South Sudan’s Kiir in talks with SPLM-N over attacks in Sudan's South Kordofan and Blue Nile states

Report from Sudan Tribune - sudantribune.com
Published on Thursday 20 July 2023 - here is a full copy:

Sudan’s Kiir in talks with SPLM-N over South Kordofan attacks

July 20, 2023 (JUBA) – South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir is in talks with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) leaders following reports of resumption of hostilities in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, an aide said.

The presidential advisor on national security, Tut Gatluak Manime told Sudan Tribune on Thursday that Kiir discussed with SPLM-N leaders prospects for peace and the need to cease military hostilities in the two areas and the whole of Sudan.

“The president has been engaging different leaders who participated and signed the Juba Peace agreement, including those who did not sign it to update them on his regional activities and his efforts to solicit their views on the comprehensive approach following his participation in the recent summit of the heads of state and government from countries sharing direct borders with Sudan”, he explained.

A supporter of the SPLM-N faction led by Abdel Aziz Adam Al-Hilu claimed they do not attack territories held by Sudan armed forces, but are trying to provide protection to areas under their control to avoid what happens in Darfur, where civilians and civil settlements as used shields by armed groups fighting each other.

“The SPLM-N is the people’s movement and it has the right and responsibilities to protect lives and properties of the people under its control. This is what is happening in South Kordofan and Blue Nile areas.  As far as I know, the SPLA-N gallant forces do not carry out attacks. They don’t attack government-held territories, they are protecting our own legitimate territory”, the supporter who preferred anonymity owing to the sensitivity of the matter, told Sudan Tribune.

The SPLM-N and the Sudanese government had previously signed an agreement to halt hostilities, allowing humanitarian aid access to the region from Sudanese territory and enabling people’s movement to and from SPLM-controlled areas.

Since July 15, the SPLA-N led by al-Hilu resumed military operations in areas neighbouring the cities of Dilling and Kadugli, amid calls for cessation of hostilities.

On Wednesday, South Sudanese government expressed deep regret over the recent resumption of the SPLM-N attacks in the South Kordofan state of Sudan, raising concerns about potential repercussions on the stability of the region.

In an interview with Sudan Tribune, Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation minister, Deng Dau Malek said he was dismayed over the renewed hostilities in the two areas, calling on “all parties concerned” to immediately halt military operations and focus on maintaining peace, security and stability of the region.

The SPLM-N, which has been fighting the government in the South Kordofan and the Blue Nile states, also known as Two Areas, since June 2011, split in 2017 into two factions, one is led by Abdel-Aziz al-Hilu and the other is led by Malik Agar.

The split within the rebel movement was a result of differences over a number of organisational matters as well as the position to adopt in the peace talks.

Al-Hilu who was the deputy chairman blamed the negotiating team led by Yasir Arman for ignoring the demand of the Nuba Mountains for self-determination.

However, during the last round of talks in February 2018, the government of Sudan and al-Hilu faction of SPLM-N failed to reach a cessation of hostilities agreement.

In 2020, the SPLM-N signed a Declaration of Principles (DoP) with the Sudanese government. The DoP affirmed the need to recognize and accommodate the different racial, ethnic, religious and cultural diversities in the country. (ST) 

Image: South Sudan's President Salva Kiir (Getty)

View original: https://sudantribune.com/article275310/

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Agar pleads with SA to intervene in Sudan conflict, calls for international assistance for internal peace

Report from SABC News (South African Broadcasting Corporation)

Published Saturday 15 July 2023, 1:32 PM - here is a full copy:

Sudan’s Vice President calls for international assistance for internal peace

Image: Reuters

Sudanese Transitional Military Council, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo meets leader of Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North, Malik Agar in Juba

The Vice President of Sudan Malik Agar says the international community must assist Sudan to achieve peace. Agar believes that Sudan’s problems are more internal than external.

The ceasefires have failed to yield results, and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has now announced that his country will bring the warring factions together.

