Can Sudan’s Civilians Build the Support They Need to End Military Islamist Rule?
10 views
Skip to first unread message
John Ashworth
May 28, 2024, 12:57:27 AMMay 28
to Group
Can Sudan’s Civilians Build the Support They Need to End Military Islamist Rule?
By Gill Lusk
Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker
May 27, 2024
The political vacuum has swelled and the Islamist civilian and army
leaders are trying their utmost to fill it. Yet this space should
rightly be filled, and filled to overflowing, by the civilian
alternative, the Coordination of Civilian Democratic Forces, known as
Taqaddum, and the peace and justice of which they are the
standard-bearers. From young revolutionaries to seasoned politicians,
now is their chance.
“Let’s hope we can all celebrate Christmas together in Khartoum next
year,” wrote a Sudanese friend in her greetings card last December.
Devastated by bombs dropped by Sudan’s own Air Force and heavy
artillery fire from both sides, Khartoum today seems a far cry from
the Christmas celebrations that I remember from the 1970s. Fir trees
from the Forestry Department nursery at Thawra, in peaceful Jebel
Marra, lined the main thoroughfare, Sharia el Gasr, and members of the
city’s many social clubs celebrated merrily as the whisky moya flowed.
That “far cry” is now a cry of unbearable pain for people who have
lost not only relations and friends, not only homes and hometowns, but
the life-enhancing hope that filled hearts and minds during the
extraordinary Revolution of 2018-19. Lives are lost: even the
cautious United Nations puts the death toll at over 16,000. Mainly
innocent civilians, they died at the hands of their “own” army, the
Sudan Armed Forces, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which
that same army had trained and claimed as its own. These are not the
rulers that the public dreamed of during the heady days of the
Revolution.*
So where are those potential rulers who can bring Sudan back to
sanity? Where is the democratic hope that once sprang so strong?
Sudan is a country in mourning – for lost lives and the loss of a
future of, as the revolutionary slogan put it, “Freedom, Peace,
Justice!’ Tragically, the lives lost cannot be restored. However,
most of the nearly nine million people that the UN estimates have been
displaced, inside or outside Sudan, may one day return to their areas.
if not to the houses flattened by SAF or RSF shells. Whether they
will be able, will even want, to return depends in large part on what
happens next.
That next stage is happening now! “Taqaddum” is holding its official
founding conference in Ethiopia, from 27th to 30th May 2024. Around
600 participants are meeting to prepare a democratic future.
Responding to criticism that they were not sufficiently inclusive, the
more seasoned civic activists and politicians agreed that youth groups
and women’s groups should first hold two days of talks in preparation
for the main conference.
This is a historic moment amid the grief of 13 months of war between
those soldiers officially tasked with protecting the country. Yet
death and displacement have badly dented people’s confidence in the
future and things will get worse before they get better. Even
envisaging a future is hard when you are fleeing death or acute hunger
and debilitating disease, as the world’s asylum seekers know only too
well. Famine in Sudan is now “inevitable” and will be “catastrophic,”
the East Africa head of the UN World Food Programme, Michael Dunford,
last month warned the UK All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for
Sudan and South Sudan. With both sides blocking emergency aid
delivery, that is, sadly, no empty prediction.
Crushed confidence is a major obstacle to action and there is a lack
of enthusiasm for Taqaddum among those who once overflowed with
boundless joy at the revolution. That makes many people easy prey for
the technically sophisticated propaganda of the SAF-Islamist axis,
which relentlessly targets Taqaddum and the Forces for Freedom and
Change which founded it. Talk of the “national army” as the “least
worst” option has grown among some Sudanese who initially could see
only the horror of that army bombing the civilians and infrastructure
it was supposedly proud to protect.
War-weariness, a tide of criticism from the Sudan Communist Party
(which has had difficulty working out where the real enemy lies) and
skepticism from liberal Sudanese imbued with a long-standing mistrust
of politicians have combined to build a wall of wait-and-see that has
not helped a Taqaddum that could benefit from more effective
communications. It could also benefit, as could its armchair critics,
from a conviction that democracy often means disagreeing but pulling
together for the greater good, especially in times of extreme crisis.
This is certainly one. And like it or not, there is really no
alternative, other than more decades of Islamist military rule. There
will be plenty of opportunity for criticism once democracy is
established.
The ripples of such caution spread and, though some external
involvement is clearly fueling the war – for example, the United Arab
Emirates’ military support for the RSF or Egypt’s and Iran’s backing
for the SAF’s non-functional “government” – the majority who cherish
dreams of peace and justice badly need the political and financial
support of democratic governments and international civil society.
