Sudan Protesters To Keep Up Campaign Until Military's Ouster

Smoke rises behind barricades laid by protesters to block a street in the Sudanese capital Khartoum to stop military vehicles from driving through the area on Wednesday, June 5, 2019. The death toll in Sudan amid a violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters and the dispersal of their peaceful sit-in earlier this week in the capital climbed on Wednesday, protest organizers said. (Mohammed Najib via AP)

BY BASSAM HATOUM, NOHA ELHENNAWY

KHARTOUM, SUDAN (AP) — Sudan’s pro-democracy leaders vowed Thursday to press their campaign of civil disobedience until the ruling military council is ousted and killers of protesters are brought to justice, but an overwhelming presence of security forces across the capital, Khartoum, appeared to thwart new demonstrations.

The African Union, meanwhile, suspended Sudan from all AU activities “with immediate effect” over the deadly military crackdown on protesters that left 108 dead this week. The suspension, it said, would last until Sudan’s military hands over power to a transitional civilian authority.

The Sudan Doctors’ Central Committee, one of the protest groups, reported Wednesday that troops were seen pulling 40 bodies of the victims, slain by the security forces, from the Nile River in Khartoum and taking them away.

The committee said it was not known where they were taken. It also said more than 500 protesters have been wounded in the crackdown.

Meanwhile, Sudan’s military-controlled health ministry disputed the death toll of 108 killed in the crackdown. The ministry’s undersecretary, Soliman Abdel Gaber, issued a statement insisting that only 46 people died in this week’s violence.

Since Monday’s violent dispersal of the protest sit-in outside the military headquarters in Khartoum, violent clashes have erupted in other parts of Sudan. The protest leaders said there were attacks, including killings and rape, in 13 cities and towns this week perpetrated by security forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

The Sudanese Professionals Association, an umbrella of union groups that has been behind months of rallies that forced the military to oust longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April, urged people to block main roads and bridges to “paralyze public life” across the country in retaliation for the military’s crackdown.

“Our success depends on our full adherence to peaceful protests, no matter how hard the criminal militias seek to drag us into violence,” the association said in a Facebook statement Thursday.

Hundreds of armored vehicles of the paramilitary RSF, which grew out of the Janjaweed militias used by al-Bashir’s government to suppress the Darfur insurgency in the 2000s, a campaign that prompted charges of genocide against its perpetrators, were seen across the capital. Barricades erected earlier this week by protesters near the site of the dispersed sit-in were removed and roads were opened. Most stores were closed and few people were seen on Khartoum streets.

Sudan’s ruling general Abdel Fattah Burhan had called for a resumption of negotiations with the protest leaders, which they promptly rejected, saying the generals cannot be serious about talks while troops keep killing protesters.

The protesters said that instead, they would continue their demonstrations and strikes seeking to pressure the military into handing over power to a civilian authority.

Amal al-Zein, an activist and a leader of Sudan’s Communist Party, said she believes only a division within the military could end the standoff — if young officers, for example, overthrow their superiors in the ruling military council.

“All members of the military council belong to the old regime, and that is why we are betting now on lower-rank officers,” she said. “We are hoping patriotic policemen and military officers will act to protect the Sudanese people.”

Before Monday’s crackdown began, the military and protest leaders had for weeks negotiated the makeup of a transitional council meant to run the country until elections. The protesters demanded civilians dominate the council, which the generals resisted.

After the crackdown, the military suspended the talks and canceled all agreed-on points. It also announced the military would form a government and hold elections within seven to nine months.

But the head of the military council, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, on Wednesday abruptly announced the generals were prepared to resume negotiations — an offer the protesters immediately turned down.

In Moscow, a top diplomat said Russia, which has largely stayed on the sidelines of the crisis in Sudan, opposes “any foreign intervention” and believes a compromise is needed.

Mikhail Bogdanov, chief of the foreign ministry’s Middle East desk, told local news agencies that Russian diplomats are in touch with all political players in Sudan, including the opposition. Bogdanov visited Khartoum earlier this year.

