch on the path of economic progress. Sankara was eliminated because he was perceived to be a leftwing Marxist revolutionary. He was never allowed to prove this revolutionary tendency beyond the few policy measures he took to redistribute wealth along a new direction in Burkina Faso society.
Just about three decades ago, Western powers have also vehemently opposed democratic rule and black majority rule in Southern Africa and especially in South Africa under various pretexts. Very galling is the support wholeheartedly given to white minority rule in South Africa and Rhodesia before white minority rule in both countries were swept away in the tidal wave of national liberation struggle in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the early 80s and the anti-apartheid struggle in the early 90s after the Fall of the Soviet Union and Communism in Eastern Europe. But by contrivance of history, it was none other than some of hated African dictators both military and civilian and both rightwing and leftwing that supported the black movements and guerrilla movements to overcome white minority supremacist rule in South Africa. These events are etched in the psyche of African intelligentsia till date.
In short African countries have traversed tortuous historical paths and byways to arrive at the present stage. According to Martin Meredith, “the more durable imprint they [colonial masters] left behind was of authoritarian regimes in which governors and their officials wielded enormous political power. The sediment of colonial rule lay deep in African society. Traditions of autocratic governance, paternalism and dirigisme were embedded in the institutions the new leaders inherited.”191
African Union on Self-trial
What can African Union and other regional bodies do to prevent coups from taking place in Africa? The rate at which military coups are now occurring in African countries has put African Union on the spot, challenging it to take a concrete ideological stand on the political phenomenon. The situational phenomenon has indeed put the continental and regional bodies on trial to determine its position on the vexatious issue that that is fast becoming an albatross on the neck of the leaderships of the two bodies on global scale. AU may have succeeded in dodging their responsibilities in this regard in the past. Indeed, their evident incapacity in preventing military coups from occurring and punishing the culprits have gone a long way at consolidating military rule in the countries concerned. But this may now be regarded as a thing of the past. Great is the expectation now of its normative value judgment on the phenomenon from all quarters and the urgency attached to it cannot be overstated. Pressures from the international community through all manners of channels are daily mounting on the two bodies to define and declare its stand on the now recurring military interventions in Africa.
The critical question is: what can these bodies do in the face of the tidal wave of military coups?
Truth be told, there is very little African Union and its other regional bodies can do to prevent military coups from taking place in any African country in the first place. Indeed, there is nothing they can do at all. One day, the Union and regional leaders will only wake up over the night to hear in the news that a military coup has taken place somewhere, in one country or the other. African Union and regional bodies have no supra-national power to prevent such military coups from taking place at all. They can only react to events that have taken place without their prior ability to control them.
The best they can do is to condemn; pressure or push such new military leaders to return to civil democratic rule as quickly as possible, and where necessary collectively impose harsh sanctions, including diplomatic non-recognition and isolation, and sustain such sanctions over a long period of time to push such military leaders out of power. African Union and the regional bodies concerned must take a strict ideological stand of outright opposition to military intervention in politics of their respective member countries.
But this is easier said than done. African governance problems are much more complex and profound. First and foremost, African leaders are much more duplicitous and/or hypocritical than most scholars and analysts wish to admit. They often pay lip service to democratic beliefs than most people realize. This is why in the greatest hours of need African leaders will always fail to push democratic principles to the foreground when extraneous factors and forces intervene such as military coups. Secondly, individual African countries are preoccupied with their internal problems that when military coup happens in another country, there is hardly enough will through their foreign policy crucibles to push for crippling sanctions against the new usurpers of power. In the not-too distant past, Nigeria was able to commit its soldiers to settling disputes (in form of peace-keeping) in other countries that have fallen into civil wars or conflicts. But this can hardly be done anymore today as Nigeria itself if threatened by disintegration because of high-intensity conflicts arising out of general insecurity and insurgency in the Northern part of country. The Nigerian military is already seen to be overstretched in helping to stem the tidal wave of multi-prong attacks from agents of insecurity.
Ultimately the objective conditions for military coups and interventions are always provided by the individual country concerned itself – the very objective conditions that African Union and the regional bodies, indeed the entire world bodies such as the United Nations, have no control over at all. Indeed, as the saying goes, “you sleep on your bed as you lay it”. It is the failure of governance in all ramifications that bring or invite military coups. When countries push themselves to the edge of precipice through poor governance and/or authoritarianism, something must snap along the way before it is probably too late. Military coup is always that “something”, often an unknown quantity within a highly VUCAed (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) environment. Ultimately, the responsibility for preventing military coups and/or interventions rests squarely on the shoulders of individual countries through the basic means of good governance and adherence to universal principles of rule or supremacy of law.
