Why Was There a Coup in Sudan After 30 Years?

My oldest readers might remember that I started this blog because of my massive frustration with mainstream media platitudes about the Arab Spring. A self-immolating Tunisian street vendor forcing strongman Ben Ali to flee the country. Or Tahrir Square students overthrowing Hosni Mubarak.

None of these symbolic acts explained what really happened but you wouldn't know that by simply reading to headline.

I had a similar reaction when I first found about the ousting of Omar al-Bashir after 30 years in power. The mainstream narrative was that popular unrest and daily protests increased the pressure on the man and he was finally toppled by his own military.

Once more, we were shown pictures of happy crowds, singing and dancing and marching with signs.

Sudanese protesters at the sit-in in Khartoum last week. Photograph: Amel Pain/EPA

And the narrative was that this was sufficient to get rid of an indicted war criminal who killed, tortured, raped literally millions of people in Darfur and elsewhere. A ruthless autocrat who suppressed every protest violently during his blood-soaked reign.

Omar al-Bashir

If it was that easy, why didn't they do it 20 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago?

Is it possible that this time the street chanting and sit-in protests was too much for his generals who told him that it was time to go.

I decided to take look.

Now, I admit that my knowledge of Sudan was fairly rudimentary.

I knew that Bashir came to power in 1989 with a coup against an elected president.

I knew that he oversaw the Islamization of the country by using the ideological guidelines of Hassan Turabi, a senior Muslim Brotherhood figure.

I knew of the Nile conflict with Egypt and Ethiopia.

And I knew about his horrifying crimes in Darfur to grab their oil and to further subjugate black Africans (vs Arabs of the North).

So it took me some digging. In the end, I uncovered a remarkable story which involved a complex regional power play by Turkey, Qatar on the one side and Saudi Arabia, Egypt and UAE on the other.

Suakin Island

Omar al-Bashir was probably one of the most cynical rulers in the world. For instance, despite being a Sunni fundamentalist, when it suited him, he established close relationships with Iran, a rare Sunni/Shia alliance, which lasted until 2016.

Then when he needed Saudi Arabia's money more, he cut-off Sudan's ties to Iran and offered Sudanese troops for the war in Yemen.

Two years ago, he did something remarkable. He leased the Suakin island to Turkey for 99 years. It didn't hurt that Erdogan was and is a staunch supporter of the Brotherhood. Nor Qatar's $4 billion dollar deal to develop the port city was a hindrance.

But the deal was a subtle reminder to Egypt that Sudan had powerful friends and border disputes and conflict over Nile could be addressed in a different manner.

If you never heard of the island, you are in good company. The island is strategically placed as a historical port for Muslim pilgrims to reach Mecca.

Now, Turkey claimed that it was going to renovate the island and return it to its former glory. But it soon became clear that it had more value as a military base. More importantly, a base that would connect the Turkish base in Qatar and the third one in Somalia.

When the deal was signed, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, taken by surprise, expressed their deep concerns.

At the time, Turkey's deal caused concern on the international scene, particularly in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE, over allegations that Turkey was seeking to expand its military foothold in Africa, in the Gulf and the Red Sea.

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the general who overthrew Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's former President affiliated with Muslim Brotherhood, was especially upset. Following the ousting of Morsi, Egypt's relations with Turkey became rather frosty and a war or words ensued between Erdogan and al-Sisi.

Equally concerned was Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi Crown Prince and de facto ruler of the Kingdom. He is suspicious of Turkish motives because of Erdogan's support for Muslim Brotherhood and his alliance with Qatar.

A Sudanese analyst warned at the time that the Suakin deal was very dangerous.

"Turkey and Egypt, as well as Ethiopia and Eritrea, all have ambitions along Sudan's Red Sea coast, and the situation needs to be handled with great sensitivity," he said. (...)

"Egypt already has a presence in the Halaib disputed area in the northern part of the Red Sea state, and now Turkey has a presence in Port Sudan and Suakin. That's really playing with fire," the analyst said.

With hindsight, prophetic warning to al-Bashir.

The Squeeze Between Qatar And Saudi Arabia

While the Suakin island deal was unfolding Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE and Bahrain tried to bring Sudan into their Anti-Terror Quartet (ATQ) but Sudan refused.

Even though these were important donors for Sudan, Qatar was a big supporter of Muslim Brotherhood and that was a line al-Bashir would not cross.

However, to appease MBS, he distanced himself from Iran and joined the Yemeni coalition.

Omar al-Bashir was playing a high-risk balancing game trying to contain incompatible options. What brought it to a head was Sudan's precarious economy. In 2017 IMF asked the government to gradually remove subsidies on food and fuel.

Unsurprisingly, protests erupted but he violently suppressed them killing scores of civilians.