From Ethiopia, the African Union’s Peace and Security Council posted on Twitter that Sudan’s suspension will remain in effect until “the effective establishment” of a civilian-led transitional authority, “as the only way to allow the Sudan to exit from the current crisis.”

The decision came during an AU meeting on the Sudanese crisis. The AU’s Peace and Security Council is in charge of enforcing union decisions, somewhat similar to the U.N. Security Council.

The suspension deprives Sudan’s ruling military council of international legitimacy, according to Amani Africa, an independent think tank based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where the AU is based. The United Nations, European Union and other bodies are expected to take their cues from the AU’s action.

In practical terms, Sudan now cannot participate in any AU meeting and any AU financial or other support will cease, the think tank said, though Sudan’s peacekeeping obligations are expected to continue.

The AU has suspended countries in the past over what were considered unconstitutional changes of government, including Egypt, Burkina Faso, Mali, Madagascar, Mauritania and Niger. In certain cases, a suspension can last for years. No other country of the 55-member continental body is currently suspended.

The AU could take further steps, imposing sanctions and calling on the U.N. to do the same, the think tank said.

The chairman of the African Union Commission, Moussa Fake Mahamat, earlier this week strongly condemned the violence in Sudan and urged the country’s ruling military council “to protect the civilians from further harm.”

ElHennawy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow and Cara Anna in Johannesburg contributed to this report.

After Ousting Bashir, Sudan's Activists Struggle To Loosen Military's Grip

Ahmed Rabie (sitting, 5th L), a member of the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), waits to break his fast with his friends during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in front of the Defence Ministry compound in Khartoum, Sudan, May 7, 2019. Picture taken May 7, 2019. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

BY NAFISAR ELTAHIR

DUBAI (REUTERS) - After spearheading the rallies that toppled former President Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s main protest group is now locked in a stand-off with the country’s new military rulers that is testing its clout as a political force.

The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) gained widespread support during more than four months of protests and it has helped win a string of apparent concessions from the military council that took over from Bashir on April 11.

But as the unionists and activists in the SPA try to chart a course to full-fledged democracy, they are coming up against a powerful rival that has shown little sign yet that it is willing to move aside for a civilian-led transition.

Frustrated by a lack of progress, the Declaration of Freedom and Change Forces (DFCF), a broad coalition of opposition groups headed by the SPA, called on Wednesday for a campaign of civil disobedience to crank up the pressure on the military.

“We have all options open from now on,” Ahmed Rabie, an influential SPA member, told Reuters. “If (the council) insists on holding on to power, we are going to consider this a military coup, and we will escalate our tactics, peacefully.”

The SPA has said such a campaign would likely focus on mass strikes, which have been successful in previous uprisings in post-independence Sudan. Strikes called by the SPA before Bashir’s fall met with limited success, but workers may be less cowed following his removal.

It may also call for a boycott of non-essential goods and public services in a bid to starve the government of tax revenue, and intensify rallies and sit-ins across Sudan.

The biggest ongoing sit-in, which began on April 6 outside the Defence Ministry in Khartoum, has become the focal point of the uprising.

The Transitional Military Council (TMC) has said it will not use force to end the sit-in. But the SPA could be undermined by maneuvering due to its lack of political experience.

“The politicking is starting. This is a terrain that the professionals association might not be as well-equipped for as it seems,” said Sudanese analyst Magdi el-Gizouli.
CONCESSIONS

To try to placate protesters the TMC replaced its first head after one day, dismissed senior allies of Bashir, announced anti-corruption measures and moved to restructure security and intelligence agencies.

Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes in Darfur, is in prison in the capital Khartoum.

But while the DFCF wants a transitional body led by civilians to steer a four-year transition, the TMC has indicated that it wants to retain overall control of any joint military and civilian sovereign council.

As talks between the two sides have dragged on, the SPA has accused the military leaders of expanding their powers.

The TMC has said it is open to more dialogue and that elections could be held after six months if there’s no agreement on an interim government - well ahead of the end of the council’s planned two-year transition.