Speaking exclusively to SABC, Agar, who is in South Africa for consultations with government officials, has called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to redouble his efforts at the African Union to bring peace to that country.

Vice President Malik Agar pleads with SA to intervene in Sudan conflict:

This week, the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres issued a warning that Sudan has reached a crisis in relation to the escalating conflict in that country.

Agar goes on to describe how peace agreements are being dishonored, which leads to a vicious cycle of violence, as well as how Sudanese diversity is mismanaged. He says there is a lack of a social justice policy, which leads to regional disparities.

The Vice-President acknowledges the presence of foreign elements interfering in Sudan, with diverse objectives such as economics, security, reinvestment, and military interests. He says that the protracted conflict will force the Sudanese people to reconsider their country’s management and reclaim power.

View original: https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/sudans-vice-president-calls-for-international-assistance-for-internal-peace/

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Why Sudan’s coup leader Gen Burhan risked a blatant power grab - Who can trust him to keep his word?

NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor:  Here below is a copy of Professor Dr. Alex de Waal’s latest Sudan coup analysis, published at BBC NEWS in the early hours of Wed 27 Oct 2021. British-born Alex (pictured below) is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the US. 

If you zoom in on the photo of Alex you can see some of the books are about Sudan and South Sudan. The large grey book with the title MASS STARVATION printed in a white circle is one of his many published works. This is not the most flattering photo available online. I have chosen it because it conveys some of the weariness and exhaustion he must feel after the miles of serious papers he has read during his lifetime. The deeply sad and difficult subjects he studies and writes about are, I believe, succeeding in making an important contribution towards world peace. 

The twitter account of World Peace Foundation @WorldPeaceFdtn is at: https://twitter.com/WorldPeaceFdtn

A list of published works by Alex de Waal is at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_de_Waal

IMAGE, Professor Dr. Alex de Waal. IMAGE SOURCE, World Peace Foundation, Tufts University: 

https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2018/05/14/new-video-alex-de-waal-on-mass-starvation/

Sudan coup: Why the army is gambling with the future

Analysis at BBC NEWS online

By ALEX DE WAAL

Africa analyst

Published Wednesday 27 October 2021

Sudan's coup leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has taken a leap into the dark. 

He has endangered Sudan's international standing as a nascent democracy, imperilled essential debt relief and international aid, and jeopardised peace with rebels in Darfur and the Nuba Mountains.

He was head of Sudan's Sovereign Council and the face of the army in the country's civilian-military cohabitation - until Monday, when he seized complete power.

He dissolved the country's civilian cabinet, arresting Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and other prominent civilians with whom the military had agreed to share power until elections were held next year.

The general's autocratic ambitions were no secret.

Over the last months, he showed impatience with Mr Hamdok's leadership, signalling that a strong ruler was needed to save the nation.

At a recent military-backed demonstration in the capital, Khartoum, protesters blamed Mr Hamdok for deteriorating living conditions - not helped by a blockade at the main port in the east which has led to shortages.

Sudanese democrats were alert to the army's stratagems, which seemed to be copied from the playbook that led to Abdul Fatah al-Sisi's military takeover in Egypt in 2013.

The Sudan Professionals Association and the multitude of neighbourhood committees that had orchestrated the non-violent protests which brought down the 30-year rule of President Omar al-Bashir in 2019 prepared for a new round of street demonstrations.

IMAGE: Source EPA. Caption, Protestors are determined not to allow the army to steal the revolution that saw Omar al-Bashir ousted in 2019

Foreign diplomats were also worried. US Special Envoy Jeffrey Feldman visited Khartoum at the weekend to press for agreement between the generals and the civilians. He left the city on Sunday with - he thought - a pact agreed.

The coup was staged hours later, leaving the Americans not only dismayed but outraged.

Making it clear that they had been deceived, the US administration has "paused" a $700m (£508m) financial assistance package.

An even bigger issue is the status of Sudan's debt relief package, recently negotiated by Mr Hamdok.