When international affairs are dominated by the Russia-Ukraine and
Israel-Gaza wars, not to mention the spread of isolationist Trumpist
populism in many places, countries not deemed globally strategic
struggle to win either assistance or column inches.
Though Britain supports the need for a civilian (rather than
“civilian-led”) government, it has nevertheless quietly downgraded its
Sudan involvement by abolishing the post of Special Envoy for Sudan
and South Sudan, replacing it with a Special Envoy in Juba and another
for the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea. Few believe that even the most
brilliant specialist could follow this vast and complex area in
meaningful detail. The APPG and others have complained loudly but in
vain.
Similarly puzzling was a May 21 webinar from the USA’s Wilson Center,
“Enhancing the Voice of Sudanese Civilians on Issues Key to Ending the
War and Restoring Peace.” Despite the title, it barely mentioned
Taqaddum or its major gathering four days later.** Since the SAF
chief, General Abdel Fattah el Burhan, and the RSF boss, Mohamed
Hamdan Dagalo alias Hemedti, jointly (lest we forget) overthrew
civilian Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok in October 2021, Washington
has failed to take civilian efforts to restore democracy as seriously
as most would wish. Fortunately, some other governments have helped
out, but Taqaddum, which Hamdok leads, struggles to be heard as
clearly as it needs if Sudan is to escape from the clutches of the
Islamist movement that is driving the war. Social media were full of
calls to mobilize Islamist supporters just before that war erupted in
April 2023 and now SAF is busy recruiting more militia.
The civilians need all the help they can muster, from Sudanese and
from powerful outsiders. There is a very large and usually
unmentioned elephant in the room. How do you end a war that both
sides appear to believe they can win militarily, though neither can,
when the leaders of both face the threat of being charged with crimes
against humanity, war crimes and quite possibly, genocide? Can you
allow them immunity in exchange for ending the war and further,
withdrawing from public life and their dreams of power? Intentionally
destroying civilian homes, vital national infrastructure and, above
all, hospitals, can be classed as war crimes. Both protagonists have
committed such devastation.
What is bringing things to a head now is the violence by both sides in
Darfur, where its historic regional capital, El Fasher, is held by the
SAF and under siege from the RSF, trapping an estimated one and a half
million non-combatants. Reinforced by reports from Human Rights
Watch*** and others, this has reminded the world of massacres in
Darfur, notably El Geneina.
“Spotlight on Darfur: the implications of ongoing conflict and
atrocities” was the title of an on-the-record Chatham House meeting on
16 May.**** After reminding the audience that the SAF had “trained
and deployed” the RSF in the genocide of the 2000s, the Chairperson,
former UK Sudan Ambassador Dame Rosalind Marsden, noted that, “…we’re
seeing the same actors and methods being used today”. There was “no
shortage of documentation or early warning, the problem is a lack of
early response and effective preventive action,” she went on. The
Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, had
told the UN Security Council on January 24 that there was evidence of
“Rome Statute crimes,” i.e. genocide, war crimes and crimes against
humanity, being committed by both sides.
It fell to international human rights lawyer Yonah Diamond to tell the
meeting that there was “clear genocidal intent” and since “the wheels
of justice turn at a glacial pace,” international rights lawyers and
activists were trying to document cases to put pressure on the
governments that are members of the ICC. That membership legally
binds them to take action when such crimes are recorded. They had
found “the same dynamics in the RSF attacks”, he said, as during the
rule of President Omer al Bashir.
The obvious need for justice raises the challenge of why leaders would
stop fighting if that means they may spend the rest of their lives
behind bars. That’s even before any discussion of rebuilding a
shattered country. There are plenty of challenges for the civilian
leaders in Taqaddum and they need all the support they can get.
Gill Lusk worked in Sudan as a teacher, then a journalist, for many
years. She then covered Sudan for even more years at Africa
Confidential newsletter, London. She now chairs the Society for the
Study of the Sudans (UK).
* Gill Lusk, “Spring of Hope”, Sudan Studies (Journal of the Society
for the Study of the Sudans, SSSUK), No. 60, July 2019. SSSUK.Org
** Wilson Center, “Enhancing the Voice of Sudanese Civilians on
Issues Key to Ending the War and Restoring Peace,” May 21, 2024,
https://gbv.wilsoncenter.org/event/enhancing-voice-sudanese-civilians-issues-key-ending-war-and-restoring-peace
*** Human Rights Watch, “Sudan: Ethnic Cleansing in West Darfur,” May
9, 2024, https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/05/09/sudan-ethnic-cleansing-west-darfur
**** Chatham House, Spotlight on Darfur: the implications of ongoing
conflict and atrocities (YouTube).
https://sudantransparency.org/can-sudans-civilians-build-the-support-they-need-to-end-military-islamist-rule/
END
______________________
John Ashworth
ashwor...@gmail.com
+254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile, WhatsApp and Signal)
PO Box 403 - 00206, Kiserian, Kenya
By Gill Lusk
Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker
May 27, 2024
The political vacuum has swelled and the Islamist civilian and army
leaders are trying their utmost to fill it. Yet this space should
rightly be filled, and filled to overflowing, by the civilian
alternative, the Coordination of Civilian Democratic Forces, known as
Taqaddum, and the peace and justice of which they are the
standard-bearers. From young revolutionaries to seasoned politicians,
now is their chance.