African Union and regional bodies in Africa have demonstrated over and over again their complete impotence in preventing military coups from taking place in their member countries that have fallen over the edge of good governance and rule of law.
Listening to African leaders condemning military coups each time they happen while in their respective countries they are sowing the seeds for military interventions later in the future by their acts of mis-governance, abuse of human rights and trampling on the principles of rule of law can be very agonizing. The hypocrisy is not difficult to see even to the blind.
One of the easiest routes to military intervention is the authoritarian tendency often exhibited by African civilian leaders. This has been the political trajectory in Africa since independence years. Hardly is there an African leader, even though democratically elected, that wants to leave power peacefully. They often entertain the idea of elongating their stay in power beyond the constitutionally-stipulated terms of office. In most cases, they in practice tamper with the existing Constitution, causing it to be amended through all sorts of mechanisms such referendum, plebiscite or legislative amendment, to suit their political purpose, mainly to stay in power as long as possible. Thus the Constitution easily becomes prey to the whims and caprices of the leader, becoming instrument of oppression and violation of the universal rule and principles of law, creating an atmosphere of supremacy of illegality to consolidate his rule.
Authoritarianism, including messianic streaks, inevitably causes political crisis, dislocation, ethnic divisions, instability and chaos serving as the basis for military interventions and/or coups. Naturally the first target is the President who will be thrown out of power in disgrace. But there are collateral damages that often follow such as throwing out the Constitution, dissolution of the Parliament, banning of all political parties, muzzling the Press and locking up anybody who dared to raise a voice of opposition. The reasons for taking these extralegal measures are often cited to be in the interests of Nation or national security or in the interest of the people – some of the same people that often welcome these military interventions with open arms in jubilation as can be seen in the case of Guinea, Chad and Mali.
One of the worst outgrowths of poor governance in Africa – despite the prevailing atmosphere of democratic rule in most countries – is corruption that forms part of the corpus of reasons for military intervention – the sleuth of sleaze across the continent, using State power to engage in primitive accumulation of capital to the detriment of the society and national progress including the concomitant impunity or the ease with which the accused escape justice and accountability.
In Nigeria, for instance, despite the institution of anti-corruption bodies and efforts, including various legal frameworks, from the very inception of the Fourth Republic, these existing legal frameworks, bodies and efforts are largely seen as ineffective in curbing the growing insidiousness of corruption especially in government circles and even private sector. Some of the accused who were arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to various jail terms were later released through all sort of contrivances after spending some months in jail and found their ways back to the corridors of power. In some cases, there were plea bargaining through which many of the accused completely escape punishment and justice in general. In fact, the anti-corruption bodies themselves are cesspool of corruption and their leaders indicted from one degree of criminal liability to the other but with no visible sign of improvement in the anti-corruption crusade.
Both the legislature and the judiciary are not spared the scourges of corruption including the very institutional pillars of national security such as the police, the military and other security agencies. In short, corruption is everywhere one looks. Scholars and analysts have largely underscored the devastating effects of corruption on the economic landscape, criminal diversion of financial resources into private pockets, creating a rat-race among competing power blocs to have access to national resources, and at the same time creating a sense of deprivation, helplessness and hopelessness among the lower classes of the populace. But what scholars and analysts may have also ignored in their analyses of the prevailing sordid conditions of corruption in Nigeria is that it provides enough strong alibi for military intervention if historical antecedents are taken into consideration – with the exception of the fact that the military is equally embroiled in the ongoing corruption in Nigeria and therefore may not have moral and political locus standi for any intervention to correct anything it perceived to be wrong with the country.
Conclusion
Despite having a population of almost 40m, significant natural resources and Africa’s fifth-largest economy, the country attracted just $1bn of investment in 2016, down from an equally unimpressive high of $2bn in 2012. For decades Sudan was known primarily for the long-running conflict between the north and the south of the country, which culminated in the 2011 secession of South Sudan. The country’s [former] president, Omar al-Bashir, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes.192
It is hardly the CV of a country ready for international investment, but things are changing. Last October [2017] the US lifted an economic embargo on the country after 20 years, citing improvements in combating terror and addressing human rights issues. Since then Khartoum has been actively trying to shed its reputation as an international pariah. In March the government announced it would open its uranium industry to investment, and has been courting the likes of Russia to help develop the sector.193
Since then the government has announced plans to issue a $1bn sukuk this year, quadruple trade with Turkey to $2bn, and boost ties with the Gulf States, including the UAE, one of its main economic partners. In March the country inked a $4bn deal with Qatar to revamp the Ottoman-era port of Suakin.194
There is even talk of engaging with investors from the West, which has long had fraught relations with Sudan. The UK–Sudan Trade Forum was hosted in London last December, with the British government participating despite criticism from rights groups over Sudan’s human rights record.195
The fact that this latest coup in Sudan, albeit unsuccessful but allegedly carried out by elements loyal to the former dictator, Omar al-Bashir, shows clearly that Sudan is still caught and haunted by the crisis of its own immediate past, and is a foreboding about the uncertain future despite the incremental progress being made by the Transitional Council in terms of reforms. Even though the military is ridden with factional rivalries, it is collectively still the biggest threat to Sudanese future – i.e. its future democratic rule.
