Sudan’s drift is proof that the ambition of a few individuals, for better or for worse, can seriously influence the destiny of nations.
In this case, for the worse. Not relying on the will of the mobilized masses, but against them.
In 2018 and 2019, Sudan had opposed its corrupt military-religious leaders with one of the most sophisticated and well-organized pro-democracy and pro-secularism movements in this region of the world.
In Khartoum, in that huge semi-desert country south of Egypt, were men and women (and especially women) at the forefront of what was then called the “second Arab Spring”: Lebanon , Algeria, Iraq… Sudan.
Professional associations (lawyers, doctors) and popular urban groups had joined forces to oust a military-Islamist dictator (Omar el-Bashir) in April 2019 and to impose a “civil transition” on the military, in a country that is absolute champion of coups: 16 since independence in 1956.
It was eight years after the almost generalized abortion of the original “Arab Spring”: Tunisia, the only democratic survivor of this first era (2010-2011), is in the process of sinking in turn.
Sudan, therefore, the improbable hope of democracy in the Arab world…
But two men and their devouring ambitions, combined at first, antagonistic today, decided otherwise: General Daglo, leader of the paramilitaries, and the head of the regular army, General al-Burhane.
These two men had united, at first, to receive the grievances of civil society and to transfer the old al-Bashir. But two and a half years after the spring 2019 agreements, in October 2021, they will dissolve the transitional government established in the wake of the “Khartoum Spring”.
In the following year (2022), they promise, once again, to replay, before a weakened civil society, the comedy of “transition”. It was to end again in April 2023. But this time, the confrontation is no longer between a unified military power and civil society, but rather between two clans at the top.
There is Mohamed Daglo, known as Hemetti (the “little Mohamed”), born in 1974 in the remote western regions of the country. An uneducated teenager, he was a camel herder on the borders of Libya.
In 2003, in Darfur, a war broke out between the local ethnic groups and the Arabs supported by Khartoum. Hemetti first sided with the rebels, before moving opportunistically to the government camp.
He will then be a leader of the Janjaweed, terrible “demons on horseback” accused of cruelty and massacres… from which the “Rapid support forces” arose, a paramilitary group that became an “army within the army”, co-instigator of the current confrontation.
At the same time, Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, born in 1960 on the banks of the Nile, was also around. Originally, unlike Hemetti, from the northern elite, al-Burhane was trained militarily in Egypt. He will keep to this day close ties with the regime of putschist Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, in power since 2013.
One state, two armies: this is the root of the current confrontation.
If al-Burhane embodies institutional continuity, the economic dominance of the military and the traditional alliance with Egypt, Hemetti, with his distinct origins, also has a very different material base and support.
This mercenary leader got his hands on a large number of gold mines, with which the country is well endowed. These looted riches allowed him to swell his numbers, to allow them, with 100,000 well-equipped fighters, to challenge the official army.
His stolen gold bars transited to Russia and the United Arab Emirates: it is not surprising to find in his entourage friends of the Wagner militia, who passed through Libya: a “Russian network” including the secretary of American state said last week “very worried”.
Once again, citizens in revolt against a dictatorship see their revolution confiscated by the shenanigans and rivalries of an over-armed elite.