Sudanese Pound hits record lows against world currencies - Committee to investigate El Fakhir

The rate of the Sudanese Pound (SDG) is trading at all-time lows on the streets of Khartoum. There is no end in sight for the ongoing economic malaise in the country – largely a legacy of the corruption and mismanagement by the deposed Al Bashir regime – that has led to unrelenting price hikes for consumer goods, and widespread shortages of bare essentials such as bread. Read more.

Sudanese Pound hits record lows against world currencies

Report from and by Radio Dabanga.org

Dated Thursday 27 February 2020

Photo: A man waits for his money at currency exchange brokerage in Khartoum (Photo: ASHRAF SHAZLY / AFP)

(KHARTOUM) - On Wednesday [Feb 26], traders in Khartoum were asking SDG 107 for one US Dollar (USD) the highest cost for the greenback to date. By comparison, today’s official daily middle US Dollar rate quoted by the Central Bank of Sudan (CBoS) is SDG 54.63.

According to dealers who spoke to Radio Dabanga, Pound Sterling (GBP) reached SDG 136.74 on the parallel market, while the price of the Euro reached SDG 114.48. Saudi Riyal (SAR) reached SDG 28.26 on, while the Emirati Dirham (AED) reached SDG 29.04, and the Qatari Riyal (QAR) trades for SDG 29.07.

The head of the Flour and Fuel Distribution Unit in South Darfur announced that the quantities of flour available in the state do not exceed 3,000 50 kg sacks, which is not enough for a day.

He attributed this to the departure of three of the five companies that supplied flour to the state.

In a meeting with the flour distribution mechanism on Tuesday, the acting governor of the state, Maj Gen Hashim Khaled, harshly criticised the mechanism for not notifying him earlier of the seriousness and exacerbation of the state’s bread flour crisis.

Rising commodity prices

Members of the Sudanese Professionals Association of the Ministry of Finance in Kassala accused the state government of causing the price of 50 kg bag of sugar to rise from SDG 1,850 ($33.86*) to SDG 3,100 ($56.74).

In a statement, she stated that the state’s Ministry of Finance has sold a large amount of subsidised sugar, estimated at 32,000 sacks to merchants, expecting increase in sugar prices due to this procedure and demanded the governor of the state to direct the return of the sugar sold to the merchants immediately so that it can go to the target citizen in the specified manner and the specified price, threatening to follow the legal means to return it.

They also demanded the formation of an investigation committee to find out those responsible administratively for this administrative corruption that occurred and hold them accountable immediately.

As reported by Radio Dabanga on February 13, Sudan’s Minister of Industry and Trade Madani Abbas, has apologised to the Sudanese people for the lack of a solution to the bread shortage. He affirmed the state’s commitment to continue subsidising bread until the end of the transitional period. The government currently subsidises a sack of flour by more than SDG 1,600 ($30).

Economists

In recent days, independent economic experts have cited the instability of the Dollar exchange rate and subsidies as major factors in Sudan’s economic crisis.

In an interview with Radio Dabanga, Professor Hamid Eltigani, economist and Head of the Department of Public Policy and Administration at the American University in Cairo.

He describes the economic situation as “dangerous”. He warns against “an explosion in the country” in case the economic crisis is not dealt with. He calls for a gradual lifting of subsidies on petrol and diesel, and normalisation of the exchange rate between the Sudanese Pound and the US Dollar.

In an interview with Radio Dabanga this week, former banker and civil society activist Hafiz Ismail, who is a leading member of the Sudanese panel of experts, says that “the current economic crisis is attributable to the lack of vision and the absence of an economic plan to manage the crisis”.

Ismail warns of economic collapse in the country due to the rapid deterioration in value of the Sudanese Pound “around the clock”. He expressed concern that the economic failure would “neutralise the public towards the government and increase the growing rejectionist trend“.

The analyst told Radio Dabanga that the Sudanese economy suffers from two distortions, namely commodity subsidy and multiple [Central Bank of Sudan, customs, and unofficial] exchange rates, and calls “for the development of policies to mitigate harm to the most affected groups through social security networks in preparation for the lifting of subsidies”.

In a separate interview with Radio Dabanga, Professor Hamid Eltigani, economist and Head of the Department of Public Policy and Administration at the American University in Cairo.

He describes the economic situation as “dangerous”. He warns against “an explosion in the country” in case the economic crisis is not dealt with. He calls for a gradual lifting of subsidies on petrol and diesel, and normalisation of the exchange rate between the Sudanese Pound and the US Dollar.

* USD 1 = SDG 54.63 at the time of publishing this article. As effective foreign exchange rates can vary in Sudan, Radio Dabanga bases all SDG currency conversions on the daily middle US Dollar rate quoted by the Central Bank of Sudan (CBoS).

View Original: https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/sudanese-pound-hits-record-lows-against-hard-currencies

NEWS HEADLINES

March 8 - 2020 KHARTOUM

Sudan: FFC, SSC and the cabinet working together to address the economic crisis
Further, the committee is authorised to form a fact-finding committee to investigate the El Fakhir company, which is reportedly monopolising the gold market in the country with large amounts of cash and the purchase of gold at unreasonable prices.

March 7 - 2020 KHARTOUM

Sudan’s sorghum production one third less than last year

March 7 - 2020 SIRBA

Gold mining to continue in West Darfur’s Sirba

March 6 - 2020 KHARTOUM

Sudan Finance Minister apologises for govt's inability to curb inflation

March 6 - 2020 ZALINGEI / TURR

Violence in Central Darfur: Five people killed, two injured, police station torched

March 5 - 2020 KHARTOUM

Activists criticise Sudan’s committee tasked with purging remnants of old regime

March 5 - 2020 KHARTOUM

Sudanese Pound hits new low as US Dollar and gold prices soar

Sudan: Economist: Plunging Sudanese Pound leading to economic collapse

A leading economic analyst has called for a programme to stabilise commodity prices and the US Dollar exchange rate in Sudan, warning of economic collapse and loss of public confidence in the transitional government. Read more.

Economist: Plunging Sudanese Pound leading to economic collapse

Report from Radio Dabanga.org

Dated Tuesday 25 February 2020

Former banker and civil society activist Hafiz Ismail, who is a leading member of the Sudanese panel of experts, says in a new interview with Radio Dabanga, that “the current economic crisis is attributable to the lack of vision and the absence of an economic plan to manage the crisis”.

Ismail warns of economic collapse in the country due to the rapid deterioration in value of the Sudanese Pound “around the clock”. He expressed concern that the economic failure would “neutralise the public towards the government and increase the growing rejectionist trend”.

The analyst told Radio Dabanga that the Sudanese economy suffers from two distortions, namely commodity subsidy and multiple [Central Bank of Sudan, customs, and unofficial] exchange rates, and calls “for the development of policies to mitigate harm to the most affected groups through social security networks in preparation for the lifting of subsidies”.

Ismail expressed concern that social security in Sudan is being obstructed by what he described “a corruption machine”, and stressed the need to start fighting corruption, while identifying clear mechanisms to implement the programme.

He calls for a unified currency exchange rate to curb the accelerating deterioration of the Pound. He called on the government to accelerate the changes of bank managements and the departments of Ministry of Finance at all levels, in addition to comprehensive tax reform to prevent tax evasion.

The former banker also stressed the need “to focus on investment in agriculture as a sustainable resource”, and “the need for the state to dominate the gold sector as a public resource, legalise prospecting, and allocate 50 per cent of production to the state with an appropriate proportion to be allocated to exploration areas”.

As reported by Radio Dabanga on February 9, Sudan’s Anti-Corruption Committee has dissolved the administrative board of the Central Bank of Sudan (CBoS) and 11 other banks and dismissed nine bank managers with alleged links to the deposed Al Bashir regime. The decision also dissolves nine administrative boards of directors of corporations, and removal of a number of directors of other institutions.

Sudan’s Anti-Corruption Committee (The Empowerment Elimination, Anti-Corruption, and Funds Recovery Committee) has issued a decision to form sub-committees in all states to be chaired by the governor of each state.

View Original: https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/economist-plunging-sudanese-pound-leading-to-economic-collapse

Sudan: Bread subsidy to continue during the transition - 1 person killed by security forces in Kosti

BBC News report by Mary Harper,

Africa editor, BBC World Service

Dated Wednesday 12 February 2020

Sudan: Bread subsidy to continue

Sudan says it will continue to subsidise the price of bread during the transition period.

Trade Minister Madani Abbas Madani said the country had sufficient wheat reserves to last until May.

On Tuesday, there were large protests in the capital, Khartoum, and other towns against shortages of bread and fuel.

There are reports that one person was killed by the security forces in the town of Kosti.

Demonstrations in 2018 about the rising cost of bread and other essentials escalated into the mass political protests that led to the downfall of President Omar al-Bashir last April.

View Original: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cq23pdgvgm8t/sudan

South Sudan govt 'deliberately starving civilians' -UN

NOTE from Sudan Watch editor: The population of South Sudan is 11 million. The following report says more than half are in acute need of food. That is 5.5 million people! Although it is sickening to read such reports it is good to know that investigators are collecting evidence on individuals for eventual use in court. 

South Sudan government 'deliberately starving civilians'

Report from BBC 

By Mary Harper

Africa editor, BBC World Service

Dated 20 February 2020

A UN human rights investigation has accused the government of South Sudan and other armed groups of deliberately starving civilians.

Investigators found access to humanitarian aid and other basic services was intentionally blocked, leaving more than half the population in acute need of food.

They said millions of dollars of state money had been plundered by government officials, and that they were collecting evidence on individuals for eventual use in court.

Their report was published two days before a deadline to form a unity government. Previous efforts to broker peace have collapsed.

Source: BBC South Sudan topics: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/c302m85q54lt/south-sudan

South Sudan: De Mabior, Shearer discuss South Sudan’s IDPs return to home areas

NOTE from Sudan Watch editor: Further below is a copy of three amusing comments posted at the following report, love their way with words! 

Note, South Sudan's Vice President Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior is the widow of the late John Garang de Mabior, ex-rebel and short-lived president of South Sudan who was killed in a helicopter crash. It is good to see a woman helping to lead South Sudan. Ms Mabior is knowledgeable of Sudan's history. Read more about her at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Nyandeng_De_Mabior

De Mabior, Shearer discuss South Sudan’s IDPs return to home areas

Report from and by Sudan Tribune.com

Dated Saturday 29 February 2020 

(JUBA) - South Sudanese Vice President Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior and the head of the UN mission David Shearer discussed the situation of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Protection of Civilians (POC) sites.

There are 188528 IDPs in the POCs including 115,479 in Bentiu, 27,924 in Malakal, 29,948 in Juba, 1,934 in Bor, and 13,243 in Wau according to a report released on 26 February.

The meeting discussed the return of the IPDs in the POCs across the country, said De Mabior told reporters according to a statement issued by the presidency.

They "agreed to speed up the process of the returned of the IDPs before the start of the rainy season," further said the statement.

For his part, Shearer indicated that the meeting also discussed the preparation to face the global coronavirus outbreak.

The international official further stressed the UN readiness to support the government efforts to return the displaced people to their areas of origin.

De Mabior who was nominated by the FDs group is the Vice President for Gender and Youth.

COMMENTS

29 FEBRUARY 10:04, BY jubaone 

Great, ensure that all jienge settlers, idlers, drifters and brigands in and

around Nimule get out and return to their ancestral lands. Feace has

come and visitation time is over. Our fellow Madis and Acholis want to

return to their places but still can’t do that as long as jienges are still

squatting and spreading filth in these areas. Peace4Land.

29 FEBRUARY 11:51, BY Eastern 

jubaone,

That’s an excellent advisory...Now that feace ’has come’, jenge from Bor,

Garang’s backyard, should think of home. The ir perennial fear of the

murle is misplaced.

FEBRUARY 11:51, BY Trouble 

Juba Kara, who r u crying to? And who will grant your request for Dinkas

to leave equatoria. Why don’t u equatoria try where’s your super powers

u claim just bark like dog. South Sudan is for all south Sudanese & any

one has right to live wherever they want stop this hate ya makako

View Original: https://sudantribune.com/spip.php?article69045

South Sudan: Machar 'feels like a prisoner' after deal - South Sudan split over who takes what ministry

Machar 'feels like a prisoner' after deal, says wife
Report from BBC News, Kampala

By Catherine Byaruhanga

Dated Wednesday 26 February 2020

Photo: President Salva Kiir (L) and his deputy Riek Machar have formed the unity government to end a long-running civil war

The wife of South Sudan’s newly sworn-in Vice-President Riek Machar says her husband feels "he is a prisoner".

Angelina Teny, who is herself a former government minister, told the BBC that restrictions put in place by the regional body, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad), on her husband’s travel within and outside South Sudan were still in place.

The restrictions were intended to stop the fighting and get Mr Machar to negotiate a peace deal. They also restrained him from speaking to the public or media.

Igad's Special Envoy for South Sudan Ismail Wais said the restrictions elapsed when Mr Machar took up his new role in the new unity government [ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-51562367 ] on Saturday.

But Ms Teny said Mr Machar's group had not received official communication to that effect. She said they were concerned that he could not fulfill his duties.

According to Ms Teny, her husband cannot freely travel around South Sudan and meet his supporters.

However, a spokesperson for President Salva Kiir denied the claim, adding that Mr Machar should hold the public meetings with the president as a show of unity.

View Original: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/c302m85q54lt/south-sudan
- - -

South Sudan split over who takes what ministry

Report from The East African - www.theeastafrican.co.ke

By Fred Oluoch

Dated Sunday 01 March 2020

The formation of the transitional government in South Sudan could be unduly delayed following disagreements over portfolio balance between President Salva Kiir and first Vice President Riek Machar.

Meetings in Juba on February 27 could not reach a compromise after Dr Machar’s Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO) complained that President Kiir’s side has not only taken all the key ministries, but has been offering ministries to other signatories without consultations.

President Kiir’s side wants to retain the Finance, Petroleum, Defence and Interior, and Foreign Affairs dockets.

