Sudan Needs Help More Than Tweets
01 September, 2019
Donald Booth
For the past several weeks senior US administration officials from Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Tibor Nagy as well as a number of congressmen have been busy tweeting about supporting Sudanese uprising and their aspiration for a civilian government. In fact Pompeo went step further by appointing veteran diplomat and former envoy to Sudan during the Obama administration Donald Booth to resume that role.
Now that Sudan has set up civilian-led government by appointing a supreme council to act as head of state that includes two women one of them a Christian, a well-known Prime Minister, Dr. Abdulla Hamdok, with track record in regional and international organizations Sudanese people are expecting more from Washington, more than tweets or behind the scenes mediation.
It took Sudanese people four months of civil protest to oust former President Omar Al-Bashir and another four to force their way through to a civilian government. Of at least 250 who lost their lives during this ordeal, almost two thirds were sacrificed for the goal of ensuring the civilian government.
However, this is not the first time Sudanese are having an uprising, nor a civilian government. They had before two short-lived experiences back in 1964 and 1985 and years before the Arab Spring, Sudanese were able to topple two military regimes through a popular uprising, but they failed to have a sustained civilian, democratic government. And that was attributed to two main reasons: the short interim period of one year in both cases, seen not enough to dismantle the previous regime before venturing into multi-party elections and the inability to have peace and democratic transformation go hand in hand.
This time the interim period will last 39 months, seen reasonable time to dismantle the previous regime and prepare for democratic transformation. Yet the key to make tangible inroads is to make a breakthrough and conclude a peace deal, which will open the way for an improvement in the economic conditions, whose deterioration has led to sparking riots against Al-Bashir in the first place.
The key to enable Sudan reconnect with the world economy and international institutions is to remove Sudan from the US list of states sponsoring terrorism and the way to do that is to reach a peace deal with rebels in Darfur, the Blue Nile and Southern kordofan areas.
And that is where Washington can use its influence with the rebel groups because there is no way to expect a sustained civilian government as long as there are rebel groups resorting to arms.
It has been 26 years since the Clinton administration added Sudan to the terrorist list and never once a review for that status has been conducted. With Al-Bashir deposed through peaceful means and the new regime hopes to get into a democratic transformation, keeping Sudan in the terrorist list with Iran and Syria will not help.
The new regime puts peace as its top priority and hopes to conclude deals with rebel groups within the coming six months, but it needs help from Washington and the international community.
The deadlock in reaching peace deal in Sudan was attributed mainly to unwillingness of Al-Bashir government to make the necessary concessions.
But peace needs two to tango together and the question is whether the rebel movements are ready to engage in serious talks, now Al-Bashir has gone. Early on in 2017 and before leaving his job as special envoy, Booth in a farewell lecture at US Peace Institute criticized some of the leaders of rebel movement saying, “some of the leaders of the Sudanese opposition especially those with guns are more than willing to ignore the interest and well-being of the citizens in favor of their own political ambitions…. we need to be careful not to hold them in unquestionable high steam”.
At stake is the suffering of people in camps and as refugees, but also an experience to have a democratic transformation in a country with strategic position where one leg is in Africa and the other in the Arab world. Sudanese people, who now occupy the high moral ground, have shown clearly they are willing to pay whatever price and turn a new page in their march towards democracy, peace and respect for human rights. It is a mammoth job that needs whatever help the United States and the world can give.
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