Sudan’s Progress Stagnates
The U.S. has not traditionally really loved these guys, but with the chaos in Ethiopia, there’s the question of how much instability is the U.S. willing to risk.
Foreignpolicy.com
Colm Quinn
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, on Monday to renew calls for civilian rule as the uneasy coalition of military and civilian leaders at the helm of the country’s transitional government begins to buckle.
Thursday’s protests, which were reported to have numbered in the hundreds of thousands, can be seen as a show of force following an attempted coup a month before and a pro-military sit-in in front of the presidential palace in Khartoum.
Elections for a new government are supposed to take place in late 2022, but those on the streets aren’t the only ones to decide that. “There’s a growing sense that the military and security services would like to see the elections indefinitely postponed,” Alden Young, a Sudan expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Foreign Policy.
Alongside the obvious power of highly trained men with guns, military leaders also exercise control over key areas of the country’s economy. Many of Sudan’s gold mines, for example, are controlled by the Rapid Support Forces, a militia led by the governing sovereignty council’s deputy chairperson, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemeti.
“This is not how any country’s economy should run, but this was how the kleptocracy of [former Sudanese President Omar] al-Bashir ran, and it’s very difficult to undo that,” Eric Reeves, a Sudan expert at Smith College, told Foreign Policy. What makes matters worse, Reeves said, is military leaders “know absolutely nothing about economics.”
That military’s control also extends to foreign policy. While Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, a civilian, was reluctant to sign an agreement normalizing ties with Israel, the military’s support for the deal eventually won out.
Regionally, the civilian-military divide can create mixed signals. Hamdok, who spent part of his career in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is seen as more sympathetic to the neighboring country and its mega-project, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, while Sudan’s military leaders, following the lead of their Egyptian allies, were staunchly opposed.
Although the United States has applied some rhetorical pressure to speed the transition, including a call this week for disparate military groups to consolidate into one entity, it has so far kept other tools, such as sanctions, off the table.
That balancing act may be down to a desire to keep problems in the region from multiplying, especially with Ethiopia’s Tigray People’s Liberation Front conflict dragging into its second year. The U.S. position shouldn’t be considered an endorsement of future military rule in Sudan, Young said, considering the human rights record of those same leaders the United States has railed against in the past.
“The U.S. has not traditionally really loved these guys, but with the chaos in Ethiopia, there’s the question of how much instability is the U.S. willing to risk,” Young said. “Ethiopia used to be a partner in the region for peacekeeping and for stability operations. Is Sudan now looking like a potential replacement?”
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