- There is scepticism about whether military leaders will really give Omar al-Bashir up to the courts
- Seeing Omar al-Bashir on trial in The Hague would be a signal that the revolution can endure
- Mr Hamdok lacks the two things he needs most: power and money. He is beholden to the military men he is quietly trying to nudge aside, who decide what finance he can access and what laws he can pass
From The Financial Times - www.ft.com
Opinion Editorial by DAVID PILLING
Published Wednesday 12 February 2020
Title: Sudan’s revolutionaries need help to avoid the ‘Myanmar trap’
The peaceful revolution that overthrew Sudan’s dictator Omar al-Bashir last April was one of the most uplifting if under-appreciated events of 2019. This year, it has all but slipped off the international radar screen.
At a time when democracy is under pressure globally, millions of ordinary Sudanese took to the streets for months to demand the end of a dictatorship that had ground their faces in the dirt for 30 years. This was the purest expression of a popular pushback against autocracy that has shaken leaderships around the world, from Algeria to Hong Kong. Now its revolution is under threat.
The country is bogged down in a perilously long three-and-half-year transition to full democracy. People are frustrated with long fuel lines and a dwindling economy. The only things upwardly mobile in Sudan these days are prices. With Mr Bashir gone, the one element that united a cacophony of opposition voices and rebel groups has disappeared into a small cell.
Worse, civilian leaders now find themselves sharing power with the very military men they rose up against. Some are calling it the “Myanmar trap”, a reference to another revolution that ousted one military regime only to see it replaced by another — albeit one camouflaged by the once-flattering form of Aung San Suu Kyi. The comparison with Egypt is also apt. There, people toppled one autocracy only to see another rise up in its place.
In Sudan, the civilian nominally in charge is not a world-famous former political prisoner but rather a quiet technocrat. Abdalla Hamdok, 64, commands respect on the Sudanese streets, where he is seen as an honest broker. But that support could quickly trickle away.
Mr Hamdok lacks the two things he needs most: power and money. He is beholden to the military men he is quietly trying to nudge aside, who decide what finance he can access and what laws he can pass.
Despite these constraints, some things have been achieved. Mr Hamdok managed to repeal a draconian public order law that controlled how women dressed and behaved in public. Many Islamists have been purged.
This week, there was another good sign. The government intimated it might allow Mr Bashir to stand trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur, levelled by the International Criminal Court. There is rightly scepticism about whether military leaders — implicated in the same events — will really give him up.
It is possible that Mr Bashir’s trial will take place in Khartoum, and not The Hague, in some sort of compromise. Even then, the risk for Sudan’s military leaders is that his testimony could expose their own complicity.
If Mr Bashir does stand trial, it would send a powerful signal that — against all the odds — Sudan’s revolution really can just about hold. Justice for Mr Bashir could be part of a broader effort at international re-engagement aimed at removing Sudan from Washington’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. Unless progress is made on that, Khartoum has no hope of writing off $60bn in past debts, or of unlocking essential new finance.
This month, General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, head of the 11-member sovereign council that runs the country, set tongues wagging by holding a previously unthinkable meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. If that was a sign Sudan is prepared to break with Arab orthodoxy, Gen Burhan will be able to press home his point when he visits Washington in coming weeks.
Something may be afoot. No removal from the state sponsor of terrorism list is possible until Sudan pays compensation to relatives of those killed in attacks allegedly organised from Khartoum. Those include 17 US sailors killed and 39 injured in a 2000 attack on the USS Cole, as well as 200 people killed in 1998 explosions outside US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
For a whole generation of western officials, Sudan equates to genocide and terrorism. Now the country has a chance to change that perception. Yet without outside help, including financial, the risk is that its democratic experiment will slip backwards. In the age of President Donald Trump, it has no obvious champion in Washington. Nor do Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states currently propping up Sudan have much interest in seeing a vibrant democracy take hold.
Sudan’s revolution is still alive, but it can be crushed at any time. After decades of dictatorship, institutions are weak. The military and the Islamists are waiting for their chance. With encouragement from outside, Sudan could yet surprise everyone by installing genuine democracy. Without it, the path of Egypt or Myanmar beckons.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2020. All rights reserved.
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