After two years of painful delays, international aid to salvage Sudan's economy was finally in prospect - and is now in jeopardy.

The African Union (AU), the United Nations, the East African regional body Igad and all of Sudan's Western donors have condemned the coup and called for a return to civilian rule.

The Arab League has also called for the constitutional formula to be respected. The grouping is usually in step with the Egyptian government, raising the question of how much Gen Burhan can count on the backing of Cairo.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which provided crucial financial aid to Gen Burhan in 2019, have stayed silent so far.

Their sympathies probably lie with the army strongman, but they will also know they cannot cover the costs of bailing out Sudan.

Gen Burhan was already the most powerful man in the country, his role legitimised by the August 2019 power-sharing deal between the military and the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), a loose coalition of civilian groups.

So why would he risk it all on a blatant power grab?

Commercial empires

According to that agreement, Gen Burhan was due to step down as chairman of the Sovereign Council next month.

At that point, a civilian chosen by the FFC would become the head of state, and the civilians in government would be better placed to push ahead with implementing key items on their agenda.

“Not only was the army commanding a vast share of the national budget, but military-owned companies operate with tax exemptions and often alleged corrupt contracting procedures" 

- Alex de Waal, Africa analyst

IMAGE: Source, GETTY

One is accountability for human rights violations. The government is committed in principle to handing over ex-President Bashir to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

His former lieutenants - including Gen Burhan and leader of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces Gen Mohamed Hamdan "Hemeti" Dagolo - wanted him to be tried in Sudan and not in The Hague.

They have good reason to fear that Bashir will name them as culprits in the alleged atrocities meted out during the Darfur war.

Gen Burhan and his fellow officers have even more reason to fear that investigation into the massacre in Khartoum in June 2019 would also point the finger of blame in their direction.

It took place two months after Bashir's removal by the army, when peaceful protesters were calling for civilian rule.

Tackling corruption and implementing security sector reform were other agenda items that worried the generals.

Take the cumbersomely named "Commission for Dismantling the June 30 1989 Regime, Removal of Empowerment and Corruption, and Recovering Public Funds."

This was not only exposing and uprooting the network of companies owned by the Islamists forced out of power in 2019, but also the tentacles of the commercial empires owned by senior generals.

Mr Hamdok had become increasingly outspoken in his criticism of the military entanglement in the economy.

Not only was the army commanding a vast - and still-increasing - share of the national budget, but military-owned companies operate with tax exemptions and often allegedly corrupt contracting procedures.

Placing the army under proper civilian control was also a priority for the next stage of the transitional period.

Risk of rebel action

Gen Burhan is claiming he is keeping the transition to democracy on track - and has promised a technocratic civilian government and elections in two years.

Most Sudanese see this as an unconvincing façade.

The crackdown has dissolved the key trade unions and professional groups that organised the previous street protests. Internet and social media are largely shut down. Troops have fired on protesters, reportedly killing 10.

VIDEO: Media Caption, Demonstrators take to the streets of Khartoum to protest against the arrests

Street activists have overcome such clampdowns before and forced the army to back down, most notably in the aftermath of the June 2019 killings.

The generals must also face the reality that the civil war in parts of the country is not over.

A peace agreement last year brought several armed opposition groups into government - but no deal was yet reached with the biggest two rebel forces.

IMAGE: Source, AFP. Caption, Gen Burhan (L) and civilian PM Hamdok (R) were part of a power-sharing administration

In Darfur there is the Sudan Liberation Movement headed by Abdel Wahid al-Nur, and in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan there is the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North, led by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu.

Both command popular support and have shown military resilience. Both were in peace talks with the government and had confidence in Mr Hamdok. The coup threatens renewed conflict.

With his unconstitutional seizure of power, Gen Burhan has taken a huge gamble.

He is offering no answers to Sudan's most pressing issues - the economy, democratisation and peace - and is risking turmoil and bloodshed at home and pariah status abroad.

