Sudan coup imperils West’s aid
When Sudan’s military removed leader Omar al-bashir in 2019, it started receiving aid that is now under threat
Sudan has only this year begun to make headway reversing decades of isolation and moving onto a path of badly needed investment and aid. Its latest military coup imperils that progress.
The country fell into pariah status with the West under Omar al-bashir, as the US imposed sanctions on his regime for sheltering Islamic extremists including al-qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the 1990s.
Al-bashir was eventually toppled by his own military in April 2019 after street protests against his rule. A precarious civilian-military government shared power beginning later that year, only for it to be uprooted by Monday’s coup.
It was only last December that Sudan formally freed itself of Washington’s state sponsor of terrorism designation, opening the way this year to more than $50-billion in debt relief and renewed largesse from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
Sudan was on the right path, said Alex de Waal, an expert on the country and executive director of the Us-based World Peace Foundation.
“Sudan’s national interests were served by continuing on this slow path of reform with international
assistance at last beginning to come in at the scale that was required,” De Waal said.
But by arresting the civilian Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, a former international economist, along with several of his ministers and civilian members of the country’s power-sharing sovereign council, the military has generated “serious risks for Sudan,” a report from the International Crisis Group (ICG) said.
Hours after the coup the US suspended a $700-million package of economic support meant to assist Sudan’s democratic transition.
On 26 October the EU threatened to suspend financial support if Sudan’s military does not restore civilians to positions of power. If the threats are carried out — particularly
by Western donors and the World Bank — Sudan’s “progress, belated but nonetheless substantial, towards stabilising the economy, will unravel”, De Waal said.
Sudan is one of the world’s least developed countries, where a tripling of bread prices in late 2018 triggered protests that led to al-bashir’s removal. The country faces shortages of medicine and essentials, and inflation is well above 300 percent.
Following al-bashir’s ouster the Gulf monarchies deposited $500-million at the central bank as part of a promised $3-billion assistance package to maintain their influence in the country.
Even if military chief and coup leader General Abdel Fattah alburhan gets further Arab financial backing it will not match that offered by international institutions and Western donors, De Waal said. The coup “leaves Sudan … going back into a period of being shunned by the rest of the world,” he added.
Shunned, but in the company of other troubled countries in the region. Sudan’s neighbour Ethiopia has been engaged in a year-long war against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. On its western flank, Chad remains in the grip of the military, albeit one threatened by insurgents, and further west there is unrest in the Sahel. “A protracted struggle in Sudan would be a further disaster for the region,” the ICG said.
The information ministry, loyal to Hamdok, said soldiers “fired live bullets on protesters … outside the army headquarters” following the coup. At least four demonstrators were killed and about 80 people wounded, according to the Central Committee of Sudan Doctors.
Analysts have expressed concern that resistance to the coup could be repressed. De Waal said this would not only mean bloodshed in Khartoum. “The civil war in the provinces in Darfur and South Kordofan would most likely be reignited.”
Leaders who authorise killing protesters or resist a return to civilian rule should face AU sanctions, the ICG said. The Gulf monarchies and Egypt, which have forged the tightest links with al-burhan and Sudan’s military, should be urging restraint, the researchers added. “They stand to gain nothing from the instability in Sudan that appears likely to follow the military takeover.”