The North-South divide has largely been taken out of equation and no longer present any form of danger because the final separation with the declaration of independence by the South and recognition of its sovereignty by the international community has already taken place as a matter of fait accompli.
This is why the coup plotters must be severely punished to serve as deterrence to future coup plotters.
It can be speculated upon that if the coup had succeeded, it would have not only set Sudan back by several steps or miles, it lies in the realm of possibility that Omar al-Bashir currently under detention and awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court could have been set free – with all the unintended but dire consequences.
These were the dangers involved in the coup which could have spelt doom for Sudan in the medium or long-term basis. That is why this article had earlier argued that the coup speaks directly to the fundamental problem of characters of the Sudanese State that need to be addressed as urgently as possible and not to be glossed over by token reforms that the Transitional Council have embarked upon.
First, the Sudanese Military need to undergo deep-going reforms to wean it from its legacy of autocracy or authoritarianism and impunity instituted by Omar al-Bashir. The Military need to be purged of all Omar al-Bashir’s loyalists. The Military is still full of al-Bashir’s loyalists and it is not just the remaining remnants that allegedly carried out the coup. The Military is still the main pillar of power upon which the Sudanese State still largely rest but a pillar that has suffered immensely from wear and tear over the arch of time under Omar al-Bashir iron-fisted rule. The pillar has the urgent need for reconstruction in order to make it responsive to the security and welfare of the Sudanese citizens rather than the narrow selfish interests of the tiny elite at the top of the Sudanese society.
Other institutions of State such as the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) should be wholly restructured and reformed. Other paramilitary bodies not wholly serving the interests of the people or the cause of democratic rule should be courageously disbanded.
More important, an electoral timetable should now come to the fore to show the democratic future that Sudan should be looking and aiming at. But all registered political parties must not be allowed to return to the old prebendalist ways. Any party affiliated or associated with the personality and interests of Omar al-Bashir should not be allowed to contest any election essentially because al-Bashir is still the rampaging elephant in the Sudanese room or bull in china shop – even if al-Bashir is in detention to await his trial for all the alleged crimes committed against Sudan in the thirty years of his iron-fisted rule. Al-Bashir raped and raped Sudan to near death! He and his die-hard loyalists must never be allowed to smell State power anymore in Sudan.
Rule of law with separation of power providing checks and balances must gradually be re-introduced and become full-fledged under the new democratic dispensation. The era of authoritarianism in which Executive branch is the final arbiter of all social and legal disputes must be drawn to a close. Press freedom to provide political and social vigilance and civic education must be instituted and held sacrosanct. All journalists still in detention must be unconditionally released. All journalists killed over the last thirty years under the iron-fisted rule of Omar al-Bashir must be honored in their memories and have their families adequately compensated. The current Transitional Council must convene a “truth reconciliation committee” to heal all the wounds that have been willfully and inadvertently inflicted upon Sudanese body politics in the last 50 years.
What goes for Sudan also applies to the rest of African countries still languishing under all manners of dictatorships or authoritarian rule. The past is lost. As commented by Martin Meredith: By the 1980s a mood of despair about Africa had taken hold. No other era in the world aroused such a sense of foreboding. The sum of its misfortunes was truly daunting. In relentless succession, African states had succumbed to military coups and brutal dictatorships, to periods of great violence and to economic decline and decay. One by one, African leaders had failed to deliver effective programmes to alleviate the plight of their populations. The vast majority of Africans enjoyed neither political rights nor freedoms. More than two-thirds were estimated to live in conditions of extreme poverty. The future was spoken of only in pessimistic terms. “Our ancient continent”, Edem Kodjo, the [former] OAU’s secretary-general, told African leaders, “is on the brink of disaster, hurtling towards the abyss of confrontation, caught in the grip of violence, sinking into the dark night of bloodshed and death … Gone are the smiles, the joy of life”196
The future must be protected from the new modern dictators!