In July 2019, following the army's violent crackdown on the democracy movement, the "quartet" of the US, the UK, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, working hand-in-glove with the AU, stepped in to press for a negotiated solution - which followed the next month.

A similar process may be needed to bring Sudan back from the brink. The problem is, after Monday, who can trust Gen Burhan to keep his word?

Alex de Waal is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the US.

More on the Sudan coup:

• IN PICTURES: Sudan coup protesters take to streets
• EXPLAINER: Sudan coup: What you need to know
• ANALYSIS: Sounding the alarm for Sudan’s democracy

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Source - BBC NEWS, view original at:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-59050473

Sudan's PM Hamdok, detained after coup, is home

NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor:  Although I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the following report, I am posting it here because it provides some details about Sudan's Prime Minister Hamdok and his wife. Sadly, I have not found any reliable news about Mr Hamdok's cabinet colleagues, their current whereabouts and how they are being treated. I am reluctant to post this report here today but am confident that Mr Hamdok and his wife have been released safely. Reportedly, they were abducted and detained at the home of Sudan's coup leader Gen. Burhan. More on this at a later date.   

Photo, Sudan's head of the military Gen Abdel-Fattah Burhan speaks during a press conference at the General Command of the Armed Forces in Khartoum, Sudan, Tuesday, Oct 26, 2021. (AP Photo/Marwan Ali)

Sudan’s prime minister, detained after coup, returns home

Report at Fox17 dot com 

Written by SAMY MAGDY, Associated Press (AP) 

Published Wednesday 27 October 2021 

Sudan's deposed prime minister and his wife were allowed to return home Tuesday, a day after they were detained when the military seized power in a coup, according to a statement issued by his office.

The release of Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok and his wife followed international condemnation of the coup and calls for the military to release all the government officials who were detained when Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan seized power on Monday.

The statement by Hamdok's office said other government officials remained in detention, their locations unknown. The deposed prime minister and his wife were under "heavy security" at home in the upscale Kafouri neighborhood of the capital Khartoum, said a military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media. The official did not say whether they were free to leave or make calls.

Earlier in the day, Burhan said Hamdok had been held for his own safety and would be released. But he warned that other members of the dissolved government could face trial as protests against the putsch continued in the streets.

View full report plus 14 photos here:  https://fox17.com/news/nation-world/sudans-prime-minister-detained-after-coup-returns-home

In Sudan, Hemedti leads the fray (Gérard Prunier)

• In reality, it is Hemedti, the brutal and cunning general who organised the harsh crackdown in Khartoum last June, who wields the real power in Sudan, writes Gerard Prunier
• After arresting Bashir, Hemedti became vice-president of the Transitional Military Council and was effectively its real boss
• The RSF's military and technical equipment in fact come from the United Arab Emirates
• The overthrown regime seemed to embody all the mistakes of the past. Read full story:

In Sudan, General Hemedti leads the fray
Analysis from The New Arab - www.alaraby.co.uk

Dated 5 February 2020

By Gérard Prunier (Former chief of the Centre français des études éthiopiennes in Addis-Abeba, member of the Centre d’études des mondes africains of Paris and author of several articles and books on Sudan)

Since the overthrow and arrest of President Omar al-Bashir on 10 April last year, there has been a fragile cohabitation between civil society and the semi-privatised "armed forces". 

Indeed Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok, who represents the civilian side of the set-up, told a visiting US congressional delegation in Khartoum in January that "the civil-military partnership in Sudan could serve as a model for other countries." 

The idea, far from just being a piece of triumphalist braggadocio, raises the question of what has been going on in Sudan in recent months.

A return to civil society

After 25 years of dictatorship, the Islamist regime in Khartoum had nothing more to offer than further failures and mounting corruption. The economic crash was the last straw. In 2018, the price of a kilo of lentils went up by 225 percent, rice by 169 percent, bread 300 percent, and fuel 30 percent. 

There was no cooking gas, or even running water. At the same time, the 2018 budget of Sudanese pounds (SDG) 173 bn (about $27 bn) allocated nearly SDG 24 bn to the military and security sectors, but only just over SDG 5 bn to education and less than SDG 3 bn to health.

Civil society responded to this descent into hell with a spontaneous mobilisation whose roots went back to October 2012, and which now gathered momentum. Workers' groups began setting up professional organisations.

Today there are 17 of them, federated under the umbrella Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA). This clandestine unionism operated with an organisational rigour worthy of the pre-1917 Leninists, but without any particular ideology apart from an embryonic democratism and a rejection of violence.

The slogan "Silmiyya!" (Peaceful!) was to become the rallying cry of the protestors. Political parties which had become more or less forgotten under the 30 years of military-Islamic dictatorship regained at least a little strength, brought together in the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC).

Despite its extraordinary popularity, this democratic movement had three weak points: it was very urban in nature, it grouped essentially the Awlad al-Beled (the Arabs of the central provinces), and apart from the trade unionists of the SPA, it was very divided.

A general backed by the UAE

The situation at the beginning of 2019 was thus somewhat special. The Islamic-military regime was no longer Islamic, and the regular army had been set into competition with paramilitary forces which had become autonomous when then-President Bashir deployed them into overseas conflicts. The dispatch to Yemen of the "volunteers" of the Rapid Support Force (RSF) by their commander, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Daglo aka Hemedti, was crucial.

After arresting Bashir, Hemedti became vice-president of the Transitional Military Council and was effectively its real boss, rather than its official president, Gen. Abdel Fatah Abderrahman Burhan. Significantly, these volunteers are better armed than Burhan's regular army. The RSF's military and technical equipment in fact come from the United Arab Emirates.

Cunning, brutal and intelligent, if little educated, Hemedti became a millionaire through the "muscular" exploitation of the gold mines in western Sudan. He was the Janjaweed militia chief in Darfur, where he committed massive violence before overthrowing President Bashir, who saw him as his protector. 

Hence the ambiguity of the situation: was this a military coup d'état, or a democratic revolution? 

The popular uprising was a mixture of jamboree, open-ended political forum and social solidarity display. Everybody was looking after children - there are lots of them - women were everywhere, and the people came to the capital from afar. The basic slogans: "Silmiya!" (Peaceful!), "Hurriya!" (Freedom!), "Thawra!" (Revolution!), "Didd al-haramiyya!" (Down with the thieves!) and "Madaniyya!" (Civilian!). 

A camp, a festival, a space for joy and celebration, the sit-in was essentially revolutionary.

But while some soldiers were fraternising with the crowd, others, especially in the provinces, were killing or injuring the supporters of change. Those who opened fire on the demonstrators were not soldiers of the regular army, the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), which was doing its best to protect them. It was either mercenaries of the RSF who came from Darfur, or an operations unit of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) - the secret services, set up by Salah Gosh.

The uprising in Darfur had already destroyed the image of a "homogenous nation" led by a radical version of Islam, and had exposed the reality of a mafia regime which had deviated into illegal commerce during its dream petrol period between 1999 and 2011.

The "deep state" created by the Islamists had established itself as the ideological - and financial - flipside of a Sudan which had become phoney. For many in Sudan, the events of 2019 were an occasion to go back over developments since independence in 1956. Everything was brought out in the popular debates: the "civil war" with the disparate South, the coups, the empty rhetoric of a democracy lived in fits and starts, Islamism as the magic solution, the colonialism of the centre over all the outlying areas.

Even Arabism did not escape criticism. In this amazing thirst for demystification, the overthrown regime seemed to embody all the mistakes of the past.

Symptoms of the nostalgic revolution

This "nostalgic revolution" has been very ill understood by the international community. There are, of course, parallels with the various "Arab springs" - the same hostility to dictatorship, the same aspiration to democracy, but with no illusions about political Islam, which aroused obvious hostility among the protestors, no doubt because of Sudan's ethnic heterogeneity.

The killer General Hemedti hails from the outlying Darfur area and he has rallied to the RSF flag many soldiers straying from the wars of the Sahel-Chadians, Nigerians, Central Africans, and even some Boko Haram deserters.

He does not harbour hostility to Islam because it is too much part of Sudanese culture to be rejected. But the Islamists who prefer the Islamist "deep state" to their Sudanese homeland have lost control of the population. That is why the attempt by the Saudis and the UAE to preserve an Islamist regime without the Muslim Brotherhood has little chance of success.

Clean up at the NISS barracks

The UAE leader, Sheikh Mohammad Bin Zayed (MBZ), realised this more swiftly than his Saudi "allies", as indeed did General Hemedti. When on 14 January semi-demobilised elements of the NISS mutinied in two of the barracks where they were cooling their heels, Hemedti's reaction was immediate: his men attacked the barracks, and fighting went on late into the night. 

The mutineers had just learned that their operations unit, which was involved in racketeering, kidnapping and illegal taxation, had been disbanded.

The NISS groups got the worst of it, and their dead were written off. But the General had to make a trip to Abu Dhabi to explain to MBZ precisely what he was up to. He may be the UAE's ally in Sudan, but he is far from being a passive tool in the region, as MBZ realised when Hemedti declined to send reinforcements to Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar in Libya, stalled outside Tripoli without being able to take the city. 

The Emiratis were reduced to recruiting "security guards" through small ads using Black Shield Security Services, a UAE front company.

Another example of the Darfur General's autonomy came on 11 January, when groups linked to the Islamist "deep state" tried to organise antigovernment demonstrations at Wad Madani, in central Sudan. Hemedti did nothing to help them, and they had to pay unemployed agricultural workers to swell their ranks.  

So was Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok justified in portraying civil-military relations in Sudan as a model to the Americans? Half. By "military" one means Hemedti, because the regular army no longer controls the situation, either politically or militarily. When there were negotiations in Juba with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (a guerrilla faction which still exists in Kordofan, in the south of Sudan), it was Hemedti who took charge of the talks and won SPLM-North agreement to a framework accord which may be ratified on 14 February.

PM accused of sluggishness

Under the power-sharing agreement signed in Khartoum on 5 July last year, there will be no elections until 2021, and those involved in the current transition will not be allowed to stand. 

PM Abdallah Hamdok is certainly doing what he can. But he is doing it at a pace which is irritatingly slow for a population which had struggled with astonishing determination until June 2019. He has only just dismissed the foreign minister, whose incompetence was a drag on Sudanese diplomacy, resurgent after 30 years of paralysis and corruption.

It remains for the World Bank to be begged for aid which the Americans continue to block on the basis of sanctions imposed earlier on the Islamist regime, and which are now obsolete.

Hemedti appears to maintain correct, but not warm, relations with the prime minister. He has talked to old political parties such as the Ummah of Sadeq al-Mahdi, and more discreetly with others. His men are involved in distributing free food and medicine. Nowadays he recruits his soldiers not just from his native Darfur, but also from among the Awlad al-Beled, the inhabitants of the country's central Nile Valley regions.

What about the people of Darfur, whose relatives he may have massacred? They are queueing up outside his offices in Khartoum. "At least he's someone we know, we know how to handle him. And it would be nice to have one of our own in the presidency, after having been colonised." 

How far will the camel trader turned militia chief go? 

People may object to his lack of education, and to his non-Sudanese origins, but that has not prevented him becoming a key player on the national and regional scenes.

Gerard Prunier is a French academic and historian specialising in the Horn of Africa.

This article was originally published by our partners Orient XXI. 

Join the conversation: @The_NewArab

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.

Read more: How revolutionaries took over Sudan's neighbourhood committees

View Original: https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2020/2/5/in-sudan-general-hemedti-leads-the-fray