The Week UK: Sudan coup: what has happened and why?

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Sudan coup: what has happened and why?
Apr 11, 2019
President Omar al-Bashir ousted after months of protests but demonstrators oppose planned military takeover

         
     
          
     
     

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Protesters waving Sudanese flag on a military vehicle near army headquarters in Khartoum

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has been forced out of office and placed under house arrest, the country’s military has confirmed.
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Minister of Defence Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf said on Sudanese state television today that Bashir - who has led the country since 1989 - is being kept under guard at the presidential palace, along with “a number of leaders of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood group”.

Thousands of protesters calling for the ousting of the 75-year-old president and his autocratic government have been camped outside the Sudanese army headquarters in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, since Saturday, Sky News reports.

The demonstration is the latest a series of public protests across Sudan, and seems to have been the tipping point for military leaders facing growing opposition from within the armed forces to the Bashir regime.

The protests sprang out of domestic frustration over corruption and unemployment, but the consequences of Bashir’s transgressions have strayed far beyond the borders of his country.
What has happened?

Sudan, one of Africa’s biggest and most strategically important countries, has been “paralysed” by months of protests against Bashir’s 30-year rule, The Guardian reports.

The demonstrations culminated in violent clashes this week between Sudanese security forces and the demonstrators in Khartoum. CNN reports that at least 22 people, including five soldiers, have been killed since Saturday, according to the Central Committee of Sudan Doctors.

Some protesters said the dead soldiers had been defending the sit-in.

On Thursday morning, two senior Sudanese officials claimed that the army had forced Bashir to step down, but refused to divulge further information.

Ibn Auf later confirmed in a highly anticipated statement that Bashir had been arrested and moved to a “safe place”, thought to be his palace.

The minister added that a “military council would be running the country for a two-year transitional period”.

However, leading activists have already said they “will not accept a military government”, citing the military’s lack of transparency and unclear allegiances, Al Jazeera reports.

The campaigners demanded that power instead be handed to a civilian government, as people who had been celebrating in the streets of Khartoum began “chanting against the defence minister, who they see as a holdover of Bashir’s regime”, CNN adds.
Why has this coup happened?

In the early years of Bashir’s reign, there were “pockets full of dollars as the oil flowed, controls were lifted and the telecommunications system revolutionised”, says the BBC.  But the economy has “floundered since the secession of the South, which took three-quarters of the country’s oil with it”, the broadcaster continues.

Unemployment, corruption and a rise in the cost of living eventually drove discontented Sudanese out onto the streets for the mass protests.

In his televised statement, Ibn Auf claimed it was clear that a coup had been coming “for a long time” after “examining what’s going on in the state and the corruption that is going on”.

“The poor are poorer and the rich are still rich and there are no equal chances for the same people,” he said.

Bashir’s regime has also faced growing opposition from outside Sudan.

Following the outbreak of violence in the Darfur region of the country in 2003, Bashir was condemned for his tacit support of the pro-government Arab-Sudanese militia Janjaweed, which murdered more than 300,000 non-Arab Sudanese living in the region and displaced a further 1.2 million.

In 2008, the International Criminal Court filed charges against Bashir for genocide and war crimes in Darfur. Yet repeated attempts to bring him to justice proved unsuccessful, and he subsequently won re-election in 2010 and 2015.

However, his last victory was marred by a boycott from the main opposition parties.
What could happen next?

Although the military is planning to install a transitional government for two years before holding elections, the protesters’ opposition makes the near future difficult to predict.

This week, the US, UK and Norway together spoke out in favour of a smooth regime change, saying that the “Sudanese authorities must now respond and deliver a credible plan for this political transition”. The three countries added that they “will support such a political process and in time could work to help resolve some of the long-term economic challenges that Sudan faces”.

Al Jazeera’s Abdelwahab El-Affendi argues that unless these “constructive gestures” are seized on by Sudanese authorities, “a supposedly ‘failed state’ will genuinely become the epitome of failure and disrepair, at a huge cost for its population, neighbours and the international community”.

For now, it appears that more unrest is coming. The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), an umbrella group of doctors, lawyers and other activists organising the demonstrations, has “called on citizens across the capital and regions around the country to converge on the army headquarters for more protests”, CNN reports.

“The regime has conducted a military coup to reproduce the same faces and entities that our great people have revolted against,” the SPA said in a statement.

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