The SPA’s civil disobedience could put pressure on the military council given Sudan’s economic vulnerability. The country is already suffering from spiraling inflation and shortages of cash and basic goods.

But its rivals in the TMC have powerful and wealthy backers.

The TMC’s leaders, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, have ties to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which together promised Sudan $3 billion to support the central bank and provide fuel, wheat and medicine.

Dagalo, commonly known as Hemedti, controls the feared Rapid Support Forces, which fought in Darfur and are participating in the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. They are also deployed across Khartoum.

“This is an army establishment and they don’t want to lose control,” said Sudanese writer and commentator Reem Abbas. “There’s a lot of things at stake: resources, land, immunity for war crimes.”

SHADOW UNIONS

The SPA, by contrast, was formed in 2016 from unofficial parallel trade unions outside the state apparatus representing doctors, lawyers, journalists and other professions.

It was campaigning for higher wages when demonstrations against Bashir, triggered by a deepening economic crisis, spread across Sudan from Dec. 19 and propelled the SPA into the role of protest coordinator. It has since expanded to include more than 20 unions.

The SPA’s non-political image was key to its success in ousting Bashir after three decades in power, said Rabie, a high school physics teacher from the Haj Yousif neighborhood on the outskirts of Khartoum.

Despite its large following, the SPA says it will not become a political party. It has no leader or strict hierarchy and, until recently, operated largely underground.

That could leave a vacuum.

Under Bashir, opposition parties’ activities were limited and membership dwindled. Analysts say they still have much work to do to become effective political forces.

The opposition also faces a challenge presenting a united front. The DFCF is made up of a wide range of political parties, civil society associations and armed groups from across Sudan and they have already made conflicting statements about their approach to the negotiations.

Many protesters believe the SPA shouldn’t be negotiating with the military at all, chanting: “Civilian rule is the decision of the people.” The SPA has sought to reassure them, saying it will act as a guarantor of the revolution and democracy during the transition.

“We always work hard to get democracy in this country and then we lose it,” said Rabie, who was jailed from Jan. 4 until shortly after Bashir’s downfall. “We worked hard to get it, and, God willing, we can protect it.”

Writing by Nafisa Eltahir and Aidan Lewis; editing by David Clarke
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The Fall of Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the ‘Spider’ at the Heart of Sudan’s Web

Mr. al-Bashir, center, with military officers in Khartoum in July 1989. He led an Islamist junta that ousted the civilian government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi in June that year.CreditAgence France-Presse — Getty Images via The New York Times

BY DECLAN WALSH

THE NEW YORK TIMES

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir loved to tell the story about his broken tooth.

As a schoolboy working on a construction site, he told supporters in January, he fell and broke the tooth while carrying a heavy load. Instead of seeking treatment he rinsed his mouth with saltwater and kept working.

Later, after he joined the army, he refused a silver tooth implant because he wanted to remember his hardships. “This one,” he said, pointing to a gap in his mouth, as supporters erupted into laughter.

The story was a way for Mr. al-Bashir, who was ousted Thursday after 30 years of iron-fisted rule over Sudan, to play up his humble origins — to show that he remained a man of the people who, like him, hailed from dusty farming villages on the Nile.

The folksy image was a jarring contrast with Mr. al-Bashir’s image in the West, where he was often seen as a heartless warmonger, as a coddler of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and as the accused architect of a genocidal purge in Darfur that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Since 2009, the International Criminal Court has sought to arrest him on war crimes charges that include murder, rape and extermination.

But global notoriety was never much of a problem for Mr. al-Bashir, 75, at home in Sudan, a vast African country with a long history of war and suffering. He outwitted rivals who underestimated him, steered a decade-long oil boom that swelled Sudan’s middle classes, and forged a network of security forces and armed militias to fight his wars that some likened to a spider’s web with Mr. al-Bashir at its center.

That carefully constructed edifice of power crumbled this week as thousands of protesters massed outside his Khartoum residence, chanting slogans and braving gunfire as rival gangs of soldiers exchanged fire. The oil money was running low, the economy was in tatters and young Sudanese, in particular, had had enough. The spider had to go.

“Just fall, that is all!” they chanted.

On Thursday morning, the military ousted him, ending his 30-year rule in the face of the sweeping demonstrations. It said it had taken Mr. al-Bashir into custody, dissolved the government and suspended the Constitution.

Representatives of the principal protest group, the Sudanese Professionals’ Association, which had been expecting a statement from the military and were preparing to negotiate a transition to civilian rule, greeted the announcement with disappointment.

“What has been just stated is for us a coup, and it is not acceptable,” said Sara Abdelgalil, a spokeswoman for the group. “Our request for a civilian transitional government has been ignored.”

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 frontman 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.

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 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.

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, then deftly use his personalized political retail skills to manage the politics of the army,” he said.

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.”

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.

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, an analyst at the United States Institute of Peace.

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, and in 2009 the International Criminal Court issued the first of two indictments against Mr. Bashir, who became the first sitting head of state to be served with an arrest warrant by the court.

“This was his biggest blunder,” Mr. el-Gizouli said. “He outsourced the war to these militias, the Darfuri pastoralists. And he created a massively bloated security establishment with competing structures.”

Mr. al-Bashir was charged with crimes that included murder, rape, torture and extermination, and his villainous reputation was amplified by campaigning celebrities like the actor George Clooney who denounced him as the embodiment of a sectarian, ruthless regime. But predictions he would become “a fugitive, a man on a wanted poster,” were only partially borne out.

Defying the court, Mr. al-Bashir traveled to Kenya, Egypt, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, although a visit to South Africa in 2015 was cut short when a court considered whether to arrest him. Some experts criticized the indictments as legally flawed and politically counterproductive.

Mr. al-Bashir portrayed himself as the victim of an international witch hunt led by an ungrateful West. He complained that the United States had reneged on its promises to lift sanctions in return for peace in the south. Buoyed by oil wealth, he swept to victory in the 2010 election, featuring posters that showed him standing proudly before new roads, dams and factories — even if 40 percent of Sudan’s people remained below the poverty line.

In 2011, South Sudan voted to secede, becoming an independent country and taking with it three-quarters of Sudan’s oil reserves. As revenues dried up, Sudan’s economy weakened badly, and Mr. al-Bashir started to face serious opposition.

Armed riot police brutally suppressed street protests against soaring food prices in September 2013, killing as many as 170 people, according to Human Rights Watch. Torture and abuse in Sudan’s jails became rampant, the group said.

Mr. al-Bashir reached wide into the region for funding and support, often flitting between rivals in search of the best deal. In 2013, he hosted the Iranian president at the time, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in Khartoum, as part of a putative courtship. Two years later, he joined an Arab alliance fighting on one side of Yemen’s war, led by Iran’s archenemy Saudi Arabia.

Last year he pivoted from his traditional ally, Egypt, to Ethiopia as part of a dispute over a giant hydroelectric dam that Ethiopia is building on the Nile. In recent months, as more protests erupted, he turned to Saudi Arabia’s Persian Gulf rival, Qatar, for help.

The lifting of American sanctions in 2017 might have helped Mr. al-Bashir. But the State Department kept Sudan on its list of terrorism sponsors, stymieing any influx of foreign investment. By 2018 Sudan’s economy was in free-fall, with an inflation rate of 72 percent, long lines at fuel stations and even a shortage of bank notes. The urban middle classes, dismayed to see their living standards collapsing, revolted.

A protest against the soaring price of bread in Atbara on Dec. 19 quickly spread to towns and cities across the country, in protests led by doctors and other professionals. Public anger grew as young doctors, some from wealthy families, were killed.

In January, Mr. al-Bashir contemptuously dismissed the protesters, telling the “rats to go back to their holes” and saying he would move aside only for another army officer, or at the ballot box.

But on the whole his forces reacted with relative restraint, killing dozens rather than hundreds of protesters. The demonstrations, often wildcat affairs in different Khartoum neighborhoods, turned into a daily occurrence.