Despite the presence of Sudanese troops in Yemen, Saudi Arabia did not help him financially. Riyadh waited until his ousting to pledge $3 billion to the new military government.

Within days of the removal of Bashir, Saudi’s purse strings loosened. Along with the UAE, it pledged a $3bn aid package to prop up Sudan’s economy and thus the transitional military government.

Curiously, Qatar refused to help as well.

The Sudanese president, who was ousted by the military on April 11, visited Doha in late January in hopes of getting financial support to ease economic conditions that had triggered more than a month of protests. He received only an offer of political asylum, according to sources.

The Emir must have sensed that the jig was up and there was no way to prop up al-Bashir's government.

As for the dictator himself, my guess is that, strapped for cash, he was contemplating a partial pull out of Yemen.

L’Arabie saoudite (...) vise effectivement à bénéficier de l’absence d’Omar el-Béchir, qui s’opposait à l’engagement militaire « trop vaste » de son pays dans les conflits au Yémen.

Even though he denied such plans, he seems to have failed to convince UAE and the Kingdom.

According to some analysts, al-Bashir’s recent visit to Damascus suggests that Khartoum is distancing itself from the Saudi/UAE axis.

According to Al-Binna, a Lebanese journal, the coup instructions came from MBS himself. who hosted the vice president and the first coup leader, Awad Ibn Auf after al-Bashir's removal.

Le coup d’État au Soudan a eu lieu très probablement suite à une série de coordinations entre le prince saoudien Mohammed ben Salmane et le ministre soudanais de la Défense Aouad Ibn Aouf qui s’était rendu, quelques jours auparavant avant le coup de force, à Riyad pour prendre part à une réunion de “l’OTAN arabe”.

The protesters clamored because of Ibn Auf's closeness to al-Bashir. Shockingly, within 24 hours he resigned. Even more shockingly, his replacement, Salah Abdallah Mohamed Saleh (Salah Gosh) also lasted 24 hours. The third guy was Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

Do you know who he is?

As chief of Sudan’s ground forces he oversaw Sudanese troops fighting in the Saudi-led Yemen war and has close ties to senior Gulf military officials.

Moreover,

A Sudanese source close to Sudan’s military leadership said the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt had a role in planning “the removal of Bashir and General Ibn Auf and Salah Gosh” as part of a strategy of “weakening the power of the Islamists in power in Sudan”.

By Islamists, they mean Muslim Brotherhood.

Given this background, the first thing the new generals did was to reassure Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries that Sudan would continue to provide troops to the war in Yemen.

Then Burhan tweeted that Suakin was an "inseparable part of Sudan."

"Its value cannot be measured with a material price, its history cannot be sold. We emphasize that we care about the sovereignty of our territories. We will not accept the presence of a foreign military existence in Sudan," Burhan added.

Turkey tried to downplay the statement but the implication was clear.

Burhan

 A week ago, Burhan's deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, aka Hemedti, affirmed that Sudan would back Saudi Arabia against Iranian threats.

General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the deputy chief of Sudan's transitional military council, met with Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, the official Saudi Press Agency reported earlier in the day.

"Sudan is standing with the kingdom against all threats and attacks from Iran and Huthi militias," Dagalo, widely known as Himeidti, told the crown prince during their meeting, the council said in a statement.

Incidentally, Hemedti is a dark figure who heads the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The RSF is a paramilitary grouping that grew out of the Janjaweed militias that fought in Darfur and has provided troops to fight in Yemen.

Besides its role in killing and raping in Darfur and Yemen, RSF is the main paramilitary group that al-Bashir used to suppress uprisings.

And now he has MBS' total support and approval.

When you look at the whole picture, what took place in Sudan was not Arab Spring 2 as some media outlets claimed.

MBS moved to have the last regime that had Muslim Brotherhood as its base overthrown and replaced its president with more malleable generals who will continue to help him in his murderous Yemeni campaign. And Egypt got rid of a ruler who could have posed too many problems.

They won.

The influence of their regional rivals Qatar and Turkey, which both had ties to Bashir, will be limited, said the Sudanese military officer. “It was a tug of war, and right now UAE and Saudi won,” he said.

Ostensibly, the losing side is Turkey and Qatar.

But I wouldn't count them out yet. The battle in Sudan might be lost but the wider war is still in play. And I don't even mean this metaphorically.

MBS' war in Yemen is unwinnable and it will ruin the Kingdom financially. He is also less and less able to inject cash into client states like Egypt and soon they will feel the squeeze.

On the Turkish side, the economic picture is not any better. But it has other options like teaming up with Iran and Russia, changing its regional priorities and adopting a softer approach towards Kurds and Syria.

Time will tell.

We live in interesting but scary dangerous times.