Can Sudan Achieve Peace and Democratic Transition? (Dame Rosalind Marsden)

Article from Chatham House, UK

Written by DAME ROSALIND MARSDEN

Associate Fellow, Africa Programme

Dated 09 August 2019

Can Sudan Achieve Peace and Democratic Transition?

• Sudan has a unique opportunity to embrace democratic transition but there is no room for complacency
• Comprehensive reforms and a united democratic front will be key to achieving peace, freedom and justice, as will continued international pressure

Photo: Sudanese demonstrators in Khartoum celebrate a hard-won transitional agreement on 4 August 2019. The agreement provides for a joint civilian-military body to oversee a civilian government and parliament for a three year transition period. Photo: Getty Images.

A compromise agreement

After more than seven months of peaceful pro-democracy protests, leading to the fall of former President Omar al Bashir’s regime in April, Sudan’s Transitional Military Council (TMC) and the opposition coalition of the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) agreed on 4 August to form a civilian-led transitional government, paving the way for democratic transition. 

The agreement is a step forward but still leaves considerable power in the hands of the military. Given the power imbalance between the military and unarmed civilians, the FFC concluded that a compromise was needed in order to establish a transitional government, however imperfect, so that civilians could push their reform agenda from inside government and avoid a political vacuum. Such a vacuum could leave room for counter-revolutionary coups or escalating violence by Sudan’s many security forces.

The TMC realized the limits of its power when its attempt to halt the revolution with a brutal crackdown on 3 June backfired, sparking international outrage. Defiant protestors continued to demonstrate, with many Sudanese determined to sustain the revolution and the FFC able to mobilize mass support.

Strong African and international pressure for the rapid formation of a civilian-led transitional authority, US/UK diplomatic intervention with the TMC’s backers, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt, and a coup attempt by counter-revolutionary Islamist forces may all have persuaded the TMC that they had to strike a deal with the pro-democracy movement.

Will Sudan have a genuinely civilian-led transitional government?

Mediated by the African Union and Ethiopia, the deal provides for a transitional period of three years and three months to prepare for national elections in 2022. During this period, the government will be composed of three transitional bodies: a joint military/civilian Sovereign Council acting as a collective head of state, with six civilian and five military members; a civilian prime minister and Cabinet of technocrats; and a Legislative Council to be formed within 90 days.

The constitutional declaration initialled on 4 August builds on a power-sharing deal agreed in July and details the powers and responsibilities of the three bodies. A signing ceremony is expected to be held on 17 August with the members of the new government to be announced shortly afterwards.

Some opposition forces have criticized the agreement for being too weak, particularly as the military will chair the Sovereign Council for the first 21 months and will be able to veto its decisions. FFC negotiators point to gains made in the constitutional declaration, such as confirmation that the FFC will have 67 per cent of the seats in the Legislative Council, the increasingly powerful RSF Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia will come under army control and government officials will not enjoy blanket immunity from prosecution.

But political dynamics will matter more than pieces of paper. The unity of FFC forces has been strained by the negotiation process, continuing street violence and internal bickering. If civilian authority is to prevail, the FFC will need to create a united political front.

Ending Sudan’s internal wars

While civilian rule and civic rights are the main demands of protestors in urban areas, Sudanese living in conflict zones attach more importance to achieving peace and ending the marginalization of Sudan’s peripheries.

The armed movements in the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), which fought for years against Bashir’s regime, have stressed that peace and democratization must go hand in hand if the revolution is to enable people in the peripheries to become equal citizens and take full part in national elections – putting an end to long-established forms of governance which favoured a privileged political elite in Khartoum.

The constitutional declaration recognizes that achieving a comprehensive peace settlement should be the first priority for the transitional period and includes a peace agenda developed with the SRF.

However, the SRF are calling for the constitutional declaration to be amended before it is signed so that formation of the transitional government can be calibrated with the peace talks. Solutions will also have to be found for the armed movements who remain outside the agreement.

Other challenges facing the new transitional government

The incoming transitional government will face huge challenges, including strong public pressure for justice and accountability, especially for the 3 June massacre, and a national economy in collapse that will require immediate stabilization and fundamental structural reforms.

