Sudan’s clash of the titans

By Tony Okerafor

Geographically speaking, that is, the Sudan is Africa largest country. Its land mass is so huge that it shares a common border with each of twelve separate countries, ranging from the north to the east, to the south and the west of the continent. The Sudan, whose population is just over 35 million, is also oil-rich.

The country grained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1956. At the same time, it is a country endowed with a rare mix of black African tribes, most of whom can be found in the south of the country, and Magreb Arabs, who dominate the north. It’s mix has enabled the Sudan to be part of both the fifty-three-nation African Union, whose membership is predominantly Sub-Saharan Africans, and the twenty-two-member Arab League of Nations, nearly all of whose member-states are composed exclusively of the descendants of Biblical Ishmael.

These factors, and more, account for why the Sudan ranks as one of Africa’s most important countries. In the Sudan, the powerful armed forces plays a crucial part in politics, and have done, particularly since 1989, when the incumbent rulers of the north African country overthrew the elected government of Prime Minister Sadik Ah Mahdi. For anyone who may be concerned, or is it "surprised"?, that the Sudan has been capturing a great deal of international attention since the 1990’s, the answer is that the great nations of the Western World, China and Russia have been engaging themselves in what might be called a low-level battle for influence.

Added to that, various parts of the country have been embroiled in costly civil conflicts, especially since the 1980’s, whether in the south of the country, which started a war of succession in 1983, or in Darfur, in the west, where an ongoing conflict has killed 300,000 and injured twice that number of people since its eruption in February, 2003.

Nowadays, Darfur, and its seemingly intractable conflict, is the main reason Sudan has been in the international spotlight for over half a decade. Naturally, the man who has been at the helm of affairs for nearly two decades should receive all the flask and blake for the atrocities that the Sudanese military are said to have committed in Darfur, where 6 million people live, but, have also been left cowering and almost hopeless by a brutal war that has turned 2.7. million Darfuris, nearly half of its entire population, into internal refugees, internally displaced persons, as the United Nations calls them.

Omar Hassan Al Bashir, now in his seventies, is both the president of the Sudan and the commander-in-chief of the Sudanese armed forces. He’s also the head of the ruling National Congress Party, N.C.P. While it’s no longer news that, since March 4, he’s been an indictee of the International Criminal Court, or I.C.C., and now has an arrest warrant hanging round his neck on account of Darfur, the truth is: Mr. Al Bashir has actually been fighting for his political survival, and sometimes for his own life as well, from the very moment he took power in that military coup, twenty years ago, almost.

He’s come against all sorts of challenges, many of them very grave, from the United States and from practically every of Sudan’s immediate neighbours: from the Ugandans, the Egyptians, the Chadians, the Libyans and the Ethiopians.

But, in all these great political battles, both within and outside Sudan’s borders, very little attention has been paid by opinion writers, as well as political analysts and observers, to the real power struggle right inside the Khartoum political establishment between President Al Bashir and the man who used to be his mentor and spiritual head: Dr. Hassan Ah Turabi.

In South Sudan, where an autonomous government has been up and running since 2005, and in Darfur, where a legion of rebel armies are arrayed against the N.C.P.-led government of Sudan, you are not likely to find a shortage of political leaders who hate Mr. Bashir and make no secret of wanting to spill his blood. But, inside Khartoum’s political establishment, bitter voices of dissent are few and far between. On the question of whether Mr. Bashir should be handed over to the I.C.C. to face trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, not even the most powerful of southern-born politicians, who have been members of a unity government with the ruling N.C.P for nearly four years, have managed to find sufficient guts to rile the Sudanese strong man, let alone speak openly against the official stance of the government on the question of the I.C.C. indictment. Of course, the official line of the Khartoum government has been that the Sudan does not recognize the I.C.C.., nor does Mr. Bashir have to answer to anybody for whatever the military, or anyone else for that matter, has wroth in Darfur. According to the Khartoum government, the U.S., which is not even a signatory to the I.C.C., but behind the indictment of Mr. Bashir is using it as a pretext to bring about regime change; in other words, as a smoke screen to overthrow the government.

Officially, Khartoum, and Mr. Bashir himself, is demanding, not just urging, that the all-powerful United Nations Security Council, which also has the likes of Russia and China in its ranks as friends of Sudan", overrule the I.C.C. indictment altogether and make it a none-issue.

Within the ranks of Sudan’s power-sharing government, as well as the military, and even across the governments of the African Union, A.U., it’s been almost impossible to find a voice that has not towed Khartoum’s official line, at least in large part. Only one man has been up in arms against the government over Bashir’s indictment, and even imprisonment and ailing health have managed to deter him. That man is none other than the charismatic leader of Sudan’s main opposition party, Dr. Hassan Al Turabi, who used to be President Bashir’s spiritual father and political mentor.

In the decade-long face-off between the two most powerful men in Sudanese politics, the climax has now come. For sometime now, the storms have indeed been gathering, and they may yet rain elephants and hippos. Eight or ten years ago, it was a triumphant Omar hassan al Bashir, with the Western world supporting him, that emerged as the ultimate master, sending his new tormentor-in-chief, otherwise his former mentor, to jail.

This time around, the United States and its allies in Western Europe are openly calling for Mr., Bashir to be handed over to the I.C.C., the International Criminal Court, to stand trial for war crimes against humanity on account of what his troops in war-ravaged Darfur were ordered to do or not to do. Rarely, Dr. Hassan Al Turabi, whose intellectual soundness the likes of which Sudanese politics has not seen in decades, and America, Britain, France and Germany appear to be singing from the same hymn sheet.

Following President Bashir’s indictment by the judges of the Hague-based I.C.C. on March 4, Dr. Turabi has become the only real, big voice in the Khartoum political establishment to ask that President Bashir surrender to the Court or be arrested. Speaking to journalists in the capital, Dr. Turabi said Mr. Bashir’s hands had been stained with blood, and that justice required him to account. Sudan’s relation with the outside world was also at stake, he said.

One interesting thing about those remarks is that they came barely eight hours after the Sudanese authorities released Hassan Al Turabi from a two-month spell in prison for having expressed virtually the same views in early January, this year. At the time, the debate, both inside and outside Sudan had begun heating up, as to whether the I.C.C. should in fact grant the formal request of its chief prosecutor, Louis Morennio O’campo, for an arrest warrant to be issued against the Sudanese strong man. Outside Darfur itself, the generality of political opinion have argued that the arrest warrant was smokescreen to carry out a Western plot for a regime change in Khartoum and that the warrant must not be taken seriously.

Around the world, especially with regard to the Arab world and Africa, most governments have publicly spoken in favour of at least a deferment of the indictment, in order not to a jeopardize the peace process on Darfur, which the Qataris have been brokering, and the C.P.A., the peace agreement on Southern Sudan which has allowed the S.P.L.M., the region’s former rebel movement, to join Mr. Bashir’s northern-based N.C.P., National Congress Party, to operate an autonomous government in the south, as well take part in a government of national unity with the N.C.P in Khartoum.

Well, the consensus among political observers in Sudan is that Hassan Al Turabi now has his former protégé by the scruff of the neck, and may yet be able to strangulate him if he so chooses. But, a brief trip down memory lane will help the reader understand better how and why the two central figures in the so-called revolution of 1989 have become such blood-thirsty foes. Their rivalry dates back to the earlier years of the N.I.F government, the National Islamic Front, which was created by General Bashir, with Al Turabi as mentor and spiritual head, in conjunction with top leaders in the Sudanese military. They complained that the government of their elected predecessor, Prime Minister Sadik Al Mahdi, was not only inherently corrupt, but, was also making a harsh of things in its prosecution of the secessionist conflict in southern Sudan.

On the surface, everything seemed to be going according to plans. Everyone, it seemed, had agreed that Sharia Law would be introduced throughout the country, and even if officials didn’t say so publicly, it was clear that the N.I.F government, whose real king-maker was Al Turabi had chosen to align itself with extremist (Islamic) groups and governments around the world.

It was not until U.S. forces bombed what the Americans said were two training camps used by Al Qaeda in Sudan that the rift between General Bashir, who was the head of the N.I.F., and Dr. Al Turabi, believed to be real power behind the throne, started to reveal itself. Some say the power struggle between both men had begun much earlier than that, basically, over what Mr. Bashir and his supporters had termed "too much meddling" from the spiritual leadership of the Front.

Sudan had been harbouring the Al Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, and some of his followers. That much was general knowledge. But, in August, 1998, several days before the U.S. attack on Sudan, two U.S. embassies, one in Darisalam, Tanzania, and the other in Nairobi, Kenya, were destroyed in a simultaneous truck-bomb attack. Al Qaeda was suspected, and the U.S. carried out a missile attack on what the Sudanese said was a soap-making factory in Khartoum.

Ontop of the retaliatory missile attack, the ultimatum came from Washington that Sudan had to cut its ties with Al Qaeda, as well as purge itself of "undesirable" elements within its leadership. Mr. Bashir’s moment had come. He quickly branded himself a moderate and a reformer, while Dr. Al Turabi, who probably underestimated the weariness and wariness that the U.S. warning had formented among the top boys in the military, kept on with his hawkish stance about "standing up to Western threats and Anti-Islamic policies". Already, the diplomatic punches had started coming from Washington, so much so that by 2000, President Clinton, who ordered the missile strikes on Khartoum, had managed to persuade all the other four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Russia, China, Britain and France, to back the imposition of economic sanctions on the Sudanese junta.

Further threats of unilateral actions(s) from Washington only intensified the power struggle in Khartoum between supporters of the two men.

Bashir’s chance came at that point, and he grabbed it with both hands. Playing on the fears of the public, plus the effect of the sanctions, in addition to a growing number of worried fellows within the leadership of the armed forces, the president made a public effort to chastise his spiritual mentor. He was dragging underground, Bashir had claimed. A verbal rebuke from Dr. Al Turabi resulted in a series of public showdown, so much so that player after player within the movement began to switch sides. By the time Dr. Al Turabi knew it, many key backers of his had left him. The General moved almost immediately. He needed to get such a powerful enemy out accused of treason and put in jail.

Since then, the charismatic politician who speaks fluent English, French and Arabic, has been traveling in and out of jail. More importantly, he’d become a show of his former self, and the Sudan he now lives in has experienced a political transformation. The N.I.F. has been replaced by the N.C.P., the war in the south has already ended and those crippling U.N. sanctions have been lifted,. Sudan has mended fences with most of those neighbouring states with which it had quarreled, during Dr. Turabi’s heydays.

But, in a sudden turn of events, afforded mostly by the indictment of March 4, Hassan Turabi sees himself in a position to beat his political enemy with the same stick with which he himself was beaten, years ago. Clearly, Bashir has been seriously weakened, politically, by the I.C.C. indictment.

Already, President Bashir is like a man on the run, and people are waiting to see, following his latest trips to Eritrea, Egypt, Libya and Qatar, whether his espoused "bravery" will take him to a signatory-nation of the Rome Statute that created the I.C.C. As for Hassan Al Turabi, he at least has an opportunity to harangue his arch-rival out of reckoning. The leader of the People’s Congress party, P.C.P., i.e. Dr. Al Turabi, has close ties to Darfur’s major rebel groups. As such, he has the power to engineer a peace deal of sorts between the rebels and Bashir’s government, part of which may include a clause, which the Americans and others can accept, to defer the I.C.C. arrest warrant. The objective will be to weaken President Bashir, further, but, ultimately, to remove power sooner than later.