Regional powers stick with Bashir amid protests
khartoum — As angry protests pile pressure on Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir to step down, key powers are standing by his regime to ensure stability in a strifetorn region, analysts say.
Demonstrations that erupted in the provinces last month after the government tripled the price of bread have escalated into nationwide protests that analysts say pose the biggest challenge to Bashir since he took power in a coup in 1989.
But despite bloodshed that Sudanese authorities say has claimed 22 lives, outside players see an interest in the 75-year-old staying at the helm.
“All camps in the region are at each other’s throat, but somehow they agree on Bashir,” said Abdelwahab Al Affendi, author and an academic at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
“They seem to favour continuity. They believe that any other alternative might not be favourable to them and to the region.”
Egypt, which has deep historical ties with Sudan, has called repeatedly for stability in its southern neighbour, with its commanding position on the Nile on whose waters they both depend.
“Egypt fully supports the security and stability of Sudan, which is integral to Egypt’s national security,” President Abdel Fattah El Sisi told a top Bashir aide who visited Cairo last week.
Days earlier, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry expressed confidence that Sudan would “overcome the present situation”.
Relations between Cairo and Khartoum had deteriorated sharply in 2017 over territorial disputes, but in recent months the two governments have ironed out their differences, with Sudan even lifting a 17-month ban on Egyptian agricultural produce.
Regional governments have scrambled to provide support, anxious to avoid any repetition of the upheavals that rocked the region in 2011. “There has been evidence of tangible support to Bashir... be it from Egypt, Saudi or Qatar,” said Affendi.
During his long years in power, Bashir has built up relations with all of the region’s bickering diplomatic players, through a string of sometimes spectacular foreign policy twists.
Just days before the protests erupted, he travelled to meet Syrian President Bashar Al Assad in the first visit to Damascus by any Arab leader since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011.
“His foreign policy is in all directions driven by economic pressures,” said a European diplomat on condition of anonymity. —