A protracted political crisis has enthralled Sudan after the military deposed President Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir from power in April 2019 following months of protests against his 30-year rule. However, the military power grab failed to pacify the protesters, who dismissed it as a "regime coup," strategically designed to preserve the position of the military in power. The formation of a Transitional Military Council, headed by Lieutenant General Awad Ibn Auf that imposed a three-month state of emergency and a two-year transitional period to prepare for civilian rule, fomented perception of the military clinging on to power.
An alliance of opposition groups called the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) urged protesters to continue with the demonstrations with calls for a civilian-led transitional government, with protesters defying a military curfew. On 11 April 2019, Awad stood down as head of the TMC following unrelenting protests and was replaced by Lieutenant Gen Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan. On August 20 2019, the military generals and protest leaders dissolved the military council and formed a transitional 11-member Sovereign Council (SC) to rule Sudan for three years until the general elections in 2022. The SC comprised six civilians and five soldiers, with Burhan heading the council for 18 months before a civilian leader appointed by the protested would take over for the remaining 18 months of the transitional period. On 21 August 2021, the SC appointed Abdalla Hamdok Al-Kinani.
Herein began a period of intricate political machinations marked with intense civilian-military relations in competition for dominance, influence and power.
The Civil and Military Competition
Arguably, the transitional government was a political compromise between the military and civilian leadership with divergent goals. For the military, its main motivation was stalling the abrupt loss of power while the civilian leaders quested for a fully-fledged civilian and democratic government. Despite a welcomed development towards inclusive governance, the inclusion of leading political and armed groups into government, except the Islamist factions, further complicated the political intricacies for the transitional government.
The political rivalry came to the forefront with the 21 October 2021 arrest of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and several other members of the civilian leadership by the military. This followed reports of an attempted coup by Islamist sympathisers, some serving and former military officers the previous week. The March 2020 assassination attempt on Hamdok pointed to a deteriorating political theatre in Sudan.
Subsequently, the military and the civilian leaders endured an uneasy peace, with the latter accusing the former of failing to control their forces and retaining those disloyal to the government. The military accused the civilian government of mismanaging the economy and causing instability through political bickering between them.
Most likely, the coup was to regain lost influence and power lost to the civilian authorities. The military claimed it had launched the coup to return the transitional period on course and enhance political stability. However, the timing was suspect coming when the military was to hand over leadership of the council to the civilian leadership. However, intense pressure from protests in the streets, the United Nations (UN), Gulf states and the US and European Union (EU) made the coup unsustainable.
Unable to hold on to total power, the military retreated and announced the reinstating of Hamdok as prime-minister. However, the military and Hamdok had not anticipated the political changes in political realities on the ground. Buoyed by military retreat, the Sudanese street rejected the deal and called on the military to offer more concessions. Amongst the demands included the release of all political detainees, prosecution of military officers involved in the killing of 42 protesters during the one-month riots, a civilian-led government and a military with a role restricted to the Ministry of Defence. A crucial constituent of Hamdok's support base, leading opposition political groups such as the Umma Party, the largest political organisation in Sudan and some members of the FFC rejected the deal reinstating Hamdok into power. They accused Hamdok of providing the military with legitimacy and currency for continued domination of the political sphere. The announcement that Hamdok would lead a cabinet of technocrats rather than the prior cabinet, which comprised politicians and other leaders, offered credence to this strand of thought. For many, the military was consolidating power to retain the status quo through proxy by restricting credible civilian leadership to the political periphery.
Episodes of Inter-communal Violence
Further from the national political sphere, a series of violent episodes in some periphery areas in Sudan worsened the political stability in the country. For instance, from September 2021, demonstrations broke out in Eastern parts of the country, with communities protesting against the October 2020 peace deal between the transitional government and rebel groups in the area. The protests had economic ramifications as the demonstrators disrupted the flow of trade and goods from Port Sudan and the capital Khartoum. The domino effect of the events in the periphery reverberated to other areas, with protests erupting in South Darfur following shortages of bread due to low wheat supplies due to the disruptions.
Similarly, the outbreak of inter-communal violence and fears of an escalation in the violence to other regions in the country heightened the political tensions. In November 2021, inter-communal clashes between herders and farmers in the Jebel Moon area of West Darfur State leftover 50 people dead. Similar fighting occurred in Tawila, Dar Es Salam and Sortoni, Kabkabiya in North Darfur.
Fragile Economic Conditions
As aforementioned, the fragile economic situation exacerbated the political crisis. Despite signs of recovery and stability in the aftermath of the 2019 removal of Bashir, the protracted political instability hindered economic recovery. The impact of which might further escalate political instability considering that worsening economic conditions sparked the protests that led to the ouster of Bashir in 2019. Two days after Hamdok's resignation, the Sudanese pound lost value against major currencies, with on USD exchanging at 439,55 Sudanese pounds, on UAE Dirham at 122 pounds and one Euro at 516 pounds. Furthermore, with Hamdok's exit, leading donor countries and international financial will likely hesitate to extend economic aid to Sudan. The US and international agencies suspended financial assistance of hundreds of millions of dollars to Sudan, while Sudan's debt relief process under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has halted.
Another challenge is that attempts to implement economic reform in line with the IMF proposals heighten the risk of further unrest. For instance, in 2021, violent demonstrations erupted after the government lifted subsidies on petrol and diesel, which resulted in the doubling of prices. Of concern was that the protests took a political nature, with demonstrators calling for a wholly civilian government.
Therefore, Sudan faces an uphill task towards stability because international aid, trade, investment and business require capacities to project and predict. However, the political uncertainty occasioned by several abrupt political changes in the country's leadership compromises this.
An Uncertain Scenario
Today, the military is unlikely to take control of the political space because of domestic, regional and international pressure. If it tries to in the mid-term, it will focus on taking political calculations within the parameters of the current deal. The civilian leadership appear to remain hamstrung because of internal divisions and competitions. Their remaining source of political currency is the protesters on the street. Herein, violent street protests will persist in an attempt to force the military leadership to concede more powers to the civilian leadership and draw international and regional attention to their course.
Revealingly, the ruling arrangement between the civilian and military leadership is one of convenience and necessity. The absence of mechanisms to manage the divergent interests from the civilian and military leadership provides for a fraught civilian-military coalition. For its part, the military is worried about losing the privileges and unfettered access to power it enjoyed for 30 years during Bashir's rule. For the civilian leadership, infighting and mistrust among themselves have weakened their ability to present a unified and formidable grouping against the political machinations from the military for control. A long-drawn political crisis has the potential of driving members of the armed groups to abandon their deal with the government and resort to violence.
As it currently stands, the divergent of numerous factors in the Sudan crisis means no single and easy remedy exists. However, a critical step towards a successful transition towards civilian rule is to establish structures to manage and mitigate the different interests and expectations from the broad-based civilian-military political leadership. The process requires diversification to spur economic and social developments in tandem with political changes in the country. As the crisis has shown, undue focus on the political theatre at the expense of the other two sectors might exacerbate the political instability in the country.
