[Sudan is in yet another civil war. Can it put military rule
behind it once and for all?]
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THE PERSISTENT ALLURE OF MILITARY COUPS  
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John Feffer
April 26, 2023
Foreign Policy in Focus
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_ Sudan is in yet another civil war. Can it put military rule behind
it once and for all? _

Military situation as of 8 May 2023 (Pink) Controlled by the Sudanese
Armed Forces (Green) Controlled by the Rapid Support Forces, Wikipedia


 

“After me, the deluge,” Louis XV reportedly said back in 1757.

“Be careful what you wish for,” the French king seemed to be
saying, “because once I’m gone, the country will go to the dogs,
and frankly I don’t care.”

Louis’ remark had a very specific context
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assassination attempt in 1757, a French military defeat at the hands
of the Prussians later that year, and predictions of floods in the
wake of Halley’s Comet. Through the centuries, however, the phrase
has become indelibly linked—_avant la lettre_—to the French
Revolution that removed his son Louis XVI from power and ushered in
the horrors of the guillotine and the despotism of Napoleon.

Executions and war are not the inevitable sequel to a popular
uprising. The American revolution had a relatively peaceful aftermath.
The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989 was, as the name
suggests, pretty soft and smooth. But in both cases, the adverse
effects came with a time delay, civil war a half century later for the
United States and the separation of the Czech Republic from Slovakia a
mere four years after the 1989 changes.

The political transformation of Sudan, meanwhile, has not been smooth
at all. Four years after a popular uprising helped to depose a
long-ruling despot, the country is now once again descending into a
terrifying civil war.

Is there any way to minimize the impact of this deluge of violence and
build on the remarkable foundation of political engagement that
non-violent activists constructed four years ago?

TAKING DOWN A DICTATOR

In June 1989, just as Eastern Europe was beginning its peaceful
transition away from communism, Omar al-Bashir seized power in Sudan
in a military coup. Bashir’s rationale was, effectively, “before
me, the deluge.” The new leader argued that only he could deploy the
force necessary to unify the country.

In 1989, Africa’s then-largest country was six years into a second
civil war between the north and the south. A first civil war, from
1955 to 1972, failed to address the grievances of the non-Arab south,
which had carried over from the colonial era. Despite Bashir’s
intention to end the second civil war, it lasted for another 16 years
under his reign. A separate conflict sprang up in Darfur, with the
Bashir regime squaring off there against non-Arab rebels. Together
with an Arab militia called the Janjaweed, Bashir later stood accused
of killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in Darfur. In 2009, the
International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted the Sudanese president on
charges of war crimes, later adding genocide.

Peace has always been provisional in Sudan. The Darfur conflict ended
in a ceasefire agreement in 2010, but a peace agreement remains
pending. In the long-running north-south conflict, South Sudan became
a separate country in 2011. But then, two years later, South Sudan
began its own civil war, which lasted until 2020 just as COVID began
to spread around the world.

Even as wars raged across the country, Bashir managed to rule for
nearly three decades with a mixture of canniness and brutality. A year
after his coup in 1989, he executed 28 military officers
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consolidate his control over the army. For the next 30 years, Bashir
jailed, tortured, and killed his opponents. He exercised complete
control
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Sudanese society and created such a climate of fear that few dared to
stand up to him.

That changed in 2011 when, influenced by the Arab Spring uprisings in
neighboring countries, a set of protests broke out in the capital
Khartoum and several other places in response to austerity measures
imposed by the government. In 2013, Bashir crushed the dissidents with
characteristic brutality by killing dozens
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arresting thousands more.

In December 2018, protesters returned to the street, again in anger
over price hikes. Bashir declared a state of emergency and fell back
on his now-familiar tactics of repression. This time, perhaps sensing
the aging Bashir’s political fragility, the protesters didn’t back
down. Marija Marovic and Zahra Hayder pick up the thread
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the story:

_Led by the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) and the umbrella
opposition coalition Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC), this
nonviolent campaign persisted for months despite repression,
culminating in a climactic mass sit-in at the military headquarters in
Khartoum. On April 11, the Sudanese army abandoned Bashir, arresting
the beleaguered dictator. Yet peaceful demonstrations continued as the
opposition rejected the leadership of the junta, known as the
Transitional Military Council (TMC), that removed Bashir. Boosted by a
wave of protests after security forces killed more than 100 protesters
at the sit-in site on June 3, the opposition successfully negotiated
an agreement in August for a 39-month democratic transition, to be
headed by a Sovereignty Council with power shared between civilians
and the military._

Bashir came to power through a military coup, and thus did a military
coup unseat him approximately 30 years later. In December 2019, after
a trial, Bashir was sentenced to two years
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prison on corruption charges. In February 2020, the Sudanese
government agreed to hand Bashir over to the ICC to be tried on
charges of crimes against humanity. When the latest outbreak of
violence occurred this month, the 79-year-old ex-leader was still in
Kober prison, the same place he’d imprisoned many of his critics.

In October 2021, approximately 26 months into Sudan’s 39-month
“democratic transition,” the military took full control of the
country. It was the sixth successful coup
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1956, on top of a dozen unsuccessful attempts. Like Bashir and the
French kings, the coup leaders declared that the country was at
serious risk of instability without the application of a firm hand. A
military coup, they were suggesting, functioned like a dike to hold
back the flood waters.

CIVIL WAR RETURNS

The war now in the headlines is essentially a falling out between
rogues. The president, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, heads up the
country’s military; his former vice president, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo
(also known as Hemedti), is in charge of the Rapid Support Forces, a
paramilitary. They were allies in the last two coups, which displaced
first Bashir and then the civilian elements of the transitional
government. Then they began to argue over how to integrate the Rapid
Support Forces
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the country’s armed forces. Really they’re just battling over who
will be top dog.

It’s hard to decide which of these strongmen has the more
compromised history. Dagalo was once the head of the Janjaweed,
responsible for horrific crimes during the Darfur war. Burhan was in
charge of Sudanese forces fighting in the Saudi-led war in Yemen
(where Dagalo, too, commanded a battalion). They both have blood on
their hands from their close association with Bashir.

And now their hands are even more blood-stained. So far, hundreds of
died during the clashes between these two rivals, and countries are
scrambling to evacuate their nationals.

The geopolitics of the war are murky. Russia has been allied with the
Sudanese regime for some time, but it apparently hasn’t decided
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to support the government or the paramilitary challenger.
Egypt supports
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the UAE backs Dagalo. Other countries have taken Russia’s
wait-and-see approach.

The United States has managed, by working behind the scenes,
to broker a three-day ceasefire
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an effort to negotiate a compromise between the warring factions.
However commendable in terms of stanching the bloodletting, this
diplomatic approach is actually part of the problem.

By focusing on the strongmen, the international community has given
these armed factions even greater legitimacy.

As Jacqueline Burns, a former adviser to the U.S. special envoy for
Sudan and South Sudan, explains
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her reflections on past negotiations, “We were so focused on getting
concessions and splitting power between the armed groups to reach a
signed peace agreement that, despite paying lip service to the need
for inclusivity and sustainable peace, we lost sight of this
longer-term goal.”

The very people who put their lives on the line for democracy when
they demonstrated against Bashir were not given a place at the
negotiating table. Burns continues:

_despite their leading role in the uprising that resulted in the
eventual ouster of Mr. al-Bashir, women were not substantially
included in the transitional government, and were only marginally
included in political and peace negotiations. Instead, yet another
peace agreement facilitated by a third party brought the armed rebel
movements to the table and into the transitional government._

Guys with guns: when they’re in control of the “peace”
negotiations, it’s no surprise when they later pull out their
weapons to preserve that same “peace.”

WHAT’S NEXT FOR SUDAN?

It’s not like Sudan’s two military rivals are fighting over
enormous wealth. Sudan is a very poor country. Though not the poorest
country in the world in terms of per capita GDP, nearly half of
Sudan’s population live below the poverty (and many experts think
that number is much closer to 80 percent
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Most Sudanese get by on subsistence agriculture, but the worst
drought in 40 years
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of the population into severe food insecurity
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levels ever in the country. The war has led to a suspension
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humanitarian aid operations, which has only made matters worse.

The endgame for Sudan is unclear in terms of which military force will
end up on top. The eternal challenge for the country is to break the
cycle of violence and military coups. This is no easy task. Thailand,
a much richer and more stable country, has suffered through a number
of coups as well, the most recent in 2014, and the military remains in
charge. What hope can water-poor, warlord-rich Sudan have by
comparison?

Sudan does have a resilient civil society. Lawyers have led the
charge [[link removed]] to hold leaders
accountable, doctors have released information on who has been killed
and injured in protests, journalists have formed their own union
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the women’s coalition MANSAM has pressed
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gender equality and women farmers have been at the forefront
of addressing climate change
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and political parties participated in guiding the transition away from
military rule.

The military leaders hold a trump card, however, and that is naked
force. They justify that force by predicting that after them, the
deluge. But it usually turns out that they don’t hold back the
flood. They cause the flood.

JOHN FEFFER is director of Foreign Policy In Focus
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He is the author, most recently, of Aftershock: A Journey into Eastern
Europe’s Broken Dreams (Zed Books). He is also the author of the
dystopian novel Splinterlands (Dispatch Books) and its
soon-to-be-released sequel Frostlands. He is the author of several
other books, and his articles have appeared in The New York Times,
Washington Post, USAToday, Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, and
many other publications.

He has been an Open Society fellow, a PanTech fellow in Korean Studies
at Stanford University, a Herbert W. Scoville fellow, a writing fellow
at Provisions Library in Washington, DC, and a writer in residence at
Blue Mountain Center and the Wurlitzer Foundation.

He is a former associate editor of World Policy Journal. He has worked
as an international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East
Asia for the American Friends Service Committee. He has studied in
England and Russia, lived in Poland and Japan, and traveled widely
throughout Europe and Asia.

For more than five decades, IPS scholar-activists have provided
critical support for major social movements by producing seminal
books, films, and articles; educating key policymakers and the general
public; and crafting practical strategies in support of peace,
justice, and the environment. Donate to the INSTITUTE FOR POLICY
STUDIES [[link removed]]

* Sudan
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* military coup
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* Civil War
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* democracy
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