The biggest challenge facing the government will be dismantling the Islamist deep state created over thirty years by the former regime, which took control of all state institutions and key sectors of the economy, including hundreds of businesses owned by the military-security apparatus.

Key to dismantling the deep state will be the implementation of a comprehensive programme of security sector reform aimed at establishing a professional and inclusive national army and reducing the power of the intelligence service.

Much will depend on whether it is possible to control the RSF by reducing its funding from the Gulf states and the gold trade, as well as containing the political ambitions of its commander, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemeti), who will be an influential figure during the transition.

Recruiting from Chad and Niger as well as from the Janjaweed Arab militia in Darfur, the RSF is an ill-disciplined transboundary militia, which could destabilize Sudan as well as the wider region. As a first step, the RSF should be withdrawn from all law enforcement activities across Sudan.

Another challenge will be to ensure proper representation of youth and women in the new governance structures. These groups were the driving force of the revolution but have been largely excluded from FFC decision-making bodies. Including these new social forces and other marginalized groups in the political process will be crucial if Sudan is to transform established patterns of power and privilege. 

Robust support for security sector reform, as well as political and economic restructuring should be prioritized by the international community if there is to be any prospect of democratic transition, development and stability. Given its size and strategic geopolitical position, the stakes in Sudan and for the wider region are high.

With its vibrant civil society, plural political environment and new social forces, Sudan has a unique opportunity to embrace democratic transition and equal citizenship. If this opening is wasted, the country could be plunged into further chaos or revert to military dictatorship. 

View original article here:  https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/can-sudan-achieve-peace-and-democratic-transition

Gulf states are mapping Khartoum’s future

Article from Chatham House, UK

Written by MOHAMED EL AASSAR

Senior Journalist at BBC Monitoring’s Middle East and North Africa team

Dated 29 July 2019

Gulf states are mapping Khartoum’s future

Fate of power sharing deal in Sudan rests in the hands of wealthy donors

Photo:  Sudanese deputy head of the Transitional Military Council, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo

Since Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese leader, was forced to step down in April by pro-democracy street protesters, the governing Transitional Military Council has received strong backing from the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Bashir and Saudi Arabia have a long and tangled history. For many years, the two were sworn enemies. But since 2014, Saudi Arabia has co-opted Bashir to remove him from Iran’s sphere of influence. Money flowed in and Saudi lobbying helped remove United States sanctions on Sudan. Iranian cultural, medical and military facilities were closed and diplomats expelled.

In 2015, Sudanese troops joined the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Similarly, the UAE wanted to ‘turn’ Bashir from his Islamist roots, and thus deprive its long-term enemy the Muslim Brotherhood of a safe haven in Khartoum.

All this changed earlier this year. As the street protests began to threaten Bashir’s grip on power, the Saudis and Emiratis started to look to a post-Bashir world.

Despite the Gulf monarchies’ known aversion to Arab uprisings, Saudi and UAE media were uncharacteristically upbeat in their coverage of Bashir’s overthrow – in many cases even appearing to support the protest movement.

This contrasted with Gulf rival Qatar’s Al Jazeera, which depicted the crisis as a conflict between military and civilian rule, and warned of a ‘coup’ against Bashir.

This didn’t help the Sudanese president, however. A past master at playing Gulf rivals off against each other, this time he had suddenly lost his touch.

After Bashir                                                                             

At the height of the protests he visited his long-time Qatari patron to ask for Doha’s money and backing. He returned empty-handed. For its part, the UAE reportedly refused to extend further support until he purged his administration of Islamists. Something he refused to do.

After the fall of Bashir, Saudi Arabia and the UAE announced a $3 billion aid package to meet Sudan’s most pressing needs. At about the same time, Sudanese media were gripped by the return of Major- General Taha Othman al-Hussein to Khartoum. Once Bashir’s chief of staff, he had fallen out with his former boss and turned up in Riyadh as a Saudi royal adviser.

He returned to Khartoum at the head of an Emirati delegation. It is widely believed that he was the architect of Sudan’s participation in the Yemen conflict, having overseen the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as part of his earlier role at the presidency.

As well as playing a much-feared security enforcement role in Sudan, the RSF also provides the main component of the Sudanese forces fighting in the Saudi-led coalition against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The Sudanese are posted at Yemen’s volatile border with Saudi, have fought in battles for control of Yemen’s west coast and provide security in cities in the coalition-controlled south.

The Yemeni rebels call them ‘mercenaries’ and ‘Janjaweed’ – the latter a reference to the RSF’s role in laying waste to Darfur in the early 2000s.

The Sudanese media don’t like them much either. They too refer to the forces as Janjaweed and accuse them of terrorizing civilians and carrying out ‘barbaric and brutal assaults’ against peaceful protesters.

Their leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who is also known as Hemeti, is loathed by the opposition. Facebook groups have branded him ‘a devil’ and the RSF the ‘Rapist Savage Forces’.

A former camel trader turned military leader, he was described by the influential pro-opposition website Dabanga as a man who has ‘never entered a military college, even for a single day, never trained or attended any military course, and never achieved any academic or any military awards’.

When Hemeti recently boasted about the large Sudanese contingent in the coalition in Yemen, another opposition website questioned why the lives of 30,000 Sudanese were being put at risk in a war in which Sudan has neither ‘a camel nor a mule at stake’. A column in the privately owned Sudanese newspaper Al-Jaridah said the Sudanese military ‘do not represent us and are not authorized to speak in our name when they say that Sudanese soldiers will remain in Yemen’.

Hemeti’s central role in the Transitional Military Council (TMC) and the violent dispersal of protests have not helped improve the military’s popularity. In April, videos circulated on social media depicted the Sudanese army ‘protecting’ the demonstrators outside military headquarters in Khartoum. Now the media make little reference to Sudan’s armed forces.

Saudi changes tack                                                              

As negotiations between the opposition and the military leaders stalled, the Saudis shifted tactics.

Their media prominently featured veteran Sudanese opposition figure Sadiq al-Mahdi, who was calling for compromise between the opposition and the military.

Saudi-owned, Dubai-based Al Arabiya TV tried to present itself as an objective observer. It gave equal air time to opposition and pro-TMC voices and regularly hosted representatives of the Sudanese Professionals Association, the group that had spearheaded the protests.

To their credit, Al Arabiya’s Sudanese reporters regularly reframe loaded questions by anchors and question TMC accusations against the protest movement in their live two-ways.

In July, the military and the opposition finally signed an agreement on a joint sovereign council that will rule during a transitional period.

Whether or not this compromise deal holds, Sudan’s future will continue to be heavily influenced by Gulf rivalries – backed by huge amounts of Gulf cash.

AUTHOR: Mohamed El Aassar is a Senior Journalist at BBC Monitoring’s Middle East and North Africa team

SOURCE: https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/twt/gulf-states-are-mapping-khartoum-s-future

£18M UK aid for South Sudan’s humanitarian catastrophe: 7M need aid, 2M on brink of famine

SOUTH SUDAN is a humanitarian catastrophe and vulnerable people face the daily threat of starvation.  There are currently 7 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and nearly 2 million people on the brink of famine in South Sudan, where food insecurity is at its worst level in the past 8 years.  Hundreds of thousands of people in South Sudan will receive lifesaving food and water thanks to new UK aid. 

Press Release

From UK Department for International Development (DFID)

Dated Wednesday 14 August 2019

UK aid to provide vital food to hundreds of thousands of people living on the edge of famine in South Sudan 

LONDON, United Kingdom, August 14, 2019/APO Group/ -- Minister for Africa, Andrew Stephenson announced an extra £18 million of UK aid on his first visit in his new role, which will be given to trusted partners to help vulnerable families in desperate need.

There are currently 7 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and nearly 2 million people on the brink of famine in South Sudan, where food insecurity is at its worst level in the past 8 years.

Minister Stephenson called on the Government of South Sudan and other parties involved in the conflict to stop obstructing the delivery of aid and step up efforts to help the millions of malnourished children, families and communities get access to vital supplies.

He also called on the Government to accelerate progress on the peace process, including security sector reform, establishing an open dialogue with opposition leader Riek Machar and delivering on the $100 million they pledged to help achieve peace.

Minister for Africa, Andrew Stephenson said:

South Sudan is a humanitarian catastrophe and vulnerable people face the daily threat of starvation.

I have seen first-hand that UK aid is saving lives and today’s step up in support will deliver urgently needed food, water and health services to hundreds of thousands of people.

We call on the Government of South Sudan to immediately lift all humanitarian access restrictions and to commit more resources to provide basic services such as health and education to give people hope for the future.

With just three months until the formation of the transitional government, time is running out. Significant effort and compromise are required to fully implement the peace agreement.

While in South Sudan, Minister Stephenson visited the World Food Programme’s warehouse in Juba to see first-hand how UK aid is helping save the lives of people who have fled conflict.

He also visited the Juba Protection of Civilian’s camp to learn about the key challenges of displacement in the country, as well as meeting with British soldiers deployed to the UN Peacekeeping mission there.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Department for International Development (DFID).

SOURCE:  https://www.africa-newsroom.com/press/uk-aid-to-provide-vital-food-to-hundreds-of-thousands-of-people-living-on-the-edge-of-famine-in-south-sudan?lang=en

Kiir, UK Minister for Africa Andrew Stephenson discuss implementation of South Sudan peace accord

Article from and by Sudan Tribune

Published Wednesday 14 August 2019

Kiir, British minister discuss implementation of peace accord

August 13, 2019 (JUBA) - South Sudan’s President, Salva Kiir and the British Foreign Office Minister for Africa, Andrew Stephenson on Tuesday to discuss the implementation of the 2018 peace accord.

The British Foreign Office Minister for Africa, Andrew Stephenson shaking hands with President Salva Kiir in Juba, August 13, 2019 (PPU)

The meeting took place in the South Sudanese capital, Juba.

The two leaders, president’s office said, discussed several issues, including the progress in the implementation of the revitalized peace deal and strengthening bilateral ties between the two nations.

"Andrew reiterated the United Kingdom’s commitment towards supporting the government and the people of South Sudan in achieving lasting peace and development for the country," partly reads the statement from the presidency.

Stephenson is expected to meet other senior government officials and also visit British-funded projects in the world’s youngest nation.

Last month, the Troika, of which Britain is a member alongside Norway and United State, called for immediate implementation of South Sudan’s peace agreement signed in September last year.

The Troika, in a statement issued, also reaffirmed their full commitment to the peace process in the war-hit East African nation.

South Sudan plunged into civil war in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused the country’s former vice-president, Riek Machar, of plotting a coup.

In September last year, however, South Sudan’s arch-rivals signed a revitalized peace agreement to end the country’s civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 2 million.

The country’s rival parties, in May, agreed on a six-month extension to implement next steps in the fragile peace agreement. The latest extension came after the main opposition group threatened to boycott formation of a unity government on May 12.

Visit original article here: http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article67936

Russia’s secretive military operations on rise in Africa

Article by and from AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY

Dated Wednesday 14 August 2019 

Russia’s secretive military operations on the rise in Africa

Private Russian military and security operations in Africa are on the increase with little of this being researched or making news headlines.

However, a new report by CNN which took a month to complete said a Russian tycoon by the name of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close confidant of President Vladimir Putin, has been instrumental in the growth of Russian private security operations on the continent.

According to the US, Prigozhin has helped fund the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company based in Saint Petersburg, which allegedly participated in the Kremlin’s efforts to meddle in the 2016 US presidential election.

CNN claims that Prigozhin is also connected with PMC Wagner, a Russian security contractor with presence on the ground in Syria and eastern Ukraine.

But it’s the Russian maverick’s reputed military actions in Africa that have been highlighted, including in Sudan, Libya and the Central African Republic (CAR), as he attempts to recoup financial losses in Syria and eastern Ukraine.

He has allegedly played a major role in many of Russia’s 20 military agreements with African states where he provides security and weapons training on behalf of Moscow.

“In return, his group of companies, headed by a firm called Concord, receives exploration permits and the rights to exploit precious metals found throughout Africa,” said CNN which sent correspondents to the CAR where they found that a radio station and a major military training base are run by a group of 250 Russian contractors.

None of the contractors would say who paid them although one claimed to be the security adviser for CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadéra. 

View original article at: https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/russias-secretive-military-operations-on-the-rise-in-africa-2019-08-14

Haftar, Hemeti, and a Canadian lobbyist's Libyan connection - Russia moves in on Sudan, Eritrea, Egypt

Middle East Eye.net looked through public documents showing how a former Israeli intelligence officer lobbying for Sudan's military council became a major player in war-torn Libya.  Sudanese fighters have reportedly arrived in Libya, an idea first floated by lobbyists in May.  Full story here below.

Sudanese fighters have reportedly arrived in Libya, an idea first floated by lobbyists in May (AFP)

Article by Middle East Eye.net

Written by Kaamil Ahmed

Published date: 02 August 2019 11:58 UTC

Haftar, Hemeti, and a Canadian lobbyist's Libyan connection

Last week, around 1,000 members of Sudan’s notorious Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were reported to have arrived in eastern Libya, joining the ranks of Khalifa Haftar's self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) which is waging war against the country's UN-recognised government in Tripoli.

Their arrival, which was reported by Radio Dabanga, a Dutch-based broadcaster run by Sudanese exiles, coincided with Haftar's declaration of an imminent "victory" as his forces amass on the outskirts of the Libyan capital.

According to Radio Dabanga, the RSF members will be deployed to protect oil facilities in Haftar-controlled eastern Libya in order to allow him to concentrate his fighters for an assault on Tripoli. It said the number of RSF fighters in Libya could rise to 4,000 in the next few months.

Al Jazeera also reported that documents from Haftar’s backers in the United Arab Emirates showed orders to transport Sudanese fighters to Libya through Eritrea.

The RSF is a paramilitary force led by Mohammed Hamdan Dagolo, the deputy head of Sudan's ruling military council commonly known as Hemeti, and has played a leading role, according to opposition activists, in a deadly crackdown on protesters in Sudan since the beginning of June.

The movement of fighters has confirmed the fears of those Sudanese protesters about becoming entangled in more regional conflicts since the prospect of RSF fighters - who have already been deployed to Yemen as part of of the Saudi-led coalition - going to Libya was first floated in a lobbying deal made public in June. 

According to documents signed by Hemeti on behalf of the military council in May, and recently published in public listings in the US, the transfer of troops to support the LNA in Libya was proposed as part of a $6m deal between Sudan's military rulers and Dickens and Madson, a Canadian lobbying firm which also has links to Haftar and a record of past dealings in Libya.

The other signatory to the deal was Ari Ben-Menashe, the founder of Dickens and Madson and a Tehran-born former Israeli intelligence officer whose eventful career has included being arrested and put on trial in the US in 1989 for allegedly trying to sell weapons to Iran.

He was acquitted after a New York jury accepted that he had been acting on orders from Israel, according to a profile of Ben-Menashe in Canada's National Post.

Among other lobbying activities, the deal said that Dickens and Madson would "strive to obtain funding for your [Sudan's] Council from the Eastern Libyan Military Command in exchange for your military help to the LNA".

When contacted by Middle East Eye this week, Ben-Menashe said that the "exchange" proposed in the agreement had yet to take place and described it as a possibility only once a civilian prime minister was installed in Sudan.

Libyan 'Wild West'

View lobbying deal doc here: https://www.docdroid.net/ppjGNsQ/sudan-military-council-lobbying-deal.pdf

But the agreement, disclosed under the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) which requires organisations representing the interests of foreign powers to declare these ties publicly, fits a pattern of dealings involving Libya and Ben-Menashe's lobbying firm.

Other documents available through the online FARA registry show that since the end of Muammar Gaddafi’s three-decade rule in 2011, Ben-Menashe’s organisation has provided public relations and lobbying services to several Libyan groups, including Haftar's LNA.

The latest agreement with Sudan is Dickens and Madson's fourth deal linked to Libya, where the organisation has had a particular focus on the eastern part of the country.

Dickens and Madson has offered clients services that range from polishing their image and forging diplomatic links to facilitating oil sales and bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance - in a turbulent Libyan context some observers have called a "Wild West" for lobbying firms.

Since Gaddafi was killed in October 2011, eight months into an uprising against his autocratic rule, Libya has been torn apart by competing claims to leadership between numerous factions.

The two most prominent bodies claiming power have been the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA), based in Tripoli, and Haftar’s LNA forces and accompanying House of Representatives government.

Haftar became a client of Dickens and Madson in 2015, according to a FARA filing which lists him and others including the House of Representatives as the "foreign principal" for a $6m deal in which the Canadian firm promised to lobby for recognition and favour in the US and Russia, but also vowed to “strive... to obtain” $500m in military assistance from Moscow. 

The goal, the document said, was to get international governments to recognise and help the House of Representative in its purported goal to “restore peace and order to the Republic of Libya”.

Ben-Menashe told MEE that he had not officially represented the House of Representatives since their deal expired earlier this year. He said he did not try to renew it after Haftar's assault on Tripoli began, which he claimed he had tried to prevent.

But he said he remained in contact with Haftar, and had tried to broker a meeting for him with Fayez al-Sarraj, the prime minister of the GNA in Tripoli who he said he had met in Tunisia and Malta.

"In spite of the fact that we didn’t have this contract [with Haftar anymore] we were requested to help as we know all the sides of the conflict," Ben-Menashe said. "The issue of uniting the two sides had been part of our work for three or four years."

'There has to be a unifying force'

Haftar, who has been backed by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia, has controlled the dominant military force in eastern Libya since launching a campaign against Islamist militant groups around Benghazi in 2014.

But his forces have been accused of human rights abuses and war crimes. Last month, Haftar promoted a commander who is the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over the alleged execution-style killing of prisoners in 2016 and 2017.

In May, Amnesty International accused the LNA of possible war crimes for bombarding civilian neighbourhoods in Tripoli.

Speaking to the BBC in July, Ben-Menashe credited Haftar and the House of Representatives with bringing stability to eastern Libya.

“We’ve represented the House of Representatives and I think there’s stability in eastern Libya - much more stable than it was before and we helped bring that about,” he said.

“What Mr Haftar did in Tripoli, that’s a different story. There has to be a unifying force and Mr Haftar got backing from different governments as well.”

Photo: Ari Ben Menashe in Zimbabwe, where he previously represented former President Robert Mugabe (AFP)

While Haftar has been Dickens and Madson's most prominent Libyan patron, Ben-Menashe has also continued to represent another Libyan client - the Unified Libya Movement (ULM) - about which there is limited public information.

The ULM is registered under a Tripoli address and stated in FARA filings that it was “supervised by Libya’s GNC [General National Congress] government”. Created in 2012, the GNC was Libya's transitional legislative authority for two years, before officially dissolving in 2016.

In a 2014 deal previously reported on by MEE, Ben-Menashe’s firm promised to deliver aid, financing and political support to the ULM to help “establish a stable social and political environment for building an inclusive, independent national government for a prosperous sovereign and unitary Libya”.

Speaking to MEE at the time, Ben-Menashe said that his clients were not all necessarily aligned with the GNC.

“Our clients are a group of people [Libyans] who want to bring everybody [from the GNC and House of Representatives] together and start a new legislative body,” he said. “Some [of the clients] are people who were in the GNC and some are still in the GNC.”

In the FARA filing after the deal with the ULM was struck, Dickens and Madson said it could not name the individuals they were representing because it "may place them at physical risk".

Working for the US government

In a 2017 report filed with FARA on the firm’s activity for foreign interests - which at the time consisted of only two Libyan clients, Haftar and the ULM - Dickens and Madson said it had meetings outside the US with individuals “who might in turn have some influence with respect to the position of the United States regarding the establishment of governing structures in Libya”.

The firm also said in the report that it had been working on behalf of the US government.

"Those activities taking place in the United States were undertaken on behalf of the government of the United States in pursuit of policies of the United States, not on behalf of the foreign principals to influence such policies," the report read.

Neither Haftar nor the ULM were Ben-Menashe’s first clients in Libya. 

In 2013, he agreed a $2m deal with the eastern Libya-based Cyrenaica Transitional Council (CTC) and an allied militia leader, Ibrahim Jathran, shortly after they had taken control of eastern Libya’s oil export ports, which they held until they were driven out by Haftar three years later.

The CTC had announced the creation of its own federal government that same year, and Ben-Menashe’s firm promised to seek recognition for its authority.