James Oryema, the SPLM-IO representative in Kenya said that his movement is going to hold on to their position and that the formation of the transitional government of national unity (TGoNU) could take some time if the other side remains intransigence.

“We are demanding that four ministries be divided into two while claiming the Petroleum and Interior dockets then we can select the rest of the remaining seven ministries. These were the ministries we had in 2016,” said Mr Oryema.

According to the September 2018 agreement, the country is supposed to have 35 Cabinet ministers, with President Kiir’s SPLM in government getting 20 ministries, SPLM-IO nine ministries; South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA) three; and Former Detainees two and Other Political Parties one ministry each.

View Original: https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/ea/South-Sudan-split-over-who-takes-what-ministry/4552908-5473706-mgdj38z/index.html

South Sudan Trust is hoping to reverse the extinction of the Northern White Rhino

Bold expedition to find 'extinct' Northern White Rhino in war-ravaged South Sudan

Report from The Daily Mirror - www.mirror.co.uk

By Nicola Methven

Dated 25 February 2020, 22:26

South Sudan Trust is hoping to reverse the extinction of the Northern White Rhino. 

Locals have reported sightings and believe the 'biologically extinct' species could exist in the country. A one-hour BBC special, The Last Unicorn, will track the bold search

The BBC is hoping to find the “extinct” Northern White Rhino with a bold ­expedition to war-ravaged South Sudan in Africa.

Locals have reported sightings and believe the “biologically extinct” species could exist in the country.

The civil conflict has made it too dangerous to film there for years and the Northern White was declared extinct in 2018 when the last male died.

Only two females remain – both are too old to reproduce – and they live under armed protection in Kenya.

Doug Hope, executive producer for the BBC’s Natural History Unit, said: “It is a long shot, but there are rumours of them out there, and in a place that is so remote, so unexplored.

Photo: These are the last remaining female Northern White Rhinos - Najin and Fatou (Image: BBC)

“From what our sources are telling us, it remains prime rhino habitat, so surely there is still a chance? And until this search is carried out we can’t close the book on the Northern White Rhino.”

A one-hour special, The Last Unicorn, will track the journey of Paul Naden, of charity Saving the Survivors, cameraman Vianet Djenguet, vet Johan Marais and high security expert Aldo Kane.

BBC2 boss Patrick Holland said: “Natural World has always covered the most urgent stories in conservation and this project could not be more timely.”

Photo: Vianet with the last white rhinos (Image: BBC)

Hundreds of thousands of people were killed and millions displaced in South Sudan’s civil war, which began in 2013 and was declared ended this month.

Once classified as the most dangerous place on the planet, the country has no permanent roads, electricity, phone networks or internet.

Scientists are planning to flood the black market with fake rhino horns in an attempt to thwart poachers.

Photo: Sudan, the legendary male Northern White Rhino who died (Image: SWNS.com)

A timeline of decline

1907 The Northern White is officially identified as a distinct species of rhino.

1960 Estimated numbers of over 2,000 in the wild made them more abundant than the Southern White Rhino.

1970 The numbers of Northern White Rhinos have halved in the past decade and are declining at an alarming rate.

1975 The continued decline in the species sees a Czech zoo import five as a precautionary measure.

1981 The Northern White rhino is declared critically endangered.

1984 It is reported that only 15 known Northern White rhinos are left in the wild. This number rises to 31 but poaching continues to thwart conservation efforts.

2008 The last official sighting of the Northern White Rhino in the wild with just six remaining in zoos.

2009 Four rhinos are shipped from the Czech zoo to Ol Pejeta in Kenya where it is hoped their natural environment will encourage them to breed.

2015 With the remaining rhinos in zoos dying, only three remain in Kenya.
2018 The last male Northern White dies, with only two infertile females remaining. The species is declared functionally extinct.

To view a video click here: https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/bold-expedition-find-extinct-northern-21576298 

View Original: https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/bold-expedition-find-extinct-northern-21576298

South Sudan: Desert locusts reported in South Sudan

Getty Images

Desert locusts (Schistocerca gregaria) live in dry grasslands and deserts

Desert locusts reported in South Sudan

Catherine Byaruhanga

BBC News, Kampala

Dated 18 February 2020

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation in South Sudan has confirmed the first detection of desert locusts in the country since the latest upsurge in East Africa.

The swarm was sighted in Magwi County, in the south-east of the country, and is believed to have flown in from northern Uganda.

Read: How a single locust becomes a plague

Source BBC South Sudan topics: 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/c302m85q54lt/south-sudan

Sudan: Scepticism whether Bashir will be given to ICC (David Pilling)

• 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.

Follow David Pilling with myFT and on Twitter

Email david.pilling@ft.com

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2020. All rights reserved.

View Original: https://www.ft.com/content/b295bbe0-4d78-11ea-95a0-43d18ec715f5

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. 

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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.

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