“Let’s hope we can all celebrate Christmas together in Khartoum next
year,” wrote a Sudanese friend in her greetings card last December.
Devastated by bombs dropped by Sudan’s own Air Force and heavy
artillery fire from both sides, Khartoum today seems a far cry from
the Christmas celebrations that I remember from the 1970s. Fir trees
from the Forestry Department nursery at Thawra, in peaceful Jebel
Marra, lined the main thoroughfare, Sharia el Gasr, and members of the
city’s many social clubs celebrated merrily as the whisky moya flowed.
That “far cry” is now a cry of unbearable pain for people who have
lost not only relations and friends, not only homes and hometowns, but
the life-enhancing hope that filled hearts and minds during the
extraordinary Revolution of 2018-19. Lives are lost: even the
cautious United Nations puts the death toll at over 16,000. Mainly
innocent civilians, they died at the hands of their “own” army, the
Sudan Armed Forces, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which
that same army had trained and claimed as its own. These are not the
rulers that the public dreamed of during the heady days of the
Revolution.*
So where are those potential rulers who can bring Sudan back to
sanity? Where is the democratic hope that once sprang so strong?
Sudan is a country in mourning – for lost lives and the loss of a
future of, as the revolutionary slogan put it, “Freedom, Peace,
Justice!’ Tragically, the lives lost cannot be restored. However,
most of the nearly nine million people that the UN estimates have been
displaced, inside or outside Sudan, may one day return to their areas.
if not to the houses flattened by SAF or RSF shells. Whether they
will be able, will even want, to return depends in large part on what
happens next.
That next stage is happening now! “Taqaddum” is holding its official
founding conference in Ethiopia, from 27th to 30th May 2024. Around
600 participants are meeting to prepare a democratic future.
Responding to criticism that they were not sufficiently inclusive, the
more seasoned civic activists and politicians agreed that youth groups
and women’s groups should first hold two days of talks in preparation
for the main conference.
This is a historic moment amid the grief of 13 months of war between
those soldiers officially tasked with protecting the country. Yet
death and displacement have badly dented people’s confidence in the
future and things will get worse before they get better. Even
envisaging a future is hard when you are fleeing death or acute hunger
and debilitating disease, as the world’s asylum seekers know only too
well. Famine in Sudan is now “inevitable” and will be “catastrophic,”
the East Africa head of the UN World Food Programme, Michael Dunford,
last month warned the UK All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for
Sudan and South Sudan. With both sides blocking emergency aid
delivery, that is, sadly, no empty prediction.
Crushed confidence is a major obstacle to action and there is a lack
of enthusiasm for Taqaddum among those who once overflowed with
boundless joy at the revolution. That makes many people easy prey for
the technically sophisticated propaganda of the SAF-Islamist axis,
which relentlessly targets Taqaddum and the Forces for Freedom and
Change which founded it. Talk of the “national army” as the “least
worst” option has grown among some Sudanese who initially could see
only the horror of that army bombing the civilians and infrastructure
it was supposedly proud to protect.
War-weariness, a tide of criticism from the Sudan Communist Party
(which has had difficulty working out where the real enemy lies) and
skepticism from liberal Sudanese imbued with a long-standing mistrust
of politicians have combined to build a wall of wait-and-see that has
not helped a Taqaddum that could benefit from more effective
communications. It could also benefit, as could its armchair critics,
from a conviction that democracy often means disagreeing but pulling
together for the greater good, especially in times of extreme crisis.
This is certainly one. And like it or not, there is really no
alternative, other than more decades of Islamist military rule. There
will be plenty of opportunity for criticism once democracy is
established.
The ripples of such caution spread and, though some external
involvement is clearly fueling the war – for example, the United Arab
Emirates’ military support for the RSF or Egypt’s and Iran’s backing
for the SAF’s non-functional “government” – the majority who cherish
dreams of peace and justice badly need the political and financial
support of democratic governments and international civil society.
When international affairs are dominated by the Russia-Ukraine and
Israel-Gaza wars, not to mention the spread of isolationist Trumpist
populism in many places, countries not deemed globally strategic
struggle to win either assistance or column inches.