The deal said Dickens and Madson would work towards obtaining $75m in military aid from Russia and help find sellers and transport for the plentiful oil supplies in eastern Libya, despite opposition from the GNC in Tripoli. 

But that deal quickly fell apart, and in October 2014 Dickens and Madson reported to FARA that no work had been done for the client and no money received.

A month later, Ben-Menashe's firm began its work with the ULM. The following year, Dickens and Madson also started working with Haftar, who by then was at war with Jathran, his first client.

'We really thought we could help'

Ben-Menashe told MEE that he had made at least 20 trips to Libya over the course of his work there for Dickens and Madson and reiterated that the company had helped to stabilise the east of the country.

Under former US President Barack Obama, Ben-Menashe said he had advocated for the eastern government to run Libya instead of the UN-backed Sarraj, who he had viewed as a bad choice.

"We really thought we could help," he said. "We were successful in the east, we helped stabilise the east, we helped do everything."

While he said he no longer worked with Haftar, who he described as "impatient", Ben-Menashe said he remained active in Libya, and was also working with the Gaddafi clan and the minority Amazigh community to build a consensus for a unified Libya.

Dickens and Madson is just one among several western lobbying firms who have identified business opportunities in the continuing instability in Libya since the 2011 revolution, according to experts.

"It's like the Wild West," Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow with the Washington DC-based Atlantic Council and former CIA analyst, told MEE.

“As we say here: there’s gold on those hills. There’s money to be made in eastern Libya for those who take the risk. 

“Just as someone’s willing to sell weapons, someone’s going to be willing to do the PR. There are a lot of bottom-feeders out there.”

Ahmed Gatnash, a co-founder of the Kawaakibi Foundation, which works to promote liberal values in the Arab and Muslim world, said the trend for Middle Eastern powers to hire lobbyists, even beyond Libya, might not do much to increase their standing with the US or other foreign powers but could indirectly impact the public’s view of diplomacy. 

“They kind of show the populace that their politicians are potentially buyable,” he said.

"Even if the lobbying firms don’t do something, it fuels a kind of despair that the world is for sale, democracies are easily corruptible. Why would anyone back democracy in Libya when it can easily be bought?"

More than a dozen parties and factions in Libya have struck deals with US-based lobbying firms since 2011, according to FARA documents. Most of them have focused on strengthening relations between the client and the US government, or polishing their public image.

Both Haftar and the UN-backed GNA have signed new lobbying deals even since the LNA assault on Tripoli began. Donald Trump spoke to Haftar in a telephone call in April, in which a White House spokesperson said the US president had recognised Haftar's "significant role in fighting terrorism and securing Libya’s oil resources".

In May, Haftar’s LNA signed a deal with Houston-based Linden Government Solutions for “assisting in relations between the US government and Client, international coalition building, and general public relations”.

The GNA sought similar assurances from New York-based Mercury Public Affairs.

Sudan's military sidesteps protesters with lobbying and ralliesRead More »

SOURCE: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/haftar-hemeti-and-lobbyists-libya-connection

Hat tip: @KaamilAhmed https://twitter.com/KaamilAhmed and @Eric Reeves https://twitter.com/sudanreeves/status/1157271162482765824

Further Reading

1,000 of Sudan RSF fighters deployed to warlord Haftar's Libya offensive

REPORTEDLY, four thousand members of Sudan’s notorious RSF militia are thought to be deployed to protect Haftar’s oil resources during the offensive on Libya's capital Tripoli.

Sudan Watch - Thursday, August 01, 2019

https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2019/08/1000-of-sudan-rsf-fighters-deployed-to.html

Sudan militia chief Hemeti hires Canadian lobbying group for $6m to influence US, Russia, Saudia Arabia, UN, AU, Libya in favour of TMC

Article from The Financial Times.com

Sudan Watch - Tuesday, July 02, 2019

https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2019/07/sudan-militia-chief-hemeti-hires.html

Russia Moves in on Africa: Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan

REPORTEDLY, three months before the coup last April in Sudan, a 'draft military agreement' was signed between Moscow and Sudan. 

Gatestone Institute - Tuesday, August 13, 2019
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14714/russia-sudan