On April 6, in their largest protest yet, demonstrators made it to the gates of Mr. al-Bashir’s home at the headquarters of the Sudanese army. The protest coincided with the anniversary of the 1985 uprising that toppled the regime of another unpopular Sudanese leader, the dictator Gaafar Nimeiry.

It was the start of the final push that lead to his ouster on Thursday. His supposedly folksy touch had fully deserted him. The military and security leaders he fostered for years told him it was time to leave.

Like many military rulers, Mr. al-Bashir liked to claim that power had been foisted upon him, and that he wielded it reluctantly. “This country does not encourage anyone to enjoy power,” he said after he seized control in 1989. “This country is exhausted. It has collapsed and fallen.”

Critics say he left Sudan in much the same condition. Less clear, though, is whether his successors can change it quickly. The tattered economy needs a huge cash injection, and current conflicts in the Sudanese regions of Blue Nile or South Kordofan are unlikely to abate. Past uprisings, in the 1960s and 1980s, quickly saw a reversion to military control after a few years of erratic civilian rule.

“People want change, but Sudan’s problems are structural, not a matter of personality,” said Aly Mr. Verjee, an analyst at the United States Institute of Peace. “Even with Bashir gone, Sudan will not be healed overnight.”

Sudan’s Military Removes, Arrests President al-Bashir

Protesters celebrate in Khartoum, Sudan, Thursday, April 11, 2019. Tens of thousands of Sudanese were making their way to the center of the country’s capital on Thursday, cheering and clapping in celebration as two senior officials said the military had forced longtime autocratic President Omar al-Bashir to step down after 30 years in power. (AP Photo)

BY MAGGIE MICHAEL, SAMY MAGDY

CAIRO (AP) — Sudan’s military arrested President Omar al-Bashir, ousting him from power in the wake of escalating protests against his 30-year rule, the defense minister announced Thursday. He said the military will rule the country for the next two years with an emergency clampdown.

The military control risks enflaming protesters. Tens of thousands of Sudanese converged throughout the day at the protest movement’s main sit-in outside the military’s General Command Headquarters, cheering, singing and dancing after word emerged in the morning that al-Bashir would be removed.

But the announcement that finally came appeared to confirm the fears of many protesters that the military would shrug off demands for a civilian transition.

Defense Minister Awad Mohammed Ibn Ouf appeared on state TV in military fatigues and announced that the military has removed and arrested al-Bashir. He said a military council decided on by the army, intelligence agencies and security apparatus will rule for two years, after which “free and fair elections” will take place.

He also announced that the military also suspended the constitution, dissolved the government, declared a state of emergency for three months, closed the country’s borders and airspace and imposed a night curfew for one month.

Earlier in the day, protests leaders had said they were in talks with the military over a transition and said they would not accept a military coup, vowing to continue their sit-in and rallies unless a civilian body controlled the transition.

Al-Bashir came to power in a 1989 coup, leading an alliance of the military and Islamist hard-liners. Over the course of his rule, he was forced to allow the separation of South Sudan and became a pariah in many countries, wanted by the international war crimes tribunal for atrocities in Darfur.

The protests that erupted in December have been the biggest challenge to his rule. Security forces responded from the start with a fierce crackdown that killed dozens. Al-Bashir banned unauthorized public gatherings and granted sweeping powers to the police since imposing a state of emergency in February. Security forces have used tear gas, rubber bullets, live ammunition and batons against demonstrators.

Sudan: Nigeria Supports AU's Position on Al-Bashir's Arrest Warrant

Sudan Minister of International Cooperation Eltigani Fedail said Nigeria confirmed its support for the position of African Union on the warrant of arrest on President Al-bashir of Sudan by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Briefing journalists after meeting with Minister of Foreign Affairs Chief Ojo Madukwe in Abuja yesterday, Mr Fedail said Nigeria is committed to having peace in Sudan and that it support for the ICC warrant of arrest on President Al-bashir will not help to restore peace in the country. [READ MORE]