Though Britain supports the need for a civilian (rather than
“civilian-led”) government, it has nevertheless quietly downgraded its
Sudan involvement by abolishing the post of Special Envoy for Sudan
and South Sudan, replacing it with a Special Envoy in Juba and another
for the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea. Few believe that even the most
brilliant specialist could follow this vast and complex area in
meaningful detail. The APPG and others have complained loudly but in
vain.
Similarly puzzling was a May 21 webinar from the USA’s Wilson Center,
“Enhancing the Voice of Sudanese Civilians on Issues Key to Ending the
War and Restoring Peace.” Despite the title, it barely mentioned
Taqaddum or its major gathering four days later.** Since the SAF
chief, General Abdel Fattah el Burhan, and the RSF boss, Mohamed
Hamdan Dagalo alias Hemedti, jointly (lest we forget) overthrew
civilian Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok in October 2021, Washington
has failed to take civilian efforts to restore democracy as seriously
as most would wish. Fortunately, some other governments have helped
out, but Taqaddum, which Hamdok leads, struggles to be heard as
clearly as it needs if Sudan is to escape from the clutches of the
Islamist movement that is driving the war. Social media were full of
calls to mobilize Islamist supporters just before that war erupted in
April 2023 and now SAF is busy recruiting more militia.
The civilians need all the help they can muster, from Sudanese and
from powerful outsiders. There is a very large and usually
unmentioned elephant in the room. How do you end a war that both
sides appear to believe they can win militarily, though neither can,
when the leaders of both face the threat of being charged with crimes
against humanity, war crimes and quite possibly, genocide? Can you
allow them immunity in exchange for ending the war and further,
withdrawing from public life and their dreams of power? Intentionally
destroying civilian homes, vital national infrastructure and, above
all, hospitals, can be classed as war crimes. Both protagonists have
committed such devastation.
What is bringing things to a head now is the violence by both sides in
Darfur, where its historic regional capital, El Fasher, is held by the
SAF and under siege from the RSF, trapping an estimated one and a half
million non-combatants. Reinforced by reports from Human Rights
Watch*** and others, this has reminded the world of massacres in
Darfur, notably El Geneina.
“Spotlight on Darfur: the implications of ongoing conflict and
atrocities” was the title of an on-the-record Chatham House meeting on
16 May.**** After reminding the audience that the SAF had “trained
and deployed” the RSF in the genocide of the 2000s, the Chairperson,
former UK Sudan Ambassador Dame Rosalind Marsden, noted that, “…we’re
seeing the same actors and methods being used today”. There was “no
shortage of documentation or early warning, the problem is a lack of
early response and effective preventive action,” she went on. The
Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, had
told the UN Security Council on January 24 that there was evidence of
“Rome Statute crimes,” i.e. genocide, war crimes and crimes against
humanity, being committed by both sides.
It fell to international human rights lawyer Yonah Diamond to tell the
meeting that there was “clear genocidal intent” and since “the wheels
of justice turn at a glacial pace,” international rights lawyers and
activists were trying to document cases to put pressure on the
governments that are members of the ICC. That membership legally
binds them to take action when such crimes are recorded. They had
found “the same dynamics in the RSF attacks”, he said, as during the
rule of President Omer al Bashir.
The obvious need for justice raises the challenge of why leaders would
stop fighting if that means they may spend the rest of their lives
behind bars. That’s even before any discussion of rebuilding a
shattered country. There are plenty of challenges for the civilian
leaders in Taqaddum and they need all the support they can get.
Gill Lusk worked in Sudan as a teacher, then a journalist, for many
years. She then covered Sudan for even more years at Africa
Confidential newsletter, London. She now chairs the Society for the
Study of the Sudans (UK).
* Gill Lusk, “Spring of Hope”, Sudan Studies (Journal of the Society
for the Study of the Sudans, SSSUK), No. 60, July 2019. SSSUK.Org
** Wilson Center, “Enhancing the Voice of Sudanese Civilians on
Issues Key to Ending the War and Restoring Peace,” May 21, 2024,
https://gbv.wilsoncenter.org/event/enhancing-voice-sudanese-civilians-issues-key-ending-war-and-restoring-peace
*** Human Rights Watch, “Sudan: Ethnic Cleansing in West Darfur,” May
9, 2024, https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/05/09/sudan-ethnic-cleansing-west-darfur
**** Chatham House, Spotlight on Darfur: the implications of ongoing
conflict and atrocities (YouTube).
https://sudantransparency.org/can-sudans-civilians-build-the-support-they-need-to-end-military-islamist-rule/
END
______________________
John Ashworth
ashwor...@gmail.com
+254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile, WhatsApp and Signal)
PO Box 403 - 00206, Kiserian